ABSTRACT
Rhetoric was one of the three verbal arts known as the trivium, yet of these three, it could be argued that rhetoric was the most fundamental in medieval culture. Gower's rhetoric is deceptively simple. That simplicity elides the complexity of Gower's attitudes toward the theory and practice of rhetoric. Recent scholarship is finally drawing out those conflicting attitudes and recognizing Gower's position, not merely as the author of the first treatise of rhetoric in English, but as a comprehensive and inclusive author invested in rhetoric's application to public life, spanning all social classes and genders. Gower also manifests strong ambivalence towards rhetoric's arbitrary power that can undermine its civilizing forces, but his sense of rhetoric as a freely given gift that opens the heart to others is foundational to his rhetorical and ethical project. The rhetoric Nolan and Yeager describe treats music and poetics both as joint keys to Gower's political project.
