ABSTRACT
This chapter explores John Gower's legal knowledge in relation to current methodologies in the field of law and literature. It asks what happens when we redefine law as a cultural domain and apply that definition to Gower's life and work. Studies of law and literature as "parallel discourses" almost inevitably end up discovering a shared culture. It is commonly assumed that Gower was a lawyer, or else some kind of civil servant. Indeed, though Gower does not appear in the legal records as a lawyer, he does show up as a litigant. The most famous case in which Gower was involved was the "Septvans affair". Gower generally splits the law into two, so that prior to the corrupt practices of his own time there was a golden age, characterized by natural law and, at a further remove, divine law. While Gower likes to castigate the law, it is intriguing that contemporary statute law uses precisely the same rhetoric.
