Gower In Exile,
2022
Southeastern Louisiana University
Gower In Exile, Joel Fredell
Accessus
The articles in Hope and Healing reveal John Gower's interest in an inclusive approach to human suffering, but also a clear-eyed look at its suffering. The experience of Amans in the Confessio Amantis, exiled from the love court of Venus, represents a powerful vision of love-agony as a central form of human suffering, not a cliche of love poetry.
Writing Into Hope: Laughter, Sadness And Healing In John Gower's Confessio Amantis,
2022
Wofford College
Writing Into Hope: Laughter, Sadness And Healing In John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Natalie Grinnell
Accessus
This article uses the theory of the narrative creation of the self to contend that the Confessio Amantis creates a space for narrative healing within the acknowledgement of mortality. Rather than being traditionally funny or ending in amorous or military victory, Gower’s poem uses the encyclopedia knowledge of the interpolated tales to establish a healing narrative in the face of failure and loss.
The Price We Pay For Envy: A Political And Social “Maladie”,
2022
University of Louisiana Monroe
The Price We Pay For Envy: A Political And Social “Maladie”, Will Rogers
Accessus
"The Travelers and the Angel" is a curious exemplum: depicting envy as almost an emotion, it depicts the seemingly hopeless worsening of the world, as the envious care more for others' pain than their own happiness. While the exemplum's moral is undoubtedly true, even for 21st century readers, we might address how Gower's particular framing of envy doesn't account for envy's potential to drive positive change.
The Unfinished Hope Of Gower's Transgender Children,
2022
Case Western University
The Unfinished Hope Of Gower's Transgender Children, Gabrielle M.W. Bychowski
Accessus
This article examines two of Gower's tales from the Confessio Amantis that deal with trans youths: Iphis and Narcissus. Considering these two tales together, I ask the question: why does one story end with hopeful futurity for the trans masculine youth and the other end with death and the absence of futurity for the trans feminine youth. Connecting these medieval texts to premodern contexts and then with modern contexts, I map the trajectory of centuries long problems facing trans youths. In the end, I conclude that trans youth possess a healthier and more stable future when they receive trans affirming …
The Consolation Of Exempla: Gower’S Sources Of Hope And “Textual Healing” In The Confessio Amantis,
2022
Stuttgart University
The Consolation Of Exempla: Gower’S Sources Of Hope And “Textual Healing” In The Confessio Amantis, Curtis Runstedler
Accessus
This article examines the role of exempla as the root cause of hope and healing in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. I argue that these exempla provide remedial action in the text. The exempla are sources of metaphorical healing in the text, functioning as what I have termed “textual healing,” that is the medicinal aspects of the text that helps remedy Amans (and the reader, to a certain extent) back to full health. This article also draws upon reading the Confessio Amantis as a consolatio poem, linking it to Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy in particular. I also discuss the role …
Healing, Accountability, And Community In Gower’S Confessio Amantis,
2022
Ursinus College
Healing, Accountability, And Community In Gower’S Confessio Amantis, Kara L. Mcshane
Accessus
This piece focuses on the Tale of Lucrece and the Tale of Mundus and Paulina in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. I examine how these two quite distinct narratives of sexual assault emphasize key themes in community response to trauma. In these two tales, Gower emphasizes the extent to which interpersonal violence is also social violence; further, community demands for accountability are essential to social healing in both cases. These two models demonstrate the extent to which contemporary society, too, struggles to hold authority accountable and address social wrongs.
Gower's "Herte-Thoght": Thinking, Feeling, Healing,
2022
Western Michigan University
Gower's "Herte-Thoght": Thinking, Feeling, Healing, Eve Salisbury
Accessus
While much has been said about the ethical principles of Gower's poetry, less has been said about his understanding of the body, its principal organs, and its relation to the medical discourse of the time. This short paper, presented initially as part of the "Hope and Healing Symposium" sponsored by The Gower Project, approaches the poet's work from a more medically inflected point of view, one that suggests a stronger kinship between the material body and its use as a metaphor for the body politic. Gower appears to be situated within a continuing debate launched by Aristotle and taken up …
Hope And Healing In Gower: A Special Issue,
2022
Westminster College
Hope And Healing In Gower: A Special Issue, Georgiana Donavin
Accessus
"Hope and Healing in Gower: A Special Issue" is the editor's short introduction to Accessus 7.1.
Literary Negation And Materialism In Chaucer,
2022
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Literary Negation And Materialism In Chaucer, Michelle Brooks
Doctoral Dissertations
After the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works on natural science in the thirteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s late fourteenth-century world saw a new interest in materialism with an awareness that materiality also implies loss. “Literary Negation and Materialism in Chaucer” explores the ways particular moments of negation—the imagined absence of a person, thing, or condition—operate in Chaucer’s work and the ways Chaucer deploys such moments as part of a larger pattern of negation that broke with the poetics that preceded him. My methodology grows out of discussions about form, philosophy, science and technology, economics, translation, and materialism. I integrate this interdisciplinary framework …
Eotenas And Hobbits: Finn And Hengest, And Tolkien’S Speculation About Origins,
2022
New York University
Eotenas And Hobbits: Finn And Hengest, And Tolkien’S Speculation About Origins, Nicholas Birns
Journal of Tolkien Research
This essay examines Tolkien’s Finn and Hengest, particularly concentrating on Tolkien’s interpretation of the word eotenas as meaning Jutes rather than ‘monsters’. As opposed to “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics,” where Tolkien emphasizes supernatural elements at the expense of history, Tolkien’s lecture on the Finnsburg episode in Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment seems to present Hengest as an English national hero, despite the bloodiness and vengeance of his reprisals against Hnaef and the Frisian court. The use of the word 'eotenas,' which can be constructed as either 'monsters' or 'Jutes,' is at the nub of the conflict here, …
Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril, Tom Ue, James Munday
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
J. R. R. Tolkien has had a significant influence on American writer Ernest Cline. In Ready Player One (2011), the character Ogden Morrow invites Wade and his friends to his mansion, which is modelled after Rivendell from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films (2001- 03). Cline goes further in his sequel Ready Player Two (2021) by staging a part of Wade’s virtual quest on Arda I, the First Age of Middle Earth. In this paper, we focus on this episode and, in so doing, argue for Cline’s insights into how we approach fantasy. First, we attend to the …
Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media, Michael Torregrossa
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In the 1130s, Geoffrey of Monmouth originated the character of Merlin, setting him upon the world stage as a wonder-working youth fathered (in the tradition of Greek and Latin authors of the past) by a daemon. However, later writers of the Middle Ages, beginning with Robert de Boron, reconceived Merlin within a more Christianized world, altering his heritage and transforming his sire into a demon from Hell. This shift from benign daemon to malevolent demon has impacted the representation of the wizard of Camelot for centuries. Contemporary fiction for the page as well as for the screen has adopted and …
The Story, The Narrator And The Reader: Mediated Horror In C.S. Lewis’S Narniad,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
The Story, The Narrator And The Reader: Mediated Horror In C.S. Lewis’S Narniad, William Thompson
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In her introduction to Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture, Jessica R. McCort defines horror for children and young adults as a hybrid genre, one having its roots in both the gothic and the nineteenth-century fairy tale. She explains that the exploration of dark forces in children’s books is often not limited to those tropes traditionally associated with the horror genre for adults: “Think of the books that are considered children’s classics. The best of them contain dark forces of one kind or another, as well as internal battles between the light and the dark: …
"Shivering Trees": Horror Monstrosity In Selected Stories From Tolkien’S The Silmarillion,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
"Shivering Trees": Horror Monstrosity In Selected Stories From Tolkien’S The Silmarillion, Elise Mckenna
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In The Silmarillion, Tolkien used conventions of horror within the setting of Arda. To begin with, the entire world, which is monstrous, is in upheaval with mountains being raised and valley being delved, lanterns of light created, and huge beings walking the land. Then, these landscapes are torn down, the lights are smashed and go out, and new creatures of horror prowl the world. The differences between the portrayals of monstrosity on a grand scale border the grotesque and the sublime. Monstrous beings, Valar and Maiar, command the elements of earth, air, fire, water. They have pre-ordained roles that …
Environmental Horror And Restoration: Tolkien And Today,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Environmental Horror And Restoration: Tolkien And Today, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Caitlin Rottler
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
J.R.R. Tolkien never forgot the felling of a willow tree that had overlooked the mill-pool in Sarehole, nor how his former climbing companion had been left to rot in the grass. His horror at that small environmental violence bleeds through his works, from poems like “From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames” (1913) to the Party Tree in The Hobbit (1937) to a letter to The Daily Telegraph in 1972 when he decried the modern “torture and murder of trees.” This presentation will draw on the excellent foundations laid by Dinah Hazell, as well as the father-son pair of …
Nature And Horror In Tolkien’S Legendarium,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Nature And Horror In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Julia Bowers
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Tolkien incorporates horror in his legendarium through the twisting of the natural world in order to signal upcoming dangers to his characters. This creates a dichotomy between the idyllic natural world that represents good in his works and the twisted natural world that has been tampered with by evil. Most of the focus on Tolkien’s portrayal of nature looks at the conflict between nature and technology; the natural world of Middle-earth is portrayed as more complex than merely all nature being good. His natural settings take on an eerie tone to convey a sense of horror to the reader as …
Delight In Horror’: Charles Williams And Russell Kirk On Hell And The Supernatural,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Delight In Horror’: Charles Williams And Russell Kirk On Hell And The Supernatural, Camilo Peralta
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Charles Williams has always been one of the more overlooked members of the Inklings, and the continued neglect of his poetry and “supernatural thrillers” suggests that he is not likely to experience a dramatic increase in popularity anytime soon. Similarly, Russell Kirk is an American historian who will always be better known for writing The Conservative Mind in 1953 than for any of the dozens of short stories and novels he wrote, many of which deal with ghostly or supernatural themes. In fact, Kirk acknowledged Williams to be an important influence on his fiction; this influence is perhaps most evident …
Charles Williams' P'O- L'U - The Cthulhu Connection,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Charles Williams' P'O- L'U - The Cthulhu Connection, Eric Rauscher
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
This presentation delineates the connections between horrific elements in the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the situation of P’o-L’u from Charles Williams.
Adoring The Head Of Alcasan: Posthuman Horror And Anticipatory Corpse In Lewis’S That Hideous Strength,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Adoring The Head Of Alcasan: Posthuman Horror And Anticipatory Corpse In Lewis’S That Hideous Strength, Mark Brians
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
At the pinnacle of Lewis’ That Hideous Strength (2003) is the reanimation of the decapitated head of Francois Alcasan. The sheer biological persistence that is afforded to it by the biosynthetic technics of medicinal artifice, allows the head to be possessed by “macrobes”— maleficent spiritual beings imprisoned within the circle of the moon. The goal of this reanimation project is purportedly “the conquest of death […] to bring out of that cocoon of organic life […] the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick …
White Shadows, Black Riders And Restless Wights: Undead Horror Monsters In The Fantasy Worlds Of J.R.R. Tolkien And George R.R. Martin,
2022
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
White Shadows, Black Riders And Restless Wights: Undead Horror Monsters In The Fantasy Worlds Of J.R.R. Tolkien And George R.R. Martin, Franz Klug
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The proposed essay aims at comparing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Nazgûl and barrow-wights with the white walkers (also known as “the Others”) and wights from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. To begin with, the folkloric/mythological templates for these sub-created monsters would be scrutinized. The introductory ascription of source material would be followed by an analysis of these creatures as horror monsters and gothic elements within the fantasy worlds of Tolkien and Martin. This analysis would also be linked to addressing the question of how the gothic/horror genre influenced the fantasy worlds of both authors, and as in …
