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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Introducing Gower Shorts, Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin
Introducing Gower Shorts, Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin
Accessus
This essay provides an introduction to a special issue of Accessus, entitled "Gower Shorts," slightly expanded and revised versions of conference papers presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2018-19 and the Modern Language Association Conference in Chicago in 2019.
Civility And Gower's "Visio Anglie", Lynn Arner
Civility And Gower's "Visio Anglie", Lynn Arner
Accessus
Deploying conventions from medieval courtesy manuals, Gower’s Visio Anglie assigned varied degrees of authority to Englishmen and women at the bodily level, a system of signification in which food, physical appearances, and overall comportment were key elements. Echoing courtesy manuals, the Visio constructed corporal marks of distinction, interpreted physical signifiers as indices of people’s inner character and value, and classified bodies into social groups accordingly. Offering understandings of civility that began with codes of bodily conduct and that expanded to claims about the cosmos, the Visio’s corporal regulatory system promoted particular understandings of citizenship and governance that sought to …