An innovative reading of John Gower's work and an exciting new approach to medieval vernacular texts. "Moral Gower" he was called by friend and sometime rival Geoffrey Chaucer, and his Confessio Amantis has been viewed as an uncomplicated analysis of the universe, combining erotic narratives with ethical guidance and political commentary. Diane Watt offers the first sustained reading of John Gower's Confessio to argue that this early vernacular text offers no real solutions to the ethical problems it raises--and in fact actively encourages "perverse" readings. Drawing on a combination of queer and feminist theory, ethical criticism, and psychoanalytic, historicist, and textual criticism, Watt focuses on the language, sex, and politics in Gower's writing. How, she asks, is Gower's Confessio related to contemporary controversies over vernacular translation and debates about language politics? How is Gower's treatment of rhetoric and language gendered and sexualized, and what bearing does this have on the ethical and political structure of the text? What is the relationship between the erotic, ethical, and political sections of Confessio Amantis? Watt demonstrates that Gower engaged in the sort of critical thinking more commonly associated with Chaucer and William Langland at the same time that she contributes to modern debates about the ethics of criticism. Diane Watt is senior lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

This book, the first study in English devoted entirely to Andreas Capellanus's De Amore, presents a comprehensive inquiry into the influence of scholasticism on the structure and organization of the work, applying methods of medieval philosophy and intellectual history to an important problem in medieval literary studies.

In Courtly and Queer, Charlie Samuelson casts queerness in medieval French texts about courtly love in a new light by bringing together for the first time two exemplary genres: high medieval verse romance, associated with the towering figure of Chrétien de Troyes, and late medieval dits, primarily associated with Guillaume de Machaut. In close readings informed by deconstruction and queer theory, Samuelson argues that the genres’ juxtaposition opens up radical new perspectives on the deviant poetics and gender and sexual politics of both. Contrary to a critical tradition that locates the queer Middle Ages at the margins of these courtly genres, Courtly and Queer emphasizes an unflagging queerness that is inseparable from poetic indeterminacy and that inhabits the core of a literary tradition usually assumed to be conservative and patriarchal. Ultimately, Courtly and Queer contends that one facet of texts commonly referred to as their “courtliness”—namely, their literary sophistication—powerfully overlaps with modern conceptions of queerness.

In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365–1430?), one of the most renowned and prolific woman writers of the Middle Ages, wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular and widely read Romance of the Rose for its blatant and unwarranted misogynistic depictions of women. The debate that ensued, over not only the merits of the treatise but also of the place of women in society, started Europe on the long path to gender parity. Pizan’s criticism sparked a continent-wide discussion of issues that is still alive today in disputes about art and morality, especially the civic responsibility of a writer or artist for the works he or she produces.

In Debate of the “Romance of the Rose,” David Hult collects, along with the debate documents themselves, letters, sermons, and excerpts from other works of Pizan, including one from City of Ladies—her major defense of women and their rights—that give context to this debate. Here, Pizan’s supporters and detractors are heard alongside her own formidable, protofeminist voice.  The resulting volume affords a rare look at the way people read and thought about literature in the period immediately preceding the era of print.