STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER

irony, which is that ‘‘Amans’’ is revealed to be only slightly more credible as a lover than is old January in The Merchant’s Tale. The person whom we fancied to be ‘‘Amans,’’ and who fancied himself as lover, too, is the old-age pensioner John Gower. If that does not count as a ‘‘discovery of that which is unexpressed,’’ then I don’t know what does. As the title of the collection indicates, Gower’s French and Latin writings receive plenty of attention. Cathy Hume raises the question ‘‘Why did Gower write the Traitie?’’ The usual answer is that Gower wanted to offer his advice about how to maintain matrimonial harmony, but as Hume rightly points out, Gower’s real purpose seems to be to show that adulterers come to sticky ends. It need not necessarily follow that Gower aimed the Traitie at some of the high-profile adulterers whom Hume mentions (Edward III, John of Gaunt), but the status of the Traitie as a straightforward marriage treatise will now need to be reconsidered. Nigel Saul in ‘‘John Gower: Prophet or Turncoat?’’ shows that Gower’s reactionary response to the peasants’ revolt was representative of his class. Finally, Andrew Galloway develops the implications of Gower’s own immersion in the dream world of the Visio Anglie. Galloway argues that the theme of the Visio is reason led astray by appetite, and this theme is exemplified not only in the revolting peasants but also, and more memorably, in the person of the terrified dreamer who wanders through an apocalyptic landscape (like Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) ‘‘amazedly, half sleep, half waking.’’ A number of essays in John Gower, Trilingual Poet are good companion pieces to Gower’s Visio Anglie, which I am sure will gain a wider audience now that it can be read in the edition and translation by Carlson and Rigg.