ABSTRACT
Compared to the development of feminist criticism on other medieval authors and texts, the scholarship on Gower and gender has arguably taken somewhat longer to become a major area in Gower studies. The very first article on Gower and gender, Linda Barney Burke’s “Women in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis,” appeared in 1977, but not much else was published in this area until the 1990s. Nevertheless, when scholars finally took the baton from Burke, the scholarship on Gower and gender grew rapidly and became a crucial strand of Gower criticism, producing several influential and stimulating studies, both in article and book form, as well as laying the foundations for future work.
