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Writing the literary zodiac: Division, unity, and power in John Gower’s poetics by Kimberly Zarins is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Writing the literary zodiac: Division, unity, and power in John Gower’s poetics about?

This dissertation explores attitudes toward literary form in fourteenth-century London's trilingual culture and what it means to package science, politics, and social upheaval as literature. John Gower, the author of substantial poems in the three languages of his day treating topics as varied as clerical greed, aristocratic vice, rebellion, astronomy, and alchemy, writes at the intersection of literature, history, and science. Though called a historian and a compiler, Gower was foremost a poet whose political, cultural, and scientific writings grew out of his sense of poetry as a whole built from smaller pieces. Division was a force Gower feared, yet exploited. Though Gower critiques the broken political body, most famously in his treatment of the 1381 Rebellion but also throughout his many writings on politics, division could also signify marvelous design. To Gower, the music of the mythical harper Arion is not pure magic but a technical product of "mesure," a word signifying notes organized in a pattern. Similarly, the stars of the zodiac are divided into signs, and alchemy, though it transforms diverse metals, requires divided elements before it can unite them through an elabor

Who reads Writing the literary zodiac: Division, unity, and power in John Gower’s poetics?

Author

Kimberly Zarins

Publisher

Cornell University

Published

2009

Language

EN

Category

nonfiction