ABSTRACT
9Insofar as conceptual frameworks are always changing, “theory” in Gowerian scholarship never means one thing. Nonetheless, critical approaches to Gower can be broadly traced as a set of “waves” that address shifting intellectual concerns. Three major theoretical trends will be discussed in this section: an initial focus on the role of ethics in the poet’s work, a turn to interpretive analysis informed by modern identity-based politics, and an increase in scholarship that explores the author’s varied linguistic and socioeconomic milieu. These general developments are not presented as unified schools of thought but rather as hints of the wide range of critical methods that Gower’s oeuvre has invited.
