Though there is no essay devoted exclusively to Gower, he is named frequently in pages of this collection, as one might expect from friends and colleagues of J.A. Burrow, who himself written so compellingly on our poet. Among important references: Ardis Butterfield (French Culture and Ricardian Court, pp. 82-120) offers a subtle and well-informed examination of inter-penetration of French and English literary culture during Ricardian emphasizing mutuality of cultural influences that was a natural product of close family ties between royal and aristocratic houses in contrast to a common tendency (among Anglophone writers) to emphasize distinctness of English from French. a brief consideration of puy as an example of cultural imitation, Butterfield dismisses suggestion of Gower's association as far-fetched since there is no evidence of continuity much beyond 1300; and in her discussion of practice of quoting already existing refrains in new compositions she cites CB 25. final part of her essay she gives direct attention to Gower as one whose works are supremely poised between linguistic cultures (p. 107). She compares CB 37 to a ballade of Guillaume Machaut, not to establish borrowing, though an argument for at least indirect influence would not be difficult to make, but to demonstrate how thoroughly at home Gower is in contemporary French poetic idiom, contrary to judgment of those who have seen either a discontinuity with French courtly writing or a reaction against it in Gower's work. She also gives brief consideration to Traite as a conclusion to CA, which it follows in 8 of 10 MSS in which it is preserved. There is than a single paradox to relation, Butterfield points out, as Gower turns to poetry immediately after renouncing any further writing about love, and as he draws upon authority of French to offer a very un-French defense of married love, creating an instability that is typical of endemic restlessness of Gower's poetic career and his constant habit of setting up oblique contrasts between different kinds of cultural perspectives (p. 120). A.G. Rigg (Anglo-Latin in Ricardian Age, pp. 121-41) cites Gower at least once on almost every page in his survey of role and status of Anglo-Latin during last half of fourteenth century, focusing on Ricardian era in particular. In this period, he writes, we begin to see clearly trends that would later lead to both demise of Latin as a medium for creative writing and its protection as a unique manifestation of classical civilization (p. 122). His essay is an engaging supplement both to his own History of Anglo-Latin Literature (1066-1422) and to Burrow's Ricardian Poetry, as he describes how Latin writers were like or unlike contemporary writers in English, using features that Burrow defined as characteristic of Ricardian age. Along way, he makes many useful observations about how Gower was like or unlike other contemporary writers in Latin. To use a small example, Gower's use of enclitic que for et, which stands out so prominently for those accustomed to classical Latin, is, Riggs asserts, entirely typical of his age (p. 133); and on a larger matter, he notes that most typical subject matter of late 14th-century Latin poetry is (as opposed to classical, Biblical, or devotional), only exceptions being a few of Gower's own short poems. last part of his essay, he juxtaposes three different examples of such historical writing, Thomas Barry's Battle of Otterburn (a straightforward factual account in verse), Gower's TC (in which poet has entirely manipulated history for his poetic and political agenda, p. 138), and Visio in Book 1 of VC, the most striking example of use of contemporary history . . . for literary purposes (pp. 138-39), presenting a vision that more than any other dream-vision I know, mirrors common experience of a bad dream (p. 139). More briefly, Stephen Medcalf (The World and Heart of Thomas Usk, pp. 222-253) cites Venus' instruction that Chaucer write his own testament of love (CA 8.2955*) as the only probable evidence of a contemporary's having read Usk's poem of that name; and Charlotte Morse (From 'Ricardian Poetry' to Ricardian Studies, pp. 316-44) cites a number of recent studies of Gower (including works by Middleton, Yeager, Scanlon, and Spearing) in her survey of critical work on Ricardian period that appeared following publication of Burrow's ground-breaking study in 1971. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1]