دانلود کتاب John Gower, Richard II and Henry IV: A Poet and his Kings. A Socio-Historical Study of John Gower’s Poetry and Late Fourteenth-Century English Politics

In 1399 King Richard II was deposed by his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke who thereby became Henry IV. This followed a decade of political and personal tension between Richard and Henry and their factions. The trilingual Southwark poet John Gower also had a part to play in the political events of the period. At the outset he honoured King Richard in his poetry but as he grew discontented with Richard’s rule of the realm he shifted allegiance and became a strong supporter of Henry. Gower provided Henry and the Lancastrians with poetry of propaganda condemning Richard’s reign and justifying Henry’s usurpation of 1399. Not only did John Gower serve his kings with his poetry for he also aimed at gaining honour and immortality for himself.
The events that took place in England towards the end of the fourteenth century were a political game of power and dominance. In this game, the various social agents found themselves either in a role of a “pawn” or a “player”. In some cases, the roles were reversed and suddenly a player would be forced to become a pawn. This, for instance, was Richard II’s fate when he went from being the king of England to being locked up in prison. Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory of fields, capital and habitus offers a method for an analysis of the “game” played in society. The findings of the social study indicate that Richard II and Henry IV were mostly competing within the political field, while John Gower’s main field was the literary one. Within the fields, they all sought to accumulate, in particular, symbolic capital. Although Henry and Richard shared the same habitus, Gower’s background and upbringing (and thus his habitus) were of a different kind.
Richard II, Henry IV and John Gower interchanged between positions of pawns or players at various stages. They each found themselves at a certain point in time in a dominated role, as pawns, and at another on the other end of the spectrum, in dominant positions as players. This is established through a reading of Gower’s poetry, a close study of the historical events and an analysis of the social status of and relationships between John Gower, Richard II and Henry IV.