University of Virginia’s
E-Text Center
This site contains electronic texts of many primary works, including
those used as sources by Gower. For many works, it provides text only,
(such as Livy’s
A History of Rome)
Also on this site is The
Ovid Collection, which focuses primarily on Metamorphoses, but also
contains a database of various artistic representations of the work.
This resource is scholarly and useful for background information or
survey of texts.
The Internet Classics Archive
Affiliated with the Classics department of MIT, this page contains digital
texts of several classical Greco-Roman authors. In addition, each work’s
page links to sections of commentary on the works, as well as recommended
books websites related to the work. Although very user-friendly, the
web site had very few functioning links, due to a server failure that
is in the process of being resolved. Most useful for Gower scholars
are links to Livy’s
A History of Rome and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
The Project Gutenberg Online Book
Catalog
This web site provides a searchable database of many primary works,
including Le
Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Each text
is available in several downloadable formats, so it would be convenient
to access texts no matter the capability of one’s computer. The
text is written in its original language, French, and no translations
are provided.
The
World of Chaucer Medieval Books and Manuscripts
This web site is part of the University of Glasgow’s Special Collections
homepage, which features monthly virtual exhibitions on different literary
topics related to their collections. Although focused on Chaucer, there
is also much useful Gower information on the site. For each work discussed,
there is an overview of the work and its history, digital images of
original manuscripts, and links to the university’s manuscript
holdings.
Some notable sections include, Chaucer’s
Contemporaries, which gives an overview of Gower’s Confessio
Amantis, and Chaucer’s
Influences, which include many of Gower’s influences as well,
such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Boccaccio’s De Casibus Illustrium
Virorum, and Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la
Rose.
