John Gower
John Gower wrote nearly thirty thousand lines of verse in three different languages, and almost nobody knows his name. Born around 1330, he was a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and by some accounts one of the fathers of English poetry. Yet while Chaucer became a household name, Gower slipped into the shadow, remembered by scholars and overlooked by nearly everyone else.
His ambition was staggering. He did not write one long poem but three, each in a separate tongue: French, Latin, and English. Taken together, scholars have argued they form a single vast project, a systematic attempt to describe the nature of man and society on the eve of the English Renaissance. Gower wanted to address kings and courts, priests and peasants, merchants and lawyers, and he wanted them all to pay attention.
The questions his life raises are hard to answer. How did he earn his money? What exactly passed between him and King Richard II on a royal barge on the Thames? And why did a poet so celebrated in his own century fall so far from grace that one prominent critic later accused him of raising tediousness to a precision of science?
Gower's early years left almost no paper trail. He was probably born into a family that held properties in Kent and Suffolk, and scholars using linguistic evidence have concluded that his formative years were spent in both counties. The Yorkshire branch of the Gower family, critics noted, bore a drastically different coat of arms, placing them firmly on a separate line.
He must have been a voracious reader from the start. Macaulay and other critics observed that Gower spent considerable time working through the Bible, Ovid, the Secretum Secretorum, Petrus Riga, the Speculum Speculationum, Valerius Maximus, and John of Salisbury, among others. That reading list shaped everything he would eventually write.
The source of his income has never been fully explained. He may have practiced law in or around London, and Macaulay lists several real estate transactions to which Gower was a party. Remarks in the Mirour de l'Omme have led some to suggest he may have dealt in wool. From 1365 he collected ten pounds a year in rent from the manor of Wygebergh in Essex. From 1382 until his death he received forty pounds per annum from properties at Feltwell in Norfolk and Moulton in Suffolk.
Sometime in the middle 1370s, Gower moved into rooms provided by the Priory of St Mary Overie, the building now known as Southwark Cathedral. He would remain there for the rest of his life. In 1398 he married Agnes Groundolf, probably for the second time; she survived him. By around 1400, possibly earlier, he had gone blind. He died in October 1408 and was buried in an elaborate tomb inside the Priory church, where it still stands today.
Around 1385, a chance encounter on the Thames changed English literary history. In the prologue to the first version of his Confessio Amantis, Gower recounts how King Richard II, meeting him on the river, invited him aboard the royal barge. Their conversation ended with a royal commission for the work that would become the Confessio Amantis.
It is a vivid story, and historians have handled it carefully. Much of what we know rests on circumstantial rather than documentary evidence, and the full history of the Confessio's revisions, including the shifting dedications, is still not entirely understood. What is clear is that Gower's loyalty eventually moved away from Richard. Later editions of the Confessio Amantis were dedicated not to Richard but to the future Henry IV.
Henry proved generous. In 1399 he granted Gower a pension in the form of two pipes of Gascony wine per year, which amounted to one tun, or 240 gallons. Carlson placed the value of that wine allowance at roughly three to four pounds at wholesale or eight pounds at retail. Scholars have speculated about which of Gower's late works prompted the grant, with candidates including the Cronica Tripertita, In Praise of Peace, O Recolende, and an illustrated presentation copy of the Confessio with a new dedication. A scholar named Meyer-Lee concluded that no known evidence actually connects the collar or the wine grant to any specific piece of Gower's writing.
When Chaucer left for Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1378, he entrusted Gower with power of attorney over his affairs in England. That legal document is one of the plainest pieces of evidence for how close the two men were. Fisher concludes that they were living near each other between 1376 and 1386, and the poetry they produced in those years reflects a genuine creative exchange.
Both poets were importing Italian models during this period and learning to count syllables in a new, more regular way. That experiment, according to Fisher, led via Gower's Mirour to the iambic tetrameter of the Confessio Amantis, and in turn shaped Chaucer's development of the pentameter. Chaucer had used octosyllabic lines in The House of Fame but set aside the iambic rhythm; it was left to Gower to develop the iambic tetrameter and leave the problem of its potential monotony to later generations of poets.
After 1376 both men turned from love poetry toward more serious subjects. For Gower that meant moralistic social complaint in the Mirour and the Vox Clamantis; Chaucer, meanwhile, struggled in The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls with the relationship between courtly poetry and social satire. Chaucer saluted Gower as "moral Gower" in the dedication to Troilus and Criseyde. Gower returned the compliment by placing a speech of praise for Chaucer in the mouth of Venus at the end of the Confessio Amantis, at lines 2950-70 of Book Eight in the first version.
The relationship was not without friction, or at least not without competition. The Introduction to The Man of Law's Tale, at lines 77-89, contains what many have read as a pointed reference to Gower's tales of Canacee and Tyro Apollonius. One critic, Tyrwhitt, writing in 1822, argued that Chaucer's remarks offended Gower and caused him to remove Venus's praise of Chaucer from later versions of the Confessio. Later twentieth-century scholars proposed less dramatic explanations for the deletion, and Fisher himself preferred to read the exchange as friendly competition between two working poets.
Gower's earliest known poems were likely ballades in Anglo-Norman French, some of which may have found their way into the collection later called the Cinkante Ballades. His first surviving major work, the Speculum Meditantis, also known as the Mirour de l'Omme, runs to just under thirty thousand lines in French and packs in a dense exposition of religion and morality. Yeager described its purpose as instruction for king and court, written at a moment when Gower believed advice about social reform might actually shape events.
The Vox Clamantis came second, written in Latin. Its first book offers an allegorical account of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 that starts as allegory, grows progressively more specific, and ends with an allusion to William Walworth's suppression of the rebels. Gower sided with the aristocracy, though he described Richard II's leadership during the crisis through the image of a captain who vainly tried to steer his ship. The remaining books of the Vox survey the sins of each class of the social order: priests, friars, knights, peasants, merchants, lawyers. Gower acknowledged borrowing heavily from other authors; Macaulay bluntly called it schoolboy plagiarism.
The Confessio Amantis, the third major work, is thirty thousand lines of octosyllabic English couplets. It borrows the structure of a Christian confession, framing it as a confession of sins against Love, and uses that framework to contain a large collection of individual tales. The overall theme remains morality, even when the stories themselves describe decidedly immoral behavior. One scholar argued that the Confessio almost exclusively made Gower's poetic reputation.
Fisher proposed viewing all three works as one continuous poem, with the shorter In Praise of Peace as its capstone. Leland, writing around 1540, stated that the three works were designed to present a systematic account of the nature of man and society. The movement across them follows a clear arc: from the origins of sin in the Mirour, through legal order and the three estates in the Mirour and Vox Clamantis, to a final meditation on royal responsibility in the Confessio. The three organizing principles, in Fisher's reading, are individual virtue, legal justice, and the administrative duties of the king.
Before the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Gower had already seen it coming. When the scholar Wickert was working to date Books Two through Seven of the Vox Clamantis, she found two passages that read as predictions of the uprising. One appears in the Mirour, where Gower used the metaphor of the stinging nettle to describe an impending catastrophe. The second is the closing couplet of Book Five, Chapter Ten of the Vox Clamantis, which warns of trouble in the near term.
Gower's warnings went unheeded. His calls for reform were ignored both before the events of 1381 and after them. The Vox Clamantis absorbed the revolt into its moral framework, but the larger social critique went without response. That pattern, of serious political poetry directed at rulers and institutions that largely declined to act on it, runs through much of Gower's career and helps explain why Leland, writing a century and a half later, still saw the three major poems as relevant documents for understanding English social ideals on the eve of the Renaissance.
For most of the sixteenth century, Gower stood alongside Chaucer as one of the founding figures of English poetry. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that standing had collapsed. Critics read his work as didactic and dull, and his closeness to the Lancastrian regime struck many as sycophancy. The American poet and critic James Russell Lowell delivered the most cutting verdict: that Gower had positively raised tediousness to the precision of science.
The recovery began in 1901 with Macaulay's edition of the complete works. After that, serious attention followed: C. S. Lewis wrote on Gower in 1936, Wickert in 1953, Fisher in 1964, Yeager in 1990, and Peck in 2006. None of it has closed the gap with Chaucer. Gower has never attracted the same popular following or critical acceptance that Chaucer has held for centuries.
The Trentham manuscript, a trilingual collection, has opened a different angle on the poet. Sebastian Sobecki's study of its early provenance shows Gower as someone willing to give Henry IV pointed and uncomfortable political advice, not simply flattery dressed in verse. Sobecki also claims to have identified Gower's own handwriting in two manuscripts, a finding that brings the poet's physical presence into the archive in a way that was not possible before. His tomb remains in Southwark Cathedral, and his final metered thoughts, as Yeager noted, were written in Latin, the language Gower and most of his contemporaries associated with timeless authority.
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Common questions
Who was John Gower and why is he significant in English literature?
John Gower was an English poet born around 1330 and died in October 1408, a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer and a contemporary of William Langland. He wrote three major long poems in French, Latin, and English respectively, and was regarded in the sixteenth century alongside Chaucer as a father of English poetry.
What are the three major works of John Gower?
Gower's three major works are the Mirour de l'Omme (written in French, also known as the Speculum Meditantis), the Vox Clamantis (in Latin), and the Confessio Amantis (in English). Each poem is roughly thirty thousand lines long, and scholars have described them as forming a unified trilogy covering individual virtue, legal justice, and royal responsibility.
What was the relationship between John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer?
Gower and Chaucer were close friends and mutual influences. When Chaucer traveled to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1378, he gave Gower power of attorney over his English affairs. Chaucer dedicated his Troilus and Criseyde in part to "moral Gower," and Gower placed a speech praising Chaucer in the mouth of Venus at the end of the first version of the Confessio Amantis.
How did John Gower come to write the Confessio Amantis?
Around 1385, King Richard II chanced to meet Gower on the Thames and invited him aboard the royal barge. Their conversation resulted in a royal commission that became the Confessio Amantis, a thirty-thousand-line poem in octosyllabic English couplets using the framework of a Christian confession.
Did John Gower predict the Peasants' Revolt of 1381?
Two passages in Gower's works have been identified as predictions of the Peasants' Revolt. One appears in the Mirour de l'Omme, using the metaphor of the stinging nettle to warn of an impending catastrophe, and the second is the closing couplet of Book Five, Chapter Ten of the Vox Clamantis. Gower's warnings were ignored both before and after the events of 1381.
Why did John Gower's literary reputation decline after the sixteenth century?
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, critics found Gower's work overly didactic and dull, and his closeness to the Lancastrian regime was seen as servility. The American poet James Russell Lowell famously claimed Gower had raised tediousness to the precision of science. His reputation began to recover after Macaulay published a complete edition of his works in 1901.
All sources
39 references cited across the entry
- 1journalA Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer's The Canterbury TalesSebastian Sobecki — 2017
- 2bookThe English of Chaucer and his contemporariesMichael Samuels — Aberdeen University Press — 1988
- 3bookThe Retrospective Review, and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine, Volumes 1–2Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy — 1828
- 4journalSome Sources of the Seventh Book of Gower's "Confessio Amantis"George L. Hamilton — University of Chicago Press — 1912
- 6webJohn Gower, Richard II and Henry IV: A Poet and his KingsGrétar Rúnar Skúlason — 2012
- 7bookJohn Gower, Poetry and Propaganda in Fourteenth-century EnglandDavid Richard Carlson
- 8bookJohn Gower and the Limits of the Law (Publications of the John Gower Society)Conrad van Dijk — D.S.Brewer — 2013
- 9bookThe Complete Works of John Gower, Vol 1 The French Works
- 10bookConfessio Amantis of John Gower, Vol 1Bell and Daldy — 1857
- 11eb1911George Campbell Macaulay
- 12bookThe Complete Works of John Gower, Vol 4 The Latin Works
- 13bookTestament of LoveThomas Usk et al. — University of Toronto Press — 2002
- 14bookThe Canterbury Tales of ChaucerW. Pickering and R. and S. Prowett — 1822
- 15bookThe Riverside ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer — Oxford University Press — 2008
- 16bookTroilus and CriseydeGeoffrey Chauucer — 1380
- 17journalGower's French Audience: The Mirour de l'OmmeRobert F. Yeager — 2006
- 18journalReviewed Work: Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature by John PeterSears Jayne — University of Chicago Press — 1958
- 19bookCommentarii de Scriptoribus BrittannicisJohn Leland — 1540
- 20bookThe French BaladesMedieval Institute Publications — 2011
- 21bookJohn Gower, the medieval poetMasayoshi Itô — Shinozaki Shorin — 1976
- 22bookJohn Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of ChaucerJohn H. Fisher — New York University Press — 1964
- 23bookThe Minor Latin Works with In Praise of PeaceJohn Gower — Medieval Institute Publications — 2005
- 24bookA companion to GowerJohn Hines et al. — D.S. Brewer — 2004
- 25bookWriting After Chaucer: Essential Readings in Chaucer and the Fifteenth CenturyJohn H. Fisher — Psychology Press — 1998
- 26journalCalendar of Documents relating to the life of John Gower the PoetJohn H Fisher — 1959
- 27bookThe Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300–1500Clayton J. Drees — Bloomsbury Academic — 2001
- 28bookPoets and Power from Chaucer to WyattRobert J. Meyer-Lee — Cambridge University Press — 2007
- 29bookA New History of English MetreMartin J. Duffel — Legenda — 2011
- 30journalEcce patet tensus: The Trentham Manuscript, In Praise of Peace, and John Gower's Autograph HandSobecki Sebastian — 2015
- 32bookThe English Works of John Gower Vol IMacaulay, G.C. — Early English Text Society — 1900
- 33bookHochon's Arrow:The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century TextsPaul Strohm — Princeton University Press — 1992
- 34bookThe Writings of James Russell Lowell: Literary essaysJames Russell Lowell — Houghton, Mifflin and Company — 1890
- 35bookThe Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval TraditionC.S. Lewis — Cambridge University Press — 1936
- 36bookStudies in John GowerMaria Wickert — Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies — 2016
- 37bookJohn Gower's Poetic: The Search for a New ArionRobert F. Yeager — Boydell & Brewer — 1990
- 38webConfessio Amantis, Volume 1: IntroductionRussell A. Peck — Robbins Library Digital Projects — 2006
- 39newsTo Kill a KingSarah Dunant — 15 February 2014