John Gower (1) (–1408)

Best known as "moral Gower," as he is called by his friend Chaucer in the dedication of Troilus and Criseyde, Gower composed "balades" in the French fashion as well as three long poems, representing the trilingual status of the cultural and political elite of late fourteenth-century England. Mirour show more de l'Homme (Mirror of Man) (c.1376--78), a mammoth French poem of some 30,000 lines, deals with the seven deadly sins. Vox Clamantis (Voice of One Crying) (c.1379--81), in Latin, is a prophetic attack on contemporary political and social abuses in response to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Gower's lengthy and occasionally dreary Middle English poem Confessio Amantis (Lover's Confession) (1390), portions of which influenced Chaucer, is set as an allegorical confession of the poet-lover to Genius, the priest of Venus. In 34,000 lines, he retells several classical love stories illustrating cupidity and the other deadly sins. (Bowker Author Biography) show less