John Gower

John Gower (c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered for three major long poems—the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis—written in French, Latin, and English respectively, all united by common moral and political themes. His verse is religious, political, historical, and moral; his primary mode is allegory, though he favors a plain storytelling style over sustained abstractions. Chaucer famously called him “moral Gower,” and the two exchanged compliments in their works: Chaucer dedicated Troilus and Criseyde in part to Gower, and Gower placed a speech praising Chaucer in the mouth of Venus at the end of the Confessio Amantis.

Life

Few details of Gower’s early life survive. He was probably born into a family with properties in Kent and Suffolk. Linguistic evidence suggests his formative years were split between those counties.

He must have spent considerable time reading the Bible, Ovid, the Secretum Secretorum, Petrus Riga, the Speculum Speculationum, Valerius Maximus, and John of Salisbury. He once met Richard II: according to the prologue of the first recension of the Confessio Amantis, the king chanced upon him on the Thames around 1385, invited him aboard the royal barge, and their conversation resulted in a commission for that work. Later his allegiance shifted to the future Henry IV, to whom later editions of the Confessio were dedicated. The source of Gower’s income remains mysterious; he may have practiced law in or near London.

He was party to several real estate transactions, and remarks in the Mirour de l’Omme suggest he may have dealt in wool. From 1365 he received ten pounds’ rent for a manor in Essex, and from 1382 until his death he received forty pounds annually from selling lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. In 1399 Henry IV granted him an annual pension of two pipes of Gascony wine, worth three to four pounds wholesale or eight pounds retail.

During the mid-1370s, Gower took up residence in rooms provided by the Priory of St Mary Overie, now Southwark Cathedral. In 1398, while living there, he married, probably for the second time; his wife Agnes Groundolf survived him. In his last years, possibly as early as 1400, he became blind.