10 Facts About John Gower

John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer.

John Gower is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.

John Gower was probably born into a family which held properties in Kent and Suffolk.

George Campbell Macaulay lists several real estate transactions to which John Gower was a party.

When Chaucer was sent as a diplomat to Italy in 1378, John Gower was one of the men to whom he gave power of attorney over his affairs in England.

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John Gower's verse is by turns religious, political, historical, and moral—though he has been narrowly defined as "moral John Gower" ever since Chaucer graced him with the epithet.

John Gower takes the side of the aristocracy but the actions of Richard II are described by "the captain in vain endeavoured to direct the ship's course".

John Gower's third work is the Confessio Amantis, a 30, 000-line poem in octosyllabic English couplets, which makes use of the structure of a Christian confession as a narrative frame within which a multitude of individual tales are told.

In later years John Gower published a number of minor works in all three languages:.

John Gower "left it to Gower to invent the iambic tetrameter, and to later centuries of poets to solve the problems of its potential monotony; he himself merely polished the traditional Middle English short line.