JOHN GOWER

      

  Almost exactly contemporary with Chaucer were two others poets, both of more than ordinary mark- one of than Chaucer's own equal, if not superior, in intensity, though far his inferior in range and in art, both curious contrasts in more ways than one with him, and with each other.The first was the author of the Vision of Piers the Plowman; the second was John Gower.
      
John Gower, (born 1330?—died 1408, London?), medieval English poet in the tradition of courtly love and moral allegory, whose reputation once matched that of his contemporary and friend Geoffrey Chaucer, and who strongly influenced the writing of other poets of his day. After the 16th century his popularity waned, and interest in him did not revive until the middle of the 20th century.
It is thought from Gower’s language that he was of Kent origin, though his family may have come from Yorkshire, and he was clearly a man of some wealth. Allusions in his poetry and other documents, however, indicate that he knew London well and was probably a court official. At one point, he professed acquaintance with Richard II, and in 1399 he was granted two pipes (casks) of wine a year for life by Henry IV as a reward for complimentary references in one of his poems. In 1397, living as a layman in the priory of St. Mary Overie, Southwark, London, Gower married Agnes Groundolf, who survived him. In 1400 Gower described himself as “senex et cecus” (“old and blind”), and on Oct. 24, 1408, his will was proved; he left bequests to the Southwark priory, where he is berried.
 Beside the shadowy and in part apocalyptic figure of Langland, the solid, well-authenticated, some what prosaic personality and literary work of John gower present a contrast which has its interest. His birth-year is not certain ; he died, old and it is said blind, in 1408, and his tomb is one of the numerous literary illustrations of the great and recently  rebuilt church of St. Saviour's, or St.Mary Overy's, Southwark, with Gower seems to have been connected in various ways. Indeed, though married, he appears to have been in minor orders.
Gower is the last of the probably not small  other than English men of letters between 1200 and 1400 who were trilingual- writing and probably speaking, French, Latin, and English with equal facility. The principal existing piece of Gower's French is a set of fifty Ballads, the favourite French form, with untwisted identical rhymes, a recurrent refrain, and an envoy. But he also wrote in French one of the three divisions of his capital work, the Speculum Meditates,a moral poem,another part of this ,the vox Clamantis, also exists, but is in Latin.a lively political poem in elegies.The Confessio Amantis, third and English part of Gower's Opus msgnum, is much less vigorous and spirited than either of this Latin poems.
Gower was both. The want of zest and rest in his literary style, and still more in his poetical medium, must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that both show an enormous improvement on such immediate predecessors as Hampole,as the author of The Pearl, as the author Cursor Mundi.He knows his craft far better than they did; he has better tools; he can teach others to turn out work that can be depended on.
 

WILLIAM LANGLAND

               Almost exactly contemporary with Chaucer were two others poets, both of more than ordinary mark- one of than Chaucer's own equal, if not superior, in intensity, though far  his inferior in range and in art, both curious contrasts in more ways than one with him, and with each other.The first was the author of the Vision of Piers the Plowman; the second was John Gower.       WILLIAM LANGLAND, the generally accepted author of the Medieval allegorical poem Piers Plowman, is a figure of whom there is no mention in contemporary records. Everything written about his life is educated conjecture based on Langland's texts and later allusions.

Langland was born sometime around 1330. In the B-Text of Piers Plowman, composed around 1377, Imagination says he has followed him "this five and forty winters." In the Dublin manuscript (D.4.1), a note in a fifteenth-century hand claims that Langland's father was one "Stacy de Rokayle." In mid-sixteenth century, Bale in his Illustris Majoris Britanniae wrote that Langland was from "Mortymers Clibury" (now Cleobury Mortimer) in Shropshire near the Malvern Hills where Piers Plowman opens. There was a hamlet named "Langley" nearby, which may explain his last name.¹

The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). This directly ascribes 'Perys Ploughman' to one 'Willielmi de Langlond', son of 'Stacy de Rokayle, who died in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire'. Other manuscripts also name the author as 'Robert or William langland', or 'Wilhelmus W.' (most likely shorthand for 'William of Wychwood'). The poem itself also seems to point towards Langland's authorship. At one stage the narrator remarks: 'I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille' (B.XV.152). This can be taken as a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-medieval literature (see, for instance, Villon's acrostics in Le Testament). Although the evidence may appear slender, Langland's authorship has been widely accepted by commentators since the 1920s. It is not, however, entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated.
Nevertheless he had a great literary talent, which perhaps amounted to genius. The literary craftsmanship which succeeds in impressing on a form so uncouth as the unrhymed and only faintly metred alliterative verse the combination of freedom and order, of swing and variety, which marks Piers Plowman, is of that kind which must distinguished itself whatsoever the form it happened to adopt. And although the architectonic gift, which might have enabled the poet to to present a real whole instead  of a series of dissolving views, ,is not present, yet it is astonishing with how little repugnance the reader who has once ''got his hand in'' accepts this apparent incoherence, and resigns himself to see the visions rise and gleam and melt, the bubbles swell and gleam and break. While as for the force of individual passages-the prologue, the fable, the best court scenes, the London Tavern, the Harrowing of Hell- these have never been mistaken by any competent critic who has read them.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER'S LIFE

The life of Chaucer has for greater part of century had its full share of that touching, if not always intelligent, devotion which justifiesthe theory that the human race is not after all indifferent to its heroes.There is no positive evidence of the the date of Chaucer's birth;for that of his death, 1400, we have not only tradition but the strong circumstantial proof that his pensions ceased to be paid at that time. He was pretty certainly the son the son of John and Agens Chaucer. Nor is there any doubt that Geoffrey Chaucer himself was in close  and constant connectionwith the Royal Family
.Geoffrey Chaucer (born 1340/44, died 1400) is remembered as the author of The Canterbury Tales, which ranks as one of the greatest epic works of world literature. Chaucer made a crucial contribution to English literature in using English at a time when much court poetry was still written in Anglo-Norman or Latin.
A considerable body of minor poems, original and translated - The Book of Duchess, The Parliament of Flowers, The Complaints of Mars and Arcite, with about  a score of shorts pieces, ballads, and more.
The House of Fame.
The Legend of good women.
Troilus and Cressid.
The canterbury Tales.
All his  this work divided into three periods- in the first of which, represented by The Romaunt of the Rose and most of minor poems, French influence predominates; in the second of which this is exchanged for Italian,as shown in Troilus [adapted from Boccaccio]; the House of fame, and the first draft of the Knight's Tale [again from Boccaccio]; while  in the third, of which the Canerbury Tales are the great outcom .The great feature of the Canterbury  Tales is the extraordinary vividness and precision of the presentment of images, whether complicated or simple.

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