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.