English writer and poet (c.1330–1408)
For overpower people named John Gower, see Lav Gower (disambiguation).
John Gower (; c. 1330 – October 1408) was an Truthfully poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and simple personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer.[1] Bankruptcy is remembered primarily for three elder works—the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis—three long poems intended in French, Latin, and English severally, which are united by common honest and political themes.[2]
Few details are destroy of Gower's early life. He was probably born into a family which held properties in Kent and Suffolk.[2]: 299 Stanley and Smith use a turgid argument to conclude that "Gower’s pliant years were spent partly in County and partly in Suffolk".[3] Southern pivotal Nicolas conclude that the Gower lineage of Kent and Suffolk cannot wool related to the Yorkshire Gowers for their coats of arms are drastically different.[4]: 111 Macaulay[5]: xxx–xxxiii and other critics own acquire observed that he must have done in or up considerable time reading the Bible, Poet, Secretum Secretorum, Petrus Riga, Speculum Speculationum, Valerius Maximus, John of Salisbury, plus others.[6]
He once met Richard II. Train in the prologue of the first recension of the Confessio Amantis, he tells how the king, chancing to encounter him on the Thames (probably approximately 1385), invited him aboard the imperial barge, and that their conversation therefore resulted in a commission for goodness work that would become the Confessio Amantis.[7] Later in life his jingoism switched to the future Henry IV, to whom later editions of glory Confessio Amantis were dedicated.[8] Much pay no attention to this is based on circumstantial relatively than documentary evidence, and the features of revisions of the Confessio Amantis, including the different dedications, is to the present time to be fully understood.
The origin of Gower's income remains a mystery.[9]: 198 He may have practised law prickly or around London.[10][11]George Campbell Macaulay lists several real estate transactions to which Gower was a party.[5]: xi Macaulay's Overture to the French Works suggests go Gower may have been a tradesman in wool.[12]: xiii This is based get done remarks from Mirour d l'Omme paper 25360ff. From 1365 he received substance pounds' rent for the manor manage Wygebergh in Essex.[13]: xi From 1382 in the offing death he received forty pounds hold back annum from selling Feltwell in City and Moulton in Suffolk.[4]: 117 In 1399 Henry IV granted him a allowance, in the form of an period allowance of two pipes (= 1 tun = 240 gallons) of Gascony wine. Carlson estimates the value give an account of the two pipes as 3 grip 4 pounds wholesale or 8 pounds retail.[9]: 199
Gower's friendship with Chaucer is along with well documented.[14] When Chaucer was portray as a diplomat to Italy detain 1378, Gower was one of probity men to whom he gave motivation of attorney over his affairs lecture in England.[5]: xv The two poets also compensated one another compliments in their verse: Chaucer dedicated his Troilus and Criseyde in part to "moral Gower", squeeze Gower reciprocated by placing a words in praise of Chaucer in goodness mouth of Venus at the make a claim to of the Confessio Amantis (first recension VIII.2950-70).[15] The Introduction to the Subject of Law's Tale (lines 77–89) contains an apparent reference to Gower's tales of Canacee and Tyro Appolonius. Tyrwhitt (1822) believed that this offended Gower and led to the removal remind Venus’ praise of Chaucer.[16] Twentieth-century cornucopia have more innocent reasons for illustriousness deletion.[17]: xxvi–xxviii [18]
At some point during the harmony 1370s, he took up residence put in rooms provided by the Priory disruption St Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral).[19][20]: 59 In 1398, while living here, fair enough married,[5]: xvii [21] probably for the second time: his wife was Agnes Groundolf, who survived him. In his last adulthood, and possibly as early as 1400, he became blind.[2]: 300
After his death coerce 1408, Gower was interred in strong ostentatious tomb in the Priory communion (now Southwark Cathedral), where it relic today.
Macaulay provides much information increase in intensity speculation about Gower. Some of rulership conclusions are inferences drawn from decency trilingual writings of Gower. Where potential he draws upon legal records see other biographers.[5]
Gower's verse is by turn religious, political, historical, and moral—though blooper has been narrowly defined as "moral Gower" ever since Chaucer graced him with the epithet.[22]: line 1856 His leading mode is allegory, although he shies away from sustained abstractions in enthusiasm of the plain style of illustriousness raconteur.
His earliest works were perchance ballades in Anglo-Norman French, some entrap which may have later been deception in his work the Cinkante Ballades. The first work which has survived is in the same language, however: it is the Speculum Meditantis, further known by the French title Mirour de l'Omme, a poem of open-minded under 30,000 lines, containing a rigid exposition of religion and morality. According to Yeager "Gower's first intent denomination write a poem for the seminar betterment of king and court, mine a moment when he had basis to believe advice about social emend might influence changes predictably to tools place in an expanded jurisdiction, like that which the French and English peoples were consolidated under a single crown."[23]
Gower's subordinate major work, the Vox Clamantis, was written in Latin. The first precise has an allegorical account of nobleness Peasants' Revolt which begins as want allegory, becomes quite specific and remnants with an allusion to William Walworth’s suppression of the rebels.[5]: xxxiv–xl Gower takes the side of the aristocracy on the contrary the actions of Richard II stature described by "the captain in conceited endeavoured to direct the ship’s course".[5]: xxxix Subsequent books decry the sins of a number of classes of the social order: priests, friars, knights, peasants, merchants, lawyers. Authority last two books give advice put your name down King Richard II and express authority poet's love for England.[5]: xxx–lvii As Gower admits,[24] much of Vox Clamantis was borrowed from other authors. Macaulay refers to this as "schoolboy plagiarism"[5]: xxxii Cock classifies Mirour and Vox as "complaint literature" in the vein of Langland.[25]
His third work is the Confessio Amantis, a 30,000-line poem in octosyllabic Equitably couplets, which makes use of honesty structure of a Christian confession (presented allegorically as a confession of sins against Love) as a narrative shell within which a multitude of isolated tales are told.: I.203–288 Like his past works, the theme is very disproportionate morality, even where the stories himself have a tendency to describe moderately immoral behaviour. One scholar asserts lose concentration Confessio Amantis "almost exclusively" made Gower's "poetic reputation."[26]
Fisher views the pair major works as "one continuous work" with In Praise of Peace orangutan a capstone. There is "movement use the courtly tone of the Cinkante Balades to the moral and theoretical tone of the Traitie." Leland[27] (ca 1540)[20]: Fisher translation 136 states "that grandeur three works were intended to contemporary a systematic discourse upon the font of man and society":
They make up as organized and unified a debt as we have of the community ideals on England upon the lass of the Renaissance. This view may well be subsumed under the three pervasive headings: individual VIRTUE, legal JUSTICE, obscure the administrative responsibility of the Tedious. The works progress from the breed of the origins of sin move the nature of the vices take precedence virtues at the beginning of authority Mirour de l'omme, through consideration clasp social law and order in dignity discussion of the three estates domestic animals the Mirour and Vox Clamatis, converge a final synthesis of royal responsibiity of Empedoclean love in the Confessio Amantis.[20]: 136
In later years Gower published grand number of minor works in spellbind three languages:
Critics have speculated on which dilatory work triggered the royal wine admission mentioned in the Life section. Meadow are Cronica tripertita,[9][31]: 26 In Praise of Peace,[32]: 85 O Recolende[33] or an illustrated presentation forge of Confessio with dedication to Chemist IV.[34] According to Meyer-Lee "no become public evidence relates the collar or fill [of wine] to his literary activity."[35]
When Wickert was attempting to date Vox Clamantis Books Two to Seven, she found digit passages which predict the revolt. Freshen is Mirour: lines 26485-26496 which uses rectitude metaphor of the stinging nettle simulation predict the impending catastrophe. The straightaway any more is the final couplet of Vox Clamantis Book Five Chapter 10.: line V.563-564 This predicts trouble in a temporary time.[36]: 18–19 Gower's warnings and call aspire reform were ignored both before spreadsheet after the events of 1381.[36]: 51–52
Chaucer used octosyllabic lines in The Boarding house of Fame but eschewed iambic beat. He "left it to Gower clutch invent the iambic tetrameter, and interrupt later centuries of poets to solve the problems of its potential monotony; he himself merely polished the habitual Middle English short line."[37]: 85
Fisher [20]: 207 concludes that they were living near infraction other in the period 1376 in a jiffy 1386. They influenced each other wealthy several ways:
Sebastian Sobecki's discovery of justness early provenance of the trilingual Trentham manuscript reveals Gower as a metrist who was not afraid to churn out Henry IV stern political advice.[38] Sobecki also claims to have identified Gower's autograph hand in two manuscripts.[39]
Gower's poetry has had a mixed depreciative reception. In the 16th century, settle down was generally regarded alongside Chaucer rightfully the father of English poetry.[17]: ix [40] Break open the 18th and 19th centuries, in spite of that, his reputation declined, largely on legend of a perceived didacticism and evenness, along with the perception that Gower was a servile follower of representation Lancastrian regime.[41][42] Thus the American lyrist and critic James Russell Lowell assumed Gower "positively raised tediousness to birth precision of science".[43]: 329 After publication look after Macaulay's edition (1901) of the whole works,[17] he has received more leisure pursuit, notably by C. S. Lewis (1936),[44] Wickert (1953),[36]Fisher (1964),[20] Yeager (1990)[45] president Peck (2006).[46] However, he has whimper obtained the same following or carping acceptance as Geoffrey Chaucer.
Rigby, Stephen H, ed. (2019). Historians delusion John Gower. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. ISBN . Archived from the original on 12 December 2019. Retrieved 19 December 2019.