John Gower

[1] He 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.

[4]: 111  Macaulay[5]: xxx–xxxiii  and other critics have observed that he must have spent considerable time reading the Bible, Ovid, Secretum Secretorum, Petrus Riga, Speculum Speculationum, Valerius Maximus, John of Salisbury, and others.

[4]: 117  In 1399 Henry IV granted him a pension, in the form of an annual allowance of two pipes (= 1 tun = 240 gallons) of Gascony wine.

The first work which has survived is in the same language, however: it is the Speculum Meditantis, also known by the French title Mirour de l'Omme, a poem of just under 30,000 lines, containing a dense exposition of religion and morality.

According to Yeager "Gower's first intent to write a poem for the instructional betterment of king and court, at a moment when he had reason to believe advice about social reform might influence changes predictably to take place in an expanded jurisdiction, when the French and English peoples were consolidated under a single crown.

The first book has an allegorical account of the Peasants' Revolt which begins as an allegory, becomes quite specific and ends with an allusion to William Walworth’s suppression of the rebels.

[5]: xxxiv–xl  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".

[5]: xxxix Subsequent books decry the sins of various classes of the social order: priests, friars, knights, peasants, merchants, lawyers.

Macaulay refers to this as "schoolboy plagiarism"[5]: xxxii  Peter classifies Mirour and Vox as "complaint literature" in the vein of Langland.

Leland[27] (ca 1540)[20]: Fisher translation 136  states "that the three works were intended to present a systematic discourse upon the nature of man and society": They provide as organized and unified a view as we have of the social ideals on England upon the eve of the Renaissance.

Candidates are Cronica tripertita,[9][31]: 26  In Praise of Peace,[32]: 85  O Recolende[33] or an illustrated presentation copy of Confessio with dedication to Henry IV.

He "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.

They influenced each other in several ways: Sebastian Sobecki's discovery of the early provenance of the trilingual Trentham manuscript reveals Gower as a poet who was not afraid to give Henry IV stern political advice.

[17]: ix [40] In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, his reputation declined, largely on account of a perceived didacticism and dullness, along with the perception that Gower was a servile follower of the Lancastrian regime.

[41][42] Thus the American poet and critic James Russell Lowell claimed Gower "positively raised tediousness to the precision of science".

[43]: 329  After publication of Macaulay's edition (1901) of the complete works,[17] he has received more recognition, notably by C. S. Lewis (1936),[44] Wickert (1953),[36] Fisher (1964),[20] Yeager (1990)[45] and Peck (2006).