John Gower (GOW-ur) is remembered only for his poetry. A fine craftsperson, he holds a secure place in English poetry even when compared to his friend and the major poet of his time, Geoffrey Chaucer.

In his own lifetime and in the generations immediately following, John Gower’s reputation as one of England’s primary poets, second only to Chaucer himself, was secure and unquestioned. Gower wrote, and wrote competently, major poetic works in three languages: French, Latin, and English. With Chaucer, Gower was instrumental in adapting the polished French style to English poetry, and his preeminence is recognized by his successors from John Lydgate to Sir Philip Sidney.

Gower’s critical reputation began to decline sharply, however, in the seventeenth century, and it has never completely recovered. There were at least three major reasons for this decline. First, because of certain revisions in his works reflecting the political situation of the late fourteenth century, Gower has often been considered a political opportunist and sycophant. Second, it has been conjectured that another revision in his Confessio Amantis is evidence that Gower had a bitter and unresolved quarrel with his friend Chaucer. Third, Gower’s works have been considered to be rather dull. The first two of these charges have nothing whatever to do with the quality of Gower’s poetry and, in fact, are probably unfounded. The third charge is much more difficult to answer. It is certainly true that the Mirour de l’Omme and to some extent the Vox Clamantis are for the most part unpalatable to modern readers, though this is chiefly the result of a shift in taste away from the popular medieval mode of the complaint, which was generalized in content and moralistic in purpose. Gower’s great English work, Confessio Amantis, is less overtly didactic and reveals the poet’s real talent for imaginative storytelling.

Although Gower no longer receives the undeserved high praise of being placed second only to Chaucer, he is nevertheless recognized today as a poet of no small talent, though perhaps without Chaucer’s genius. He was a superb craftsperson, whose verses in both French and English have a smoothness and a polish that Chaucer never achieves, although the regularity may at times become monotonous. Furthermore, Gower the craftsperson had a keen interest in unity and form. For example, he imposed a careful and rigid structure, whether based on the seven deadly sins or the three estates, upon his complaint material. There is also reason to believe that the many revisions he made in his major works during his lifetime were at least in part an attempt to forge them into a single, unified whole: John H. Fisher (John Gower, 1964) sees them as a three-part discourse on the nature of humankind and of society, and the need for each individual, but particularly the king, to follow reason and natural law for the common profit.