John Gower

The complete text of John Gower's poem is a three-volume edition, including all Latin components-with translations-of this bilingual text and extensive glosses, bibliography and explanatory notes. Volume 1 contains the Prologue and Books 1 and 8, in effect the overall structure of Gower's poem.

Gower's achievement in writing substantially in all three primary languages of his time-Anglo-French, English, and Latin-was a source of pride to others and, undoubtedly, to him too: into the final years of his life he continued to produce poetry in all three languages. Certainly there is reason to know these poems for the light they shed on the intense partisanship and events of great moment surrounding the usurpation 1399-1400. It was during these parlous times that Gower composed most of the poems included here. All are important documents historically; but they are also poems admirable equally for their skill and craft. In Praise of Peace is in the same position as the shorter Latin works edited and translated in this volume: ignored, neglected, reduced, or relegated to the dusty realm of footnotes. But there is far more at work in this complex poem, as Gower's verse deftly weaves in and out of the historical, political, social, and religious contexts and controversies of its day. In tone, In Praise of Peace is, if not triumphant, determinedly optimistic. In this light, we might view the poem as a coda to Gower's long career, restating and reinvigorating his famously moral principles about just rule of self and society.

Though never quite matching the popularity and scholarly acclaim of his friend and contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet John Gower produced an impressive body of poetry in Anglo-Norman French, Latin, and Middle English and has earned his reputation as one of the great English poets of the fourteenth century. His Confessio Amantis, or “The Lover’s Confession,” ranks among the Middle English texts most frequently copied before the advent of the printing press. The poem both follows and builds upon the model of fourteenth-century Christian confessions by shaping the lover’s account into a frame narrative for a collection of shorter poetic tales, pairing courtly-love reinterpretations of the seven deadly sins with moralizing narratives drawn from biblical, classical, and medieval sources. Volume 3 of this three-volume edition presents Books 5, 6 and 7, including translations of Latin components, alongside a comprehensive bibliography, glosses, and explanatory notes.