Gower, John c.1325-1408
English medieval poet

Born in Kent, he spent most of his life in London and had contacts with the court in the service of Richard II and Henry IV. A friend of Chaucer, he wrote Speculum Meditantis, in French verse, which was discovered at Cambridge only in 1898, and 50 French ballads. Other works include the Vox Clamantis, elegiacs in Latin (1382-84), describing the rising under Wat Tyler, and the long English poem Confessio Amantis (c.1383), consisting of over 100 stories taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Gesta Romanorum, and medieval histories of Troy. Gower was blind from about 1400.

Bibliography: J A Burrows, Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain Poet (1971)