The complete works of John Gower, volume 4: The Latin works

About this book

The volume presents a meticulous scholarly investigation of the life of John Gower, the 14th‑century poet, framed by an opening that lays out the paucity of reliable sources. It explains that beyond Gower’s own writings, the only concrete evidence consists of his marriage licence, his will, and the tomb in St Saviour’s Church, all of which have been examined and re‑interpreted by successive antiquarians from Leland to Todd. The author surveys the chain of commentary, noting how early writers relied on guesswork and how later scholars such as Sir Harris Nicolas and Pauli began to ground their conclusions in documentary evidence from the Close Rolls and other records. The text then shifts to a detailed analysis of property transactions recorded in the reign of Edward III, using these to argue for Gower’s Kentish origins and to separate the poet from similarly named contemporaries.

The prose is dense, footnote‑laden and characteristic of late‑18th‑ to early‑19th‑century historical scholarship, employing a formal, argumentative voice that assumes familiarity with medieval legal terminology and archival sources. Readers who relish rigorous textual criticism, the intricacies of medieval English law, and the historiography of literary biography will find this volume rewarding, while those seeking narrative biography or poetic translation may prefer a more accessible treatment.

Opening lines

To write anything like a biography of Gower, with the materials that exist, is an impossibility. Almost the only authentic records of him, apart from his writings, are his marriage-licence, his will, and his tomb in St. Saviour’s Church; and it was this last which furnished most of the material out of which the early accounts of the poet were composed. A succession of writers from Leland down to Todd contribute hardly anything except guesswork, and this is copied by each from his predecessors with little or no pretence of criticism. Some of them, as Berthelette and Stow, describe from their own observation the tomb with its effigy and inscriptions, as it actually was in their time, and these descriptions supply us with positive information of some value, but the rest is almost entirely worthless. …

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