Rival Poets: Gower's 'Confessio' and Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'

Published: Elisabeth Dutton, with John Hines and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 276-87.

Description: Bowers describes LGW as "work-in-progress" of the 1390s and dates the G-prologue between 1392 and 1394, offering various comments to help justify these datings and explore their implications: LGWP emulates Gower's Ricardian prologue to "Confessio Amantis," and Chaucer recurrently follows Gower in choosing plots; the Man of Law is a portrait of Gower; Pandarus is a version of Robert de Vere, friend of Richard II; Chaucer suffered an "inferiority complex" in the face of Gower's trilingualism and the success of "Piers Plowman" and the "Pearl"-poet; Gower was the cynosure of Lancastrian literary promotion in the early fifteenth century.

Alternative Title: John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition.

Chaucer Subjects: Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations; Legend of Good Women; Man of Law and His Tale; Troilus and Criseyde