Books by 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 imaginative French poetry is now available in a new edition with facing page translation, annotations, and introduction. Gower's Traitie employs the French poetic form of balade, typically used for courtly verses, to avow instead the virtues of loving marriage, characteristic of Gower's signature moralizing. His Cinkante Balades confront the tradition of the French Livre de Cent Balades, by describing the feelings of a young man towards his lady, but eventually offering a praise of love insofar as it is subject to reason and morality. Together the two works offer an excellent introduction to the Anglo-Norman works of Gower and are perfect for classroom use.

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.