John Gower

John Gower (c. 1330–1408) was an English poet, a friend and contemporary of Chaucer, who wrote major long works in all three literary languages of his day: French (Mirour de l'Omme), Latin (Vox Clamantis), and English (Confessio Amantis).

A man of some property in Kent, he spent his later years at the Priory of St Mary Overie in Southwark, where his elaborate tomb, with its painted effigy resting its head on his three books, still stands in what is now Southwark Cathedral.

Confessio Amantis, his English masterwork, frames some hundred and forty tales as a lover's confession to a priest of Venus, moving through the Seven Deadly Sins toward a final meditation on age and the end of love — dedicated, in its first version, to Richard II.