Even if Chaucer had not in a famous moment referred to his friend as ‘moral’, our image of Gower would be much the same. To Shakespeare he was already synonymous with sententious precept and exemplary fable, and later criticism has made him the moral voice of his age, the ‘articulate citizen’, or less flatteringly ‘an encyclopedia of current prejudices and ideals’. The subtitle of Fisher’s pioneering monograph, ‘Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer’, reinforces the traditional image, neatly eliding Gower’s role as poet in the process. But the tradition begins with Gower himself: in manuscripts whose preparation he oversaw, a colophon defines his three major works, the Anglo-Norman Mirour de l’Omme, the Latin Vox Clamantis, and his English masterpiece, the Confessio Amantis, as ‘three learned books’, composed ‘between work and leisure’ to instruct his society and its leaders. Each reviews the estates of society from its own perspective: in the case of the Mirour the focus is provided by the moral doctrine of the penitentials; in the Vox, by a review of the state of contemporary England; and in the Confessio by world history and ancient political thought, punctuated with episodes from the historians, poets and philosophers.

Selective and somewhat misleading as a characterization of Gower’s corpus, the colophons make plain that he wanted his poetry to matter as social criticism. It is clear too that his appeals for reform were heard in high places, though the life records show nothing like Chaucer’s lifelong service to the crown, and we can only guess at the grounds on which Gower presumed to dedicate the Confessio, first to Richard II, then to his successor-to-be, Henry of Lancaster.