ABSTRACT
Chaucer’s friend, as he is generally considered, respectfully referred to by him at the end of Troilus and Criseyde as ‘moral Gower’ (v, 1856-7), to whom he dedicates his poem, has for centuries been the victim of more or less unfair comparisons, as if he had tried and failed to achieve what Chaucer accomplished much more successfully. In fact, John Gower is in many respects a very different kind of writer, with a different temperament, different interests and, as far as can be judged from his impressive oeuvre, different ideas about poetry.1
