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John Gower is one of the three or four major poets of the English fourteenth century. The canon of his writings is large, and the influence of his work on subsequent generations of writers is substantial. He is still read today with delight by a large number of admirers. To readers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Gower stood with Geoffrey Chaucer as the originator of English poetry. They are the makers who introduced into English vernacular poetry the melifluous meters of the classical tradition.
Literary and historical evidence indicates a long-standing friendship between the two poets. In 1378, when Chaucer traveled to Italy on business for the royal household, he gave Gower power of attorney over his estate. A few years later Chaucer paid his friend high tribute by dedicating a work that some critics consider his greatest literary masterpiece, Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1382-1386), to him:
O moral Gower, this bok I directe
To the, and to the, philosophical Strode,
To vouchen sauf ther nede is to corecte
Of youre benygnites and zeles goode.
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