But, even granting a dearth of real readers, Chaucer was not universally admired in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His Canterbury Tales became, for some, a signal of moral degradation. From the middle of the sixteenth century and to its end, Chaucer’s rival for affection and adulation as England’s premiere national poet was his contemporary John Gower (ca. 1330-1408). The historical Chaucer and Gower knew each other in their lifetimes; they refer to each other in their poetry. Both Chaucer and Gower were printed by Caxton: Gower’s long English poem, Confessio amantis, appeared in 1483, the same year Caxton printed Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. Thomas Berthelet, the self-proclaimed King’s Printer, brought out the Confessio in 1532, the same year that Thynne brought out his works of Chaucer—printed by Berthelet. The Confessio was reprinted, perhaps by other hands, in 1554, as Thynne’s Chaucer edition was reprinted two more times before Stow’s version appeared in 1561. The editions of Gower’s Confessio do not have the weight of contemporary Chaucer folios: with about 190 leaves, or about 400 pages, they do not have the heft of Chaucer’s well over 500 pages. But despite a reduced number of editions and copies, and despite the fifteenth century’s identification of Chaucer as England’s literary icon, sixteenth-century Gower gave sixteenth-century Chaucer a run for his money. Gower’s tomb, in London’s Southwark Cathedral, predates Chaucer’s in Westminster, but Southwark was smaller than Westminster and was identified with the monastic Augustinians rather than having the political foundation Westminster enjoyed: Southwark earned its designation as cathedral in 1905. Gower had a hand in his tomb’s design, although its modern version is in large part a reconstruction. Perhaps Gower’s interest in a permanent chantry for his remains says more about his selfopinion and attempts to foster his reputation than it does about his piety. But it is for his piety, especially as foil to Chaucer, that Gower was known in the sixteenth century.
In the complicated religious politics of the successive reigns of Henry Vlll’s three children, Gower possessed the epithet “moral Gower.” The phrase was used not only to tout his work but to distinguish it from Chaucer’s. In an era riven by sectarian politics and religious foment, reformist mentalities preferred “moral Gower” to his opposing number’s racy Canterbury Tales. Truth be told, a fair number of The Canterbury Tales are naughty: “The Miller’s Tale” is the best-told dirty joke in the English language. YouTube versions of it run a close second to “Pardoner’s Tale” videos. As for the sixteenth century, some writers use the phrase “Canterbury Tale” as a code for scurrility. One dramatist, Robert Greene (1558-1592), actually constructs a prose dream vision in which Chaucer and Gower visit him as he struggles with his legacy and the immoral books he has produced. The dream’s Chaucer supports Green’s less-than-pious collection of stories as an excellent legacy, but “moral Gower” lectures Green on the error of his ways (with not a joke in sight). Through the intercession of a biblical deus ex machina, King Solomon advises Greene that wisdom and theology should be his only study. Greene credits Gower with showing him the way to repent of his works and immoral behavior, and, when the vision ends, Greene promises to leave all thoughts of love, instead devoting himself to produce fruit of better labors.
Besides moral Gower in Greene’s book, other sixteenth - and seventeenth-century references to Chaucer and Gower show that Greene’s opinion had traction. For instance, Sir Philip Sydney’s Apologie for Poetry notes Chaucer’s “great wants.” But in the number of sixteenth-century editions published, Chaucer outshone Gower brightly. Gower’s work saw printing only once in the sixteenth century, in 1554, in contrast to the many printings of Chaucer’s works. No seventeenth-century Gower edition exists. Indeed, Gower’s work wasn’t republished until the nineteenth century. Perhaps fame needs a racy edge to reach the height of iconic status. Chaucer’s work, though little read, inhabited sixteenth-century literary history and nationalist narratives and found printers for editions in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
The world of narrative literature itself changed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and not just because of the availability of books. Perhaps it was Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth I’s tutor, who praised Chaucer as the English Homer to keep alive Chaucer’s reputation as excellent versifier and epic poet. The attribution seems somewhat forced in light of the difficulty readers had with Chaucer’s Middle English, pronounced and poetically scanned differently from modern English. Perhaps this difficulty prompted Sir Philip Sydney in his classic Apologie for Poetry (1581) to forgive Chaucer his “great wants,” his deficiencies, because he had in the main “beautified our mother tongue.”
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