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Contemporaries of Chaucer
Contemporaries of Chaucer
John Gower:
Confessio Amantis
Confessio Amantis ("The Lover's Confession") is a 33,000-line Middle
English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing
lover, Amans to the chaplain of Venus, Genius as a frame story for a
collection of shorter narrative poems.
the confessor, Genius helps to examine the lover's conscience and tells him
exemplary stories of behaviour and fortune in love, organized under the
headings of the Seven Deadly Sins and drawing widely on classical story
and medieval romance.
At the end, when the lover has been entirely shriven of his sins and his grasp
of the ethics of love is complete, the confessor tells him that he is too old for
love and disappears.
According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II,
whom requested him to write something in English.
He dedicated it to Richard II.
Later, He dedicated it to Henry IV.
There was a speech in First Version, in praise of Chaucer in the mouth
of Venus at the end of the Confessio Amantis.
John Wycliff:
His attacks on the authority and abuses in the Church, and
ultimately his denial of Transubstantiation, led to repeated
attempts to condemn him from at least 1378 onwards;
Wycliffe was also an advocate for translation of the Bible into the
vernacular.
He completed a translation directly from the Vulgate (Latin) into
Middle English in the year 1382, now known as Wycliffe's Bible.
An additional updated versions being done by Wycliffe's
assistant John Purvey and Nicholas Hereford.
Wycliffe's followers were known as Lollards.
They followed his lead in advocating Predestination, Iconoclasm,
and Caesaropapism, while attacking the veneration of Saints, the
Sacraments, Requiem Masses, Transubstantiation, monasticism,
and the very existence of the Papacy.
He was called as the Morning Star of the English Reformation.
John Mandeville:
Sir John, the ostensible author of the famous book of Travels
which is found in many European languages.
Its first appearance in Anglo-Norman French in 1356-7.
had traversed by way of Turkey (Asia
Minor and Cilicia), Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt upper and
lower, Libya, great part of Ethiopia, Chaldea, Amazonia, India the
Less, the Greater and the Middle, and many countries about India;
The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, generally
known as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
Accoring to him, Jerusalame is the centre of the Earth. He hurries
Christians to claim their land from Pagans.