Vox Clamantis

Vox Clamantis ("the voice crying out") is a Latin poem of around 10,000 lines in elegiac verse by John Gower that recounts the events and tragedy of the 1381 Peasant's Rising. The poem takes aim at the corruption of society and laments the rise of evil. Gower takes an entirely aristocratic side in the poem, regarding the peasants' claims as invalid and their actions as following the anti-Christ.

Gower's earlier Mirour l'Omme had proposed the metaphor of the microcosm: man is, within himself, a miniature world and a metaphor of the world. As disorders occur in the man, they occur in the wider world. In Vox Clamantis, the same general trope is employed, but Gower emphasizes the role of the political, with a dire view of the effects of the polis and political on both the man and the cosmos. Gower outlines the proper duty of each of the three estates of society and argues that none of those alive were close to acting in a proper manner.

The poem is an important account of life under Richard II in London and the effects of the peasants' rebellion.

External links

• Cambridge History of English Literature
• The Norton Anthology Introduction Online
• Norton Anthology Online's reproduction of the title page showing Gower firing arrows at the world