Vox Clamantis

''Vox Clamantis'' ("the voice of one 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 Peasants' 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.

There is no need to dwell much upon the poetical style of Gower’s Latin poems. Judged by the medieval standard, Vox Clamantis is fairly good in language and in metre, but the fact has recently been pointed out that a very large number both of couplets and longer passages are borrowed by the author without acknowledgment from other writers, and that lines for which Gower has obtained credit are, in many cases, taken either from Ovid or from some medieval writer of Latin verse, as Alexandre Neckam, Peter de Riga, Godfrey of Viterbo, or the author of Speculum Stultorum, passages of six or eight lines being often appropriated in this manner with little or no change.

The motto of Dartmouth College , "Vox Clamantis in Deserto," alludes to this poem.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Information About

Vox Clamantis