The Speculum Meditantis, or Mirour de l'Omme, is a handbook of sins and sinners, written in French.
The Vox Clamantis, written in Latin, covers similar ground. Opening with a vision of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the poet passes in review the faults of the different grades of society—clergy, nobles, labourers, traders, lawyers—and ends with an admonition to the young King Richard II.
In his English work, the Confessio Amantis, he expressly abandons the task of setting the world to rights, and promises to change his style henceforth. Now he will sing of Love. The machinery of the poem is suggested by the great source of mediaeval conventions, the Roman de la Rose. On a May morning the poet, a victim of love, wanders afield and meets the Queen of Love (cp. the beginning of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women). She bids him confess to her priest Genius. Genius hears the confession, sustaining with some incongruity the triple rôle of high priest of Love, Christian moralist, and entertainer—for it is he who tells the stories which, woven about the frame work of the Seven Deadly Sins, make the real matter of the poem.
The first form of the Confessio was completed in 1390. It contains a Prologue in which the suggestion for the poem is ascribed to Richard II, and an Epilogue in his praise. In this version the Queen of Love at parting gives Gower a message for Chaucer:
And gret wel Chaucer whan ye mete,
As mi disciple and mi poete:
For in the floures of his youthe
In sondri wise, as he wel couthe,
Of ditees and of songes glade,
The whiche he for mi sake made,