John Clanvowe


Sir John Clanvowe was an English diplomat, soldier and poet. He was born to a Marcher family originally of Welsh extraction, and was himself probably of mixed Anglo-Welsh origin. He held lands that lay in the present-day Radnorshire district of Powys and in Herefordshire.

Life

Clanvowe was a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1386 they were both deponents in the Scrope v. Grosvenor case in the Court of Chivalry, in which Lord Scrope of Bolton and Sir Robert Grosvenor fought over the right to bear a particular coat of arms. Chaucer and Clanvowe testified in favour of Scrope.
Clanvowe was one of the "Lollard knights", with supposedly heretical views, at the court of King Richard II.
In 1390 he was campaigning with Louis II, Duke of Bourbon against Tunis. He was buried with Sir William Neville in a joint tomb discovered in 1913 in Istanbul's Arap Mosque in a way which would suggest a close relationship between the two men.

Works

Clanvowe's best-known work was The Book of Cupid, God of Love or The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, a 14th-century debate poem influenced by Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls. In the poem, the nightingale praises love, but the cuckoo mocks it for causing more trouble than joy. It is written as a literary dream vision and serves as an example of medieval debate poetry. An organ concerto inspired by the poem was composed by Handel. Apparently the poem also influenced works by John Milton and William Wordsworth.
Clanvowe also wrote The Two Ways, a penitential treatise.
Clanvowe is first mentioned in modern times in the History of English Literature by F. S. Ellis in 1896. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale had previously been attributed to Chaucer, but the Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature notes the absence of direct evidence linking Clanvowe with the work.