The main principles for the pronunciation of Chaucer's language, so far as it differs from ours, are these: Every letter should be sounded, especially the final _e_ (except when it is to be suppressed before another vowel). A large proportion of the rimes are therefore feminine. The following vowel sounds should be observed: Stressed _a_ like modern _a_ in father. Stressed _e_ and _ee_ like _e_ in _fête_ or _ea_ in breath. Stressed _i_ as in _machine_, _oo_ like _o_ in _open_. _u_ commonly as in _push_ or like _oo_ in _spoon_, _y_ like _i_ in _machine_ or _pin_ according as it is stressed or not. _ai_, _ay_, _ei_, and _ey_ like _ay_ in _day_. _au_ commonly like _ou_ in _pound_, _ou_ like _oo_ in _spoon_. _-ye_ (final) is a diphthong. _g_ (not in _ng_ and not initial) before _e_ or _i_is like _j_.
Lowell has named in a suggestive summary the chief quality of each of the great English poets, with Chaucer standing first in order: 'Actual life is represented by Chaucer; imaginative life by Spenser; ideal life by Shakspere; interior life by Milton; conventional life by Pope.' We might add: the life of spiritual mysticism and simplicity by Wordsworth; the completely balanced life by Tennyson; and the life of moral issues and dramatic moments by Robert Browning.
JOHN GOWER. The three other chief writers contemporary with Chaucer contrast strikingly both with him and with each other. Least important is John Gower (pronounced either Go-er or Gow-er), a wealthy landowner whose tomb, with his effigy, may still be seen in St. Savior's, Southwark, the church of a priory to whose rebuilding he contributed and where he spent his latter days. Gower was a confirmed conservative, and time has left him stranded far in the rear of the forces that move and live. Unlike Chaucer's, the bulk of his voluminous poems reflect the past and scarcely hint of the future. The earlier and larger part of them are written in French and Latin, and in 'Vox Clamantis' (The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness) he exhausts the vocabulary of exaggerated bitterness in denouncing the common people for the insurrection in which they threatened the privileges and authority of his own class. Later on, perhaps through Chaucer's example, he turned to English, and in 'Confessio Amantis' (A Lover's Confession) produced a series of renderings of traditional stories parallel in general nature to 'The Canterbury Tales.' He is generally a smooth and fluent versifier, but his fluency is his undoing; he wraps up his material in too great a mass of verbiage.