Sir John Clanvowe was the ideal Ricardian courtier. A member of the landed gentry, Clanvowe spent his early years as a knight fighting on several campaigns in the Hundred Years War with France. He later served as a knight in the households of the Earl of Hereford, Edward III, and Richard II, for whom he was a Knight of the Chamber, a trusted councilor and an ambassador to France. Clanvowe was an accomplished poet, author of the Chaucerian “The Boke of Cupide” and part of a court literary coterie that included Geoffrey Chaucer and others who were on familiar terms with French poets, such as Oton de Granson, Jean Froissart, and Eustache Deschamps. But Clanvowe was also the author of a pious religious treatise called “The Two Ways”. It is this text and its sympathetic reference to…
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Citation: Havens, Jill. "Sir John Clanvowe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 February 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=891, accessed 18 December 2024.]
