| Summary: | This article presents information related to John Gower's two lyric sequences, the "Cinkante Balades" and the "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz." These two sequences have received comparatively little critical attention because they are written in Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French, they fall between all conceivable critical cracks. There are good evidences that Gower's choice of language for the ballades was a deliberated choice, not a convenient accident. "To King Henry IV, in Praise of Peace" suffice to demonstrate that shorter forms of verse in English were not beyond him. They suggest how far he might have traveled in that direction had he not elected to expend his compositional energies in French.
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