Confessio Amantis, Volume 1

Though never quite matching the popularity and scholarly acclaim of his friend and contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer, the prolific English poet John Gower produced an impressive body of poetry in Anglo-Norman French, Latin, and Middle English and has earned his reputation as one of the great English poets of the fourteenth century. His Confessio Amantis, or "The Lover’s Confession," ranks among the Middle English texts most frequently copied before the advent of the printing press. The poem both follows and builds upon the model of fourteenth-century Christian confessions by shaping the lover’s account into a frame narrative for a collection of shorter poetic tales, pairing courtly-love reinterpretations of the seven deadly sins with moralizing narratives drawn from biblical, classical, and medieval sources. The first book of this three-volume edition presents the Prologue and Books 1 and 8 of Gower’s poem, including translations of Latin components, alongside a comprehensive bibliography, glosses, and explanatory notes.