Series: Literary Structures | Publication Date: October 1, 1978
Confessio Amantis,the principal work in English by John Gower, friend of Chaucer, by whom he was influenced, has always been read as a conventional poem about the seven deadly sins. Here, paying particular attention to the poem’s language and style, Peck gives a brilliant new reinterpretation which not only illuminates the poem’s elegant beauty but provides a profound moral purpose as well.
Gower’s Confessio, according to Peck, is a restatement of late fourteenth-century ideas of good and bad behavior, and is designed to illuminate and reshape the minds and hearts of men.
Peck sees the concepts of “kingship”—the governance of souls as well as kingdoms—and “common profit”—the mutual enhancement of such kingdoms—as the poem’s unifying ideas. Peck’s discussion further shows how the various tales hold together and support the poem’s loose plot and the poet’s strongly moral intention.
