The translation of John Gower’s complete Confessio Amantis, by medievalist Brian Gastle and poet Catherine Carter, with Latin translations by Andrew Galloway, is a most welcome contribution to Gower Studies and the TEAMS catalogue. The very fact of its existence, a result of tremendous labor, makes teaching the Confessio, one of the major works of the English late Middle Ages, possible in surveys where Middle English language learning is not possible. But in addition to making the poem finally available as a whole in Modern English, the translation manages to be both clear and elegant, reflecting the dual expertise of its English translators. The Latin, which has been translated before by Galloway in the Middle English edition of theConfessio (edited by the late Russell Peck) has been updated and clarified as well (especially for readers without immediate access to the Latin), and Latin summaries, which usually appear in the margins of manuscripts of the Confessio, are now available in translation in the footnotes rather than in the endnotes of the Peck edition. [1] This is an excellent translation, especially for teaching this long and complex poem in the undergraduate classroom.
The introduction and notes for the Confessio, like the text itself, are pitched towards an undergraduate audience and its instructors; both are brief but pithy. In the introduction, Gastle and Carter write that the Confessio has the “ability to be understood both in parts and as a whole” (xv), and they provide the means for students to gain that ability. They have cleverly used the initial divisions of the Confessio’sPrologue to provide historical context for the poem. While there are times when the introduction feels too compressed, they avoid producing something too long to be assigned as a reading with, for instance, the Prologue. Rather than linger on Gower’s biography, the introduction, in approaching topics such as genre and language, introduces students to more important context (including the very necessary Roman de la Rose) and a good sense of Gower’s meter. That is particularly important because of Gastle and Carter’s choice “to prioritize the meaning of the words and the lines over their sound” (xxxi). The explication of translation methodology shows the depth to which Gastle and Carter have thought through the difficulties of translation in general and the translation of theConfessio in particular. Their commitment to a Gowerian “middle way” (xxxiii) in which they have the dual goal of “clarity and readability while maintaining the form as much as possible” (xxxiv) works; the poem reads fluidly, and the occasional retention of couplet rhyme reminds the reader of the original form. The notes offer some context and comparison, but primarily explication of the original Middle English, especially when its breadth of meaning required difficult translation choices.
The translation succeeds in remaining literal but retaining register. Gastle and Carter steer away from word choices and grammatical structures which would make the poem sound archaic, a tall order when word-for-word renderings lead easily into archaisms. That said, they don’t try to “update” Gower either; the poem reflects Gower’s own often chatty tellings. For instance, in Book I’s famous “The Tale of Florent,” the titular knight is confronted by a loathly lady who demands marriage in return for help with his quest. Gastle and Carter translate Gower’s “‘Nay,” seith Florent, ‘that may noght be’” with “‘No,’ said Florent, ‘that won’t happen’” (I.1561). The translation communicates the humorous abruptness of Florent’s words where a word-for-word literal translation would have erased the comedy. Indeed, readers will be refreshed by a considerably less dour Gower than they have been conditioned to expect. Socrates is asked by his wife “what the hell he thought” (III.663); the comedy remains, with Gastle and Carter substituting “hell” for “devel” to avoid the wife sounding like Henry Higgins. They also leave words in place when it would be easy to make them less weird; when Amans is describing his dreams, the only place where he can succeed in love, he concludes with desire for “sleepy heaven” (“slepi hevene”; IV.2916). Something like “heaven of sleep” would have sounded more poetic but lost the ridiculous character of Amans at this moment.
But they don’t make Gower a clown either. Soon after the “sleepy heaven” moment, Genius tells one of the most poignant tales in the collection, that of Ceyx and Alcyone, well known from both Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There, Genius differentiates between the dreams that are “evidence” (that “evidence the truth”; IV.3054) and those that are “bot a jape” (“but a joke”; IV.3055). In the context of Alcyone’s anxious waiting for her lost husband, “jape” and “joke” are perfect words to cut to the heart of dreams’ cruelty; when it is revealed to Alcyone how Ceyx is dead, Gastle and Carter render beautiful poetry:
All the tempest of the black cloud,
The maddened sea, the shrieking winds,
All this she dreamed, and saw him die (IV.3063-65).
Throughout the translation, they are able to follow Gower from laughter to tears, from bathos to pathos.
Sometimes, however, when Gastle and Carter make a particularly difficult set of translational choices, some of the poetry gets lost. Near the end of the poem, when Amans is revealed as old, Venus advises him to give up love. She cautions:
‘Min herte wolde and I ne may’
Is noght beloved nou adays;
Er thou make eny suche assaies
To love, and faile upon the fet,
Betre is to make a beau retret (VIII.2414-16).
This is admittedly a particularly challenging passage. Gower begins by himself translating Maximianus’s maxim, “nec quod non possum, non voluisse meum est” into a Middle English maxim, and ends with the French “beau retret.” [2] They translate it:
‘The heart wills, but the flesh cannot’
Is not beloved nowadays;
Before you make such an attempt
At love, and then fail in the test,
Better to make graceful exit
The replacement of the Maximianus with a recognizable maxim allows for some of the comedy of the moment: nobody likes to get a canned excuse when what one wants is an erection. “Moral Gower,” indeed. However, the rest of the translation loses the martial metaphor upon which the lines are structured. While “attempt” can certainly translate “assaie,” “assaie” with “fet” and “beau retret” all imply that Venus is telling him not to engage in open battle, and in the context of Venus’s failure to assist, this seems to refer to the attempts to seize the castle of Jalousie in Le Roman de la Rose, the principal source for the interactions between Amans and Venus (and Genius). The clarity of the translation sacrifices some subtlety, though at a high point of Gower’s trilingual referentiality.
Because in a 33,000-line poem, picking and choosing may seem arbitrary and not representative, in the interests of giving readers a sense of the translation in its granularity, I have chosen one section to read carefully side-by-side with the Middle English: the narrative of Tereus, Procne, and Philomena in Confessio Amantis 5. The section presents considerable challenges for translation, especially one which takes closeness of meaning and accessibility of the text as essential to its project. Gastle and Carter must present a male-authored narrative of rape, violence, and revenge, told by a male narrator to male listener, in a period (and we can debate whether such a period is over) when rape is central to masculine erotic power. At the same time, these narratives are not simply aligned with that erotic power; as Jennifer Garrison suggests, “Gower depicts these women’s narratives of suffering as socially transformative precisely because they threaten the masculine chivalric ideal.” [3] The section could serve (and indeed has already served) [4] as a case study of medieval sexual violence for the undergraduate classroom.
Gastle and Carter begin the section on “Ravine” (Rapina in the Latin verses and marginalia) by using the same term Peck had used to name the section: “Rapacity.” [5] The term offers useful flexibility, and their note to the term itself makes clear for the reader the complexity of the term, defining both “ravine” and “rapere.” The rapere / raptus definition is immediately helpful for anyone situating this text in the context of rape in Chaucer, especially in relationship to the complex case of Cecily Chaumpaigne. Nonetheless, the translation does not shy away from using the terms “rape” and “rapist” to clearly indicate Tereus’s crime.
There are a few places where additional notes might have been helpful; for instance, after Philomena is raped, she states that she will speak publicly about it—that is, she will, as soon as it is possible, raise the “hue and cry,” which was centrally important to establishing rape cases in the Middle Ages; this could be useful for a student to know. But her determination to announce her rape and rapist is an example of Philomena’s courage as well as her righteous anger, and the translation is able to communicate this admirably. Indeed, despite (or perhaps because of) the closeness of the translation to the original, the emotional expression of both Philomena and Procne are powerfully and lyrically expressed. For instance, Gastle and Carter work carefully with instances of rime riche: “That dai schal falle, I hope so,/ That I schal telle out al mi fille,/ And with mi speche I schal fulfille/ The wyde world in brede and lengthe (5.5658-61) is rendered, “The day shall come, or so I hope,/ When I shall speak out my fill,/ And with my speech I shall fill up/ The wide world to its breadth and length.” The translation is remarkably close and clear, but it also mirrors the sonic structure of these lines: where the falle/fille/fulfille sound becomes impossible, they create the speak/speech echo and generally maintain the rest of the alliteration that embellishes the potent rhetoric of this passage, including a version of therime riche that sounds correct to the modern ear.
A few things were sacrificed in the translation that I find important to the narrative as a whole. For instance, Gower uses versions of the word “shapen” a half dozen times in the Tereus, Procne, and Philomena story, which thematize the violence as not the result of spontaneous wrath, but of plotting (on all sides, not just Tereus); it is not translated in a consistent way, though without using a cognate, I’m not sure how it might have been a better mode. However, “wod,” which appears in 5.5639, 5684, and 5701, all referring to the mental state of Tereus, is very carefully rendered through thoughtful alteration in translation: when in comparison to animals (5684 and 5701) it is “mad/maddened” but when it directly refers to Tereus (“whanne he was so wod/ That he no reson understod”; 5.5639-40), they translate, “When he, so wild and barbarous,/ That no reason could move him.” In an extremely literal sense, this translation simply does not do justice to “wod”; “wild” can work, but “barbarous” has no real ground in the Middle English Dictionary’s range of possibilities. [6] However, what Gower is explicitlynot doing in the narrative in general, as Garrison has argued, is excusing Tereus on account of his erotic infatuation. [7] With a very useful note to the line just previous, Gastle and Carter suggest the degradation in terms of estate [8] that occurs with Tereus’s violent desire and rape of Philomena, and their translation does not allow the reader to miss the loss of social position; to be “wod” is indeed Tereus’s infatuation, which the reader cannot miss, but the movement here away from close translation means that the reader recognizes more easily Gower’s criticism of lordly power used in tyrannical ways, that Tereus is not a victim of love but a “tyrannical rapist” (tirant ravine; 5627). This is Gower’s and the translators’ “middle way,” and it produces a text primed for classroom discussion of detail, style, and language, not just narrative.
Teachers of medieval English literature can be assured that if they assign this book to those unfamiliar with Middle English, or still in the process of learning it, students will gain access to Gower’s style as well as content, in a lively and literal rendering. This excellent translation will greatly advance the teaching of Gower at the undergraduate level, and I hope will make his work more accessible to academics in fields where the learning of Middle English is not prioritized.
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Notes:
1. John Gower, Confessio Amantis, Russell Peck, ed., 3 vols. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS, 2000-2004).
2. David R. Carlson, “Gower’s Amans and the Curricular Maximianus,” Studia Neophilologica, 89 (2017): 67-80, 76.
3. Jennifer Garrison, “Transforming Community: Women’s Rape Narratives and Gower’sConfessio Amantis,” Medieval Feminist Forum, 57.1 (2021), 121-41, 123.
4. Cf. Georgiana Donavin, “Gower and #MeToo,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 30.1 (2023): 53-61.
5. Cf. Peck, Confessio, vol. 3, p. 156.
6. Middle English Dictionary, s.v.“wōd(e, adj.” https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/, accessed August 19, 2025.
7. Garrison, “Transforming Community,” 136.
8. Indeed “astat,” about which Gastle and Carter provide an extremely useful note at Pr.105 to explain their choice to generally render it “estate” or “state,” allows readers to track this central term of Gower’s poem.