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This essay analyzes why John Gower set the "Tale of the Three Questions," the concluding story in Book I of the Confessio Amantis, in Spain. Written during a time of intense parliamentary concerns over money apparently wasted by Richard II's uncles on military campaigns against Castille-Leon, the tale argues tar the relevance of Spain to England and for the relevance of poetic counsel in domestic politics. The question of Spain in English politics in the 1380s offered Gower a way into debates among the magnates and parliaments of England by evoking past and present Anglo-Castilian relationships. He imagines a situation in which the strategy of good counsel works, suggesting a more acceptable set of choices: alliance and realignment instead of the absolutism of either conquest or avoidance.

Defining the principles that apply to resolving conflicts between individuals in The Wife of Bath 's Tale and comparing them to parallel conflicts in Gower's "Tale of Florent," one discovers that The Wife of Bath 's Tale foregrounds appeals to political, social, religious, and ethical authority -all of which are questioned, discussed, and negotiated. In the "Tale of Florent," on the other hand, conflict tends to be internal rather than between individuals. Florent's conflicts are resolved by himself alone thinking about the obligations he has accepted in his various covenants, and then behaving in such a way that he does not lie or cheat or break his pledge. Conflict resolution in Gower depends upon absolute commitment to principle, the culturally sanctioned rules that govern human behavior. Conflicts in the "Tale of Florent" are not resolved through argument, debate, negotiation with an adversary as in Chaucer's text.

This article explores the connections between the views of Love and Fortune in the Confessio Amantis and in works by Guillaume de Machaut. lt demonstrates Machaut's anti-Boethian views that the worthy lover may escape Fortune's control through the exercise of virtue and applies those views to Gower's presentation of both love and political fortunes. In the Prologue and Book I, in particular, Gower establishes Love and Fortune as essentially interchangeable, preparing the reader to understand each as the product of reciprocal relationships between people, rather than the result of Fortune or Love capriciously turning a wheel. The Confessio thus aims to enable readers to adopt virtuous behaviors, not to court love but rather to court good fortune more broadly.

In each instance that John Gower uses the term "Saracen" in his Confessio Amantis to characterize the enemies of Christendom, Juan de Cuenca' s prose Castilian translation, the Confisyon del Amante, employs alternative language -language that predominantly downplays rather than exacerbates scenes of religious conflict. This essay analyzes these divergent representations of difference to argue that such comparative analysis of English and Spanish texts makes legible each writer's differing investments in narratives of Christianity's violence and pacifism, its anxieties about its religious neighbors and its belief in its own triumphant ascendancy. Understanding the interpretive nuances of these differences between Gower and Cuenca carries implications for our understanding of the political, historical, and literary transactions between England and Castile and Leon in the late middle ages.