ABSTRACT
The existence of two Iberian versions of John Gower's Confessio Amantis, the Portuguese Livro do Amante and the Castilian Confisyon del Amante, has been widely known to scholars since at least the nineteenth century. This chapter focuses on basic questions about the translators, commissioners, and readership of Gower's work as it was translated first into Portuguese, and later from Portuguese into Castilian. It also focuses on the textual transformations that the Confessio underwent during its Iberian travels. The chapter considers the Portuguese and Castilian literary and intellectual contexts relevant for a deeper understanding of the Iberian Confessios' translation, circulation, and reception. The structural changes that Robert Payn carried out in his version of the Confessio privileged the reading of Gower's work in the Livro – and, by extension, in the Confisyon – as a rich compilation, an encyclopedic work encompassing a wealth of materials that were already familiar to courtly elites across Europe, including the Iberian Peninsula.
