SOURCE: McKinley, Kathryn. “Kingship and the Body Politic: Classical Ecphrasis and Confessio Amantis VII.” Mediaevalia 21 (fall 1996): 161-87.

In the following essay, McKinley regards Book Seven of the Confessio Amantis as a digressive “excursus on ideal kingship” that temporarily departs from the central theme of the poem in a rhetorical manner that echoes those of classical poets Homer, Ovid, and Virgil.

At the turn of this century, in describing some of the most serious defects in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, the eminent G. C. Macaulay had this to say about Book VII, Genius' excursus on the education of Alexander:

Still worse is the deliberate departure from the general plan which we find in the seventh book, where on pretence of affording relief and recreation to the wearied penitent, the Confessor, who says that he has little or no understanding except of love, is allowed to make a digression which...