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John Gower is, together with Chaucer, Langland and the Pearl Poet (whose true identity is unknown) one of the key figures in the English literature of the late 14th century. These authors are sometimes known as the "Ricardians", after King Richard II in whose reign they produced most of their works, and the period has been seen as representing a rebirth of English as a literary language. Ever since the Norman Conquest three centuries earlier, English, although it remained the mother-tongue of the great majority of the population, had been overshadowed by Latin and French as a written language. Indeed, Gower himself (unlike Chaucer or Langland) wrote works in both those languages, "Vox Clamantis" in Latin and "Le Miroir de l'Homme, later renamed "Speculum Meditantis", in French. "Confessio Amantis" ("The Lover's Confession") is in fact his only major work in English.

Like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or Boccaccio's "Decameron" "Confessio Amantis" is a collection of tales set within a narrative framework. It is divided into eight books and takes the form of the confession made by a lover, named at first only as "Amans" (Latin for "lover") but later identified as Gower himself, to Genius, a priest of Venus. It is based upon the sort of confession a penitent might make to a Christian priest, and Genius leads Amans through the seven deadly sins, urging him to confess his "sins against love" and telling him a series of moral stories exemplifying the sins under discussion. (The one sin which is not fully dealt with is lust. In the eyes of a priest of the Goddess of Love this presumably does not count as a sin). There are also a number of lengthy digressions from the main theme, especially the whole of Book VII which consists of a lengthy discourse on the education given by Aristotle to Alexander the Great and a treatise on good kingship.