The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers

The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers Synopsis

The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group prayers occupy a key position in the history of English literature and the development of English religious devotion. Dating from the second quarter of the thirteenth century, they are among a group of texts written in English at a time when the language of literature and the court was Anglo-Norman French, and the language of church and state was Latin. The text for which this group is named, The Wooing of Our Lord is also a highly skilled composition, combining beautiful and poetic expression with a profound affective theology. Its first-person female narrator speaks directly to Christ, becoming the voice of the reader whom the text guides through a passionate meditation upon the magnitude of Christ's love, his sufferings in his Passion, and the response of the individual soul.

Catherine Innes-Parker's graceful new translation is paired with the original Middle English dialect in a facing-page format.