The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers

The Wooing of Our Lord occupies a seminal position in the history of English literature and the development of English religious devotion. Dating from the second quarter of the thirteenth century, it is one of a group of texts written in English at a time when the language of literature and the court was Anglo-Norman French, and when the language of church and state was Latin. The Wooing of Our Lord is also a highly skilled composition, a work which combines 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.

Catherine Innes-Parker is Professor of English at the University of Prince Edward Island.