author
active 14th century Dan Michel
Known almost entirely through a single surviving work, this 14th-century English writer left behind one of the most important prose texts in the Kentish dialect of Middle English. His Ayenbite of Inwyt offers a rare glimpse of how moral and religious writing sounded outside courtly or Latin traditions.
1 Audiobook
The Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience) A Translation of Parts into Modern English
by active 14th century Dan Michel, active 1279 d'Orléans Laurent
About the author
Little is known for certain about this medieval author beyond what appears in his own work. Dan Michel of Northgate is usually identified as an English writer active around 1340, and he is associated with Northgate in Canterbury, Kent.
He is remembered for Ayenbite of Inwyt (often translated as Remorse of Conscience), a prose translation into Kentish Middle English of a French religious treatise by Frère Lorens. Because so little is known about his life, the book itself is the main reason he remains important.
Today, Dan Michel matters less as a biographical figure than as a literary one. His writing preserves an uncommon form of Middle English and gives readers and scholars a valuable window into the language, devotional reading, and translation culture of 14th-century England.