Confession

See also: Confession (law) and Confession (religion)
For other uses, see Confession (disambiguation), and Confessions (disambiguation).
"Confess" redirects here. For other uses, see Confess (disambiguation).
Confession of Love by Jean-Honoré Fragonard depicts a subject confessing feelings that had been concealed up to that point.

A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of people – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information that he believes the other party is not already aware of,[1] and is frequently associated with an admission of a moral or legal wrong:

In one sense it is the acknowledgment of having done something wrong, whether on purpose or not. Thus confessional texts usually provide information of a private nature previously unavailable. What a sinner tells a priest in the confessional, the documents criminals sign acknowledging what they have done, an autobiography in which the author acknowledges mistakes, and so on, are all examples of confessional texts.[2]

Not all confessions reveal wrongdoing, however. For example, a confession of love is often considered positive both by the confessor and by the recipient of the confession and is a common theme in literature.[3][4] With respect to confessions of wrongdoing, there are several specific kinds of confessions that have significance beyond the social. A legal confession involves an admission of some wrongdoing that has a legal consequence, while the concept of confession in religion varies widely across various belief systems, and is usually more akin to a ritual by which the person acknowledges thoughts or actions considered sinful or morally wrong within the confines of the confessor's religion. In some religions, confession takes the form of an oral communication to another person. Socially, however, the term may refer to admissions that are neither legally nor religiously significant.[1]

  1. ^ a b Roger W. Shuy, The Language of Confession, Interrogation, and Deception (1998), p. 2–10.
  2. ^ Jorge J. E. Gracia (1995), A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology, pp. 94–95.
  3. ^ Giulio Marra, Shakespeare and this "imperfect" World: Dramatic Form and the Nature of Knowing (1997), p. 69, describing "the distinction between 'to do' and 'to confess', between having thoughts of love and confessing one's love, between the indetermination of a feeling and its final definition", as a theme that "creeps into the various stories".
  4. ^ Charles Emil Kany, The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel in France, Italy and Spain (1937), Volume 21, Issues 1-6, p. 19.