Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Descriptions of Individual Manuscripts
- Manuscripts in the United Kingdom
- Manuscripts in Continental Europe
- Manuscripts in the United States of America
- Appendix I Summary List of Manuscripts, with date, lines missing, other contents and note of Macaulay’s classification; with Fragments (brief descriptions) and Extracts listed at the end
- Appendix II Manuscript Sigla used by Macaulay, in alphabetical order
- Appendix III Gower’s Latin Addenda to the Confessio and other pieces, not by Gower, that appear in Confessio Manuscripts
- Works Cited
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Volumes Already Published
- PlateSection
26 - Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 902
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Descriptions of Individual Manuscripts
- Manuscripts in the United Kingdom
- Manuscripts in Continental Europe
- Manuscripts in the United States of America
- Appendix I Summary List of Manuscripts, with date, lines missing, other contents and note of Macaulay’s classification; with Fragments (brief descriptions) and Extracts listed at the end
- Appendix II Manuscript Sigla used by Macaulay, in alphabetical order
- Appendix III Gower’s Latin Addenda to the Confessio and other pieces, not by Gower, that appear in Confessio Manuscripts
- Works Cited
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Volumes Already Published
- PlateSection
Summary
Confessio Amantis, with Latin addenda
London, s.xv, first quarter
Contents
[1*]
(fol. 1ra–1vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–143, supplied by a later hand.
The first leaf, replacing a lost leaf, contains a copy of Prol. 1–143 in a hand of s.xvi/xvii, taken from Berthelette’s (first) edition of 1532 (as the s.xix note on fol. ir points out; see also Macaulay, [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix), with some modernization of spelling. As in Berthelette, the opening Latin verses are omitted and the gloss abbreviated, but those at Prol. 93 are present (the gloss with ‘secundo’ for ‘secundi’), carefully set out in the column. Catchwords on both recto and verso.
Prologus/ Hic imprimis declarat Johannes | Gower quam ob causam presentem | libellum composuit et finaliter | compleuit. Anno
regni regis Ricardi | secundi: 16 (prose rubric). Of them that writen vs to fore < > Stond in this world vppon a were.
1
(fols 2ra–183vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 144–VIII.3114*
And namely but þe power < > Oure ioye mai been eendelees
Prologue (fol. 2ra); Book I (fol. 7rb); Book II (fol. 26vb); Book III (fol. 46rb); Book IV (fol. 61rb); Book V (fol. 81va); Book VI (fol. 124rb); Book VII (fol. 137va); Book VIII (fol. 167ra).
Text: collated by Macaulay (sigil A): Ia. ‘The text is a very good one of the revised type’ (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix), though in Books VII and VIII there are fewer of the revised readings. The stint of the second scribe (fols 17r–80v) is column-for-column with MS Fairfax 3 (see Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Manuscript’, 76) and the spelling is near-identical, as Macaulay observed (II.cxxxix; see also Samuels and Smith, ‘The Language of Gower’). Neither is copied from the other, since Bodley omits passages in Fairfax and Fairfax is earlier than Bodley, and the conclusion must be that both are derived from a common exemplar in which Gower had been involved (Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Manuscript’, 83–84). The Bodmer MS and CUL, MS Mm.2.21, two other MSS with column-for-column copying, have close resemblances to Fairfax 3 and Bodley 902, respectively, but neither is derived from the other (Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Manuscript’, 76).
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- A Descriptive Catalogue of the English Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis , pp. 187 - 195Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021