Confessio Amantis, with ‘Explicit’ and ‘Quam cinxere’

London, s.xv, very early in first quarter

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–184rb)

NB There is a mistake in the (modern) page-numbering, which leaps from 19 to 30, so that all numbers from 30 onward to the end are ten out. The correct count is restored throughout this description. Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3172end

Prologue (fol. 1ra) begins imperfect, fol. 1 being torn, with progressive loss of Prol. 66–79 and complete loss of 80–84; so on verso, 99–106 and 107–19; also, fol. 3 cut and torn, with loss of 238–48; so on verso, 285–94; there is, further, a leaf lost after fol. 6, with Prol. 1066–I.106; Book I (fol. 7ra) begins imperfect at 107; Book II (fol. 25vb) wants a leaf after fol. 33, with 1521–1704, in its place a stub (fol. 34, wrongly foliated 44), with the remains of the marginal gloss at II.1555 in the gutter, recto; Book III (fol. 45ra); Book IV (fol. 60va) wants a leaf after fol. 72 [not 74, pace Macaulay] with 2229–2396; Book V (fol. 80rb) wants a leaf after fol. 110, with 5505–5662; Book VI (fol. 123ra); Book VII (fol. 136va); Book VIII (fol. 166va) has the outer half of fol. 168 cut away [not fol. 171, pace Macaulay], with loss of 271–318 on fol. 168rb–va, and also two or three miniatures. Four leaves are lost in all, but many lines of text are lost that were on the back of miniatures that have been removed.

Text collated by Macaulay (sigil N): III (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.clx–clxi). Dr Ian Doyle noted, ‘[text] agrees column for column with Fairfax from 7ra (prev. leaf gone, probably with picture of Confessor as on Fairfax folio 8) to 14ra inclusive, the parallelism in the next col. disrupted by the miniature’ (personal notes on the MS).

For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.