Confessio Amantis, a de luxe MS, six scribes, with Latin addenda and poems and the French Traitié

s.xv, first quarter, early

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–182ra) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3172end

Prologue (fol. 1ra); Book I (fol. 7rb); Book II (fol. 26va); Book III (fol. 46ra) wants three leaves from quire vii after fol. 51, with III.1087–1632; Book IV (fol. 58rb); Book V (fol. 78va); Book VI (fol. 121va); Book VII (fol. 135ra); Book VIII (fol. 164vb) wants at least one leaf at the end, with Latin text.

Text: III. Collated by Macaulay (sigil K). His opinion (ed., Works, II.cxli–ii) is that K is close to F (Bodleian, MS Fairfax 3): indeed, of the six scribes that he recognises, ‘the first and the fourth give a text so closely corresponding to that of F, that it is almost impossible not to believe that it is copied from it’ (clxi). They follow Bodleian, MS Fairfax 3 with almost no deviation from its text – though not column for column, as Macaulay’s wording (Works, II.clxii) inadvertently suggests. The MS has exactly the same contents as F (See PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION, VI). Note that Bodmer shares the Latin gloss at Prol. 22, Hic in principio…destinauit, with two MSS that Macaulay assigns to his second recension (Nottingham UL, MS WLC/LM/8 and Princeton UL MS Taylor 5) as well as three of the third recension (BL, MS Harley 7184, Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Lat. 213, and this one). See Macaulay (ed.), Works, II.2. See the description of Magdalen Lat. 213 above. For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.

2

(fol. 182ra) ‘Explicit iste liber’ (6 lines)

3

(fol. 182ra) ‘Quam cinxere freta’