Confessio Amantis, with Latin addenda

London, s.xv, first quarter

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–214ra) Confessio Amantis Prol. 135–VIII.3114*end

Prol. (fol. 1ra) wants 1–134, 454–594; Book I (fol. 6rb); Book II (fol. 28vb); Book III (fol. 51vb, but English text fol. 52ra); Book IV (fol. 69vb); Book V (fol. 93vb); Book VI (fol. 142vb); Book VII (fol. 158ra); Book VIII (fol. 194ra).

An original first leaf is lost, with text of Prol. 1–134. The first surviving leaf is smudged. A leaf is lost after fol. 2, with text of Prol. 454–594. The closing folios, from fol. 210, are rubbed, damp-stained and badly discoloured.

Text: collated by Macaulay (sigil E): Ic. Macaulay (ed., Works, II.cxlvii–viii) notes some agreements with MSS of the two later recensions, and thinks the exemplar of E ‘must have had some corrections’. ‘On the whole’, he says, ‘the text of E is probably the best of its class’. It is one of the two MSS (the other is Bodleian, MS Bodley 294) that has the narrator refer to himself as ‘Iohn Gowere’ at I.161.

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. 214rb) ‘Explicit iste liber’

Explicit iste liber < > sub eo requiesce futurus

3

(fol. 214rb) ‘Quam cinxere freta’

4

(fol. 214rb–va) ‘Quia vnusquisque’

Illustration

Removal of original leaves 1 and 4 probably indicates former presence of prefatory miniature and Nebuchadnezzar picture. There is a twelve-line miniature (75 x 75 mm.) at fol. 7vb (middle), after I.202, illustrating the Lover kneeling before the confessor Genius.