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
37 - Cologny, Switzerland, Martin Bodmer, MS CB 178
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, 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
Torpor ebes sensus scola parua labor minimusque, etc. (6 lines of Latin verse)
Of hem that writen ous tofore < > Oure ioie mai ben endeles
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)
Explicit iste liber < > sub eo requiesce futurus.
Later six-line version with dedication to Henry earl of Derby.
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.478.
3
(fol. 182ra) ‘Quam cinxere freta’
Quam cinxere freta < > stat sine meta
With rubric ‘Epistola super huius’
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.479.
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- Information
- A Descriptive Catalogue of the English Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis , pp. 259 - 266Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021