We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2024
Gower, Confessio Amantis, with Latin concluding material, Traitié, and three Latin poems
s.xv, end of first quarter
This description is partly derived and occasionally quoted from the brief description of the Wollaton Hall MS by Ralph Hanna in Ralph Hanna and Thorlac Turville-Petre (eds), The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers (York, 2010), 100–01, and the essay by Derek Pearsall, ‘The Wollaton Hall Gower Manuscript (WLC/LM/8) considered in the Context of Other Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis’, in the same volume, 57–67. We are grateful to the editors for permission to make use of their work.
Contents
1
(fols 1ra–200va) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3172
Torpor hebes sensus, etc. (6 lines of Latin verse). Of hem þat written vs tofore < > Oure ioie may ben endeles. Amen
Prologue (fol. 1ra); Book I (fol. 7rb); Book II (fol. 27vb); Book III (fol. 48va); Book IV (fol. 64b); Book V (fol. 86va); Book VI (fol. 132rb); Book VII (fol. 146rb); Book VIII (fol. 181vb). There are nine lines blank at the foot of the final column of text (fol. 200va); fol. 200vb is blank but ruled.
Collated by Macaulay (ed., Works, II.clvi) (sigil Λ): Text II. He considers the MS to be very close to Bodley 294, especially items 2–7 below. The Wollaton MS has been claimed as source for part of Caxton’s print of the Confessio. For discussion, see N. F. Blake, ‘Caxton’s Copy-Text for Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, Anglia, 85 (1967), 282–93, reprinted in N. F. Blake, William Caxton and English Literary Culture (London, 1991), 187–98 (esp. 192–94).
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. 200va) ‘Explicit iste liber’
Explicit iste liber < > sub eo requiesce futurus
Later six-line version with dedication to the earl of Derby.
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.478.
3
(fol. 200va) ‘Quam cinxere freta’, with preceding rubric ‘Epistola super huius’
Quam cinxere freta < > stat sine meta
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.479.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
