26 - Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 902

Summary

Confessio Amantis, with Latin addenda

London, s.xv, first quarter

Contents

[1*]

(fol. 1ra–1vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–143, supplied by a later hand.

The first leaf, replacing a lost leaf, contains a copy of Prol. 1–143 in a hand of s.xvi/xvii, taken from Berthelette’s (first) edition of 1532 (as the s.xix note on fol. ir points out; see also Macaulay, [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix), with some modernization of spelling. As in Berthelette, the opening Latin verses are omitted and the gloss abbreviated, but those at Prol. 93 are present (the gloss with ‘secundo’ for ‘secundi’), carefully set out in the column. Catchwords on both recto and verso.

Prologus/ Hic imprimis declarat Johannes | Gower quam ob causam presentem | libellum composuit et finaliter | compleuit. Anno

regni regis Ricardi | secundi: 16 (prose rubric). Of them that writen vs to fore < > Stond in this world vppon a were.

1

(fols 2ra–183vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 144–VIII.3114*

And namely but þe power < > Oure ioye mai been eendelees

Prologue (fol. 2ra); Book I (fol. 7rb); Book II (fol. 26vb); Book III (fol. 46rb); Book IV (fol. 61rb); Book V (fol. 81va); Book VI (fol. 124rb); Book VII (fol. 137va); Book VIII (fol. 167ra).

Text: collated by Macaulay (sigil A): Ia. ‘The text is a very good one of the revised type’ (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix), though in Books VII and VIII there are fewer of the revised readings. The stint of the second scribe (fols 17r–80v) is column-for-column with MS Fairfax 3 (see Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Manuscript’, 76) and the spelling is near-identical, as Macaulay observed (II.cxxxix; see also Samuels and Smith, ‘The Language of Gower’). Neither is copied from the other, since Bodley omits passages in Fairfax and Fairfax is earlier than Bodley, and the conclusion must be that both are derived from a common exemplar in which Gower had been involved (Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Manuscript’, 83–84). The Bodmer MS and CUL, MS Mm.2.21, two other MSS with column-for-column copying, have close resemblances to Fairfax 3 and Bodley 902, respectively, but neither is derived from the other (Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Manuscript’, 76).