Winner of the 2022 John Hurt Fisher Award from the John Gower Society
First comprehensive catalogue of the manuscripts of one of the most important medieval works, with full descriptions of their features.
The
Confessio Amantis is John Gower’s major work in English, written around the time that his acquaintance Geoffrey Chaucer was writing the
Canterbury Tales. Extant manuscripts are numerous. At the end of the nineteenth century G. C. Macaulay had described the forty manuscripts then known to survive in the introduction to his edition, but some of these descriptions were very brief, and of course the other nine of whose existence he was then unaware were not included. This descriptive catalogue of all of the surviving manuscripts containing the
Confessio is the first work to bring together extensive detailed descriptions of its forty-nine complete manuscripts and numerous fragments and excerpts; it will enable scholars of Middle English literature and manuscript studies to compare features across the corpus of surviving manuscripts or read detailed descriptions of individual manuscripts. Each description in this catalogue covers the manuscript’s contents, artwork, physical qualities such as size, material, collation, foliation, etc., as well as additions by later users and provenance. There is also a lengthy introduction giving an overview of the corpus, and appendices for reference to the current whereabouts of the manuscripts, fragments and excerpts, and listing Gower’s Latin and French works that appear in some of the manuscripts. Eight colour illustrations provide context for discussions of the miniatures and illuminated borders of some manuscripts.
Table of Content
Introduction
MANUSCRIPTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
1. Cambridge, University Library MS. Dd.8.19
2. Cambridge, University Library MS. Mm.2.21
3. Cambridge, Pembroke College MS. 307
4. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College MS. 63
5. Cambridge, St Catharine’s College MS. 7
6. Cambridge, St John’s College MS. B.12
7. Cambridge, Trinity College MS. R.3.2
8. Glasgow University Library, Hunterian MS. 7
9. London, British Library MS. Additional 12043
10. London, British Library MS. Additional 22139
11. London, British Library MS. Egerton 913
12. London, British Library MS. Egerton 1991
13. London, British Library MS. Harley 3490
14. London, British Library MS. Harley 3869
15. London, British Library MS. Harley 7184
16. London, British Library MS. Royal 18.C.xxii
17. London, British Library MS. Stowe 950
18. London, College of Arms MS. Arundel 45
19. London, Society of Antiquaries MS. 134
20. Manchester, Chetham’s Library MS. 6696
21. Nottingham, University Library, Middleton Collection MS. WLC/LM/8
22. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Arch. Selden B.11
23. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 35
24. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 294
25. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 693
26. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 902
27. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Fairfax 3
28. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Hatton 51
29. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 609
30. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Lyell 31
31. Oxford, Christ Church MS. 148
32. Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS. 67
33. Oxford, Magdalen College MS. Lat. 213
34. Oxford, New College MS. 266
35. Oxford, New College MS. 326
36. Oxford, Wadham College MS. 13
MANUSCRIPTS IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE
37. Cologny, Switzerland, Martin Bodmer MS. CB 178
38.
olim Marquess of Bute 85 (now in a private collection in Europe)
MANUSCRIPTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
39. Chicago, IL, Newberry Library MS. +33.5
40. New Haven, CT, Yale University, Beinecke Library, Osborn MS. fa. 1
41. New York, NY, Columbia University Library MS. Plimpton 265
42. New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Museum and Library MS. M.125
43. New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Museum and Library MS. M.126
44. New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Museum and Library MS. M.690
45. Philadelphia, PA, Rosenbach Museum and Library MS. 1083/29
46. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University, Firestone Library MS. Garrett 136
47. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University, Firestone Library MS. Taylor 5
48. San Marino, CA, Henry E. Huntington Library MS. EL 26 A 17
49. Washington, DC, Folger Shakespeare Library MS. SM.1
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
About the author
The late Derek Pearsall was Emeritus Gurney Professor of Middle English Literature at Harvard University; he wrote extensively on Chaucer, Gower, Langland and Lydgate, including biographies of Chaucer and Lydgate, an edition of the C-text of Langland’s Piers Plowman.
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