Early Revision in the Text of Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Author/Editor
- Pearsall, Derek.
- Title
- Early Revision in the Text of Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Published
- Pearsall, Derek. "Early Revision in the Text of Gower's Confessio Amantis." Journal of the Early Book Society 24 (2021): 247-61.
- Review
- [For a response to this essay, see Peter Nicholson, "Gower's Early Revisions Revisited," JEBS 25.] Pearsall seeks to identify the earliest form of the "Confessio Amantis," based on manuscript evidence of authorial changes that led G. C. Macaulay to posit the familiar "three recensions" theory. Pearsall looks at passages from seven manuscripts (using Macaulay's sigils, S, Δ, Ad, T, B, Ʌ, p2) that he terms the "Huntington group" (251), named for S, the oldest among them—San Marino, CA, Huntington Library MS EL 26 A 17. All of these are "second recension" manuscripts, according to Macaulay, in part because they have additions and/or changes complimentary to Henry IV. "Attempts to date different versions of the 'Confessio' in relation to real historical circumstances, such as those made by Macaulay," Pearsall asserts, "lead only to confusion, and should in any case be disentangled from the discussion of manuscript affiliations" (249). Scrutinizing the various alterations differentiating these MSS from Macaulay's "first recension" MSS, Pearsall concludes that "the manuscripts of the Huntington group . . . must have been part of the original form of the poem, or at least the earliest surviving form" (258)--in direct disagreement with Macaulay. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Manuscripts and Textual Criticism