Descriptive Catalogue of Eight Medieval Manuscripts from Wadham College, Oxford.
- Author/Editor
- Stone, Zachary E.
- Title
- Descriptive Catalogue of Eight Medieval Manuscripts from Wadham College, Oxford.
- Published
- Stone, Zachary E. "Descriptive Catalogue of Eight Medieval Manuscripts from Wadham College, Oxford." The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 21 (2020): 445-76.
- Review
- Stone provides a brief history and chronology of the process of medieval manuscript acquisitions at Wadham College and an overview of the current catalogues of the College's collection. Of the eight medieval manuscripts catalogued here, one--MS 13--contains Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and "Traitié" (catalogued at 472–476). The manuscript is from England, perhaps Chester, and dates to c. 1470. The manuscript is paper, and its foliation is ii + 446 + ii, where fol. ii is a vellum flyleaf; fols 447–448 are post-medieval endleaves. Stone notes two scribes, both writing in a late mixed cursive hand: Scribe A can be localised to Derbyshire and Scribe B to the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border (475). They originally wrote consecutively but a later misbinding led to Scribe A's hand at 1-169v, 273-288v, and Scribe B's hand at 170-272v, 289-446v. Gower's CA runs from fols. 1–442r. Macaulay places MS 13 in his third recension of the text, stating that it derived from Bodleian, MS Fairfax 3. Stone notes "significant confusion in the prologue regardless of binding errors" (473). The Traitié follows on fols. 442v-446v. Stone then describes the manuscript's collation, textual decoration and presentation, additions, binding, and provenance. It contains authorial marginalia in Latin. Additions are in both English and Latin, including chronicle entries, a list of Chester sheriffs and mayors, "a long note regarding the composition of Gower's 'Confessio' . . . copied in a s. xv/xvi hand" (474) which references Richard II's reign and the work's dedication to Henry, musical notation, and individual alphabet letters and doodles. [RM. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis
Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz