Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis

Author/Editor
Echard, Siân

Title
Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis

Published
Echard, Siân. "Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis." In Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A.G. Rigg. Ed. Green, Richard and Mooney, Linne R.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. 99-121.

Review
Echard examines how the selection and presentation of the final matter (mostly in Latin) in both MSS and editions of Gower's works affect the reader's perception of the poet's achievement and reputation. The variety that she reveals is concealed, of course, beneath the arrangement that has become familiar to us from the choices that Macaulay made for his edition. Where we are accustomed to read the author's assertions about his "survival through his works ” (100), for instance, two MSS of VC end instead with an epitaph, an offer of indulgences for those who pray for the poet’s soul, and in one case an illustration of a tomb, drawing attention to his death and to an afterlife of a very different kind. Similar alternatives are evident in the two versions of the final Latin epigram of Book 8 of CA. One praises Richard, the other makes a more general prayer. Apart from the political motivation for the alteration, “one version could be seen as the poet’s self-proclamation under the guide of the conventional courtly gesture; the other, as the equally conventional but different recognition, in the face of approaching death, of a spiritual imperative that supersedes the poetic claim” (103). The Latin Explicit that normally follows CA also exists, as is well known, in two versions, one with an additional two lines commending the book to Henry. But again, beyond whatever personal or political motivation for the addition, there is also a change in the poet’s self-presentation, shifting attention from “his own poetic claims to attention” (104) to his subservience to his patron. In the revisions of the colophon, Echard sees not only a changing view of his first patron but also a shift from the attention given to the composition and structure of Gower’s three poems to the language in which they are written: “the result of the process, whether it was Gower’s process or not, is that this linguistic aspect of his poetic identity is heightened, and actually looms as large or larger in the manuscript tradition than do his political allegiances” (106). Gower’s linguistic achievement is also emphasized in the verses beginning “Eneidos Bucolis,” which are found in two copies of CA and four of VC. “This is a paradoxical piece,” Echard notes, “asserting in Latin that the key aspect of Gower’s poetic identity is his mastery of the vernacular” (108), a paradox heightened by the way in which it normally occurs in the company of his Latin or French compositions rather than his English, even in MSS of CA. The surviving copies also differ in the ways in which the end matter is decorated and arranged. The result is a variety of different presentations of the poet, a tradition that continues in modern editions, as both Berthelette and Macaulay, in Echard’s account, can each be found making choices of presentation based on his own ideas about what constitutes an appropriate “last word.” Echard’s essay concludes with a helpful table showing the end contents of all of the surviving MSS of CA and VC. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.2.]

Date
2004

Gower Subjects
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Manuscripts and Textual Studies