A Caxton "Confessio": Readers and Users from Westminster to Chapel Hill.
- Author/Editor
- Gastle, Brian W.
- Title
- A Caxton "Confessio": Readers and Users from Westminster to Chapel Hill.
- Published
- Gastle, Brian W. "A Caxton Confessio: Readers and Users from Westminster to Chapel Hill." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 201-17.
- Review
- Gastle's essay offers a close view of the unusual features of one copy of William Caxton's 1483 "Confessio Amantis"--the copy held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Incunabula 532.5. Gastle summarizes the ownership history of the volume, describes its "distinctive features" (203), particularly its binding and readers' marks, and explores it as "a unique window into fifteenth-century politics and culture" (204). The volume is one of "handful" of extant examples of "original Caxton bindings" (203; in 1961, William Wells identified eight; see 203n9), and the materials used to reinforce this binding include four pieces of a papal indulgence which together "constitute almost the entirety" (204) of the indulgence printed by Caxton in 1481. Commissioned by papal nuncio Giovanni dei Gigli, this indulgence survives in only four known copies (all found in bindings), although Caxton printed another indulgence commissioned by Gigli in 1489. Other information about Gigli, especially the fact that the nuncio wrote a Latin epithalamium "in celebration of the engagement of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York" (206), enables Gastle to align, tentatively, the "business relationship between Caxton and Giovanni" with their shared "desire to promote literary history in England" (207). Other binding fragments include "one damaged and worn leaf" (207) on which are found two "mysterious cut-out images" (217) that "seem to have originated in Caxton's shop." The posture and gesture of one figure suggests that it is "lecturing or stating something declaratively," Gastle says, and he posits that "[i]f the figure was meant to represent a character" in the CA, Genius "would be the likely candidate" (209), even though how and why the leaf ended up in the volume's binding is unclear. Gastle treats several signatures--John Crofton, John Kynaston, Thomas Genway (?), and John Leche--found in the volume with cautious speculation, and he discusses judiciously its seven-line quotation of the opening lines of the "The Nutbrown Maid," clarifying the popularity of the early Tudor poem, and editing the lines against the reconstructed version of the poem published by William A Ringler, Jr. The lines are found in the UNC volume in the context of the CA version of the "Tale of Constance," leading Gastle to comment on possible relations between the poem and the Tale, both concerned with female adversity. Finally, Gastle quotes the two lines in Spanish found in the volume, connecting their reference to the port town of Bermeo in the Bay of Biscay with Spanish/English trade before the onset of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585) and with the translations of CA into Portuguese and Spanish. Detailed, and informed, Gastle's essay closes with the hope that "future scholarship may explore the possibilities" (217) raised here. They are rich possibilities, clearly illustrated in a series of five figures. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Confessio Amantis