The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Author/Editor
Pearsall, Derek.

Title
The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Published
Pearsall, Derek. "The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 21-34.

Review
This essay gives us a bit of detective work concerning the "Sutherland fragment," a fragment known only from a photocopy of a single leaf held by the Huntington Library. As Pearsall says, the leaf was listed in the catalogue of a collection of manuscripts purchased by Henry Huntington from the library of the Duke of Sutherland in 1917. Sometime in the 1960s the Huntington Library realized that the leaf itself was not contained in the collection and requested a photocopy, which was provided. Pearsall's essay is an attempt to reconstruct the background of this surviving photocopy, namely "[what] it consists of, what manuscript it is possibly from, why it was not sent with the original collection of manuscripts, where the original leaf is now, and what part it may have played in recent sales activity" (21). Pearsall's tentative conclusions are as follows: "There was once, and may still be, a single leaf that had belonged to a manuscript of good quality of the fifteenth century, first quarter. All that now exists, so far as we know is a photocopy of that original leaf, made from a microfilm which was deposited, perhaps for a limited period, in the National Library of Scotland. Where that original leaf is now is a puzzle: perhaps in a desk-drawer or other infrequently visited repository in the National Library or in the residence of the Duke of Sutherland at Mertoun; perhaps irretrievably lost or destroyed; perhaps deposited in some distant bank vault, the property of a rich collector of medieval manuscripts and fragments" (30-31). Pearsall also appends an edition of the text of this fragment as an appendix. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1]

Date
2020

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