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medieval
Medieval
Dating from the end of the thirteenth century, MS 1830 in the Library of Saint Germain (now Bibliothèque nationale MS 19152), is the largest corpus of popular medieval poetry from this early date, containing numerous familiar beast fables (some derived Aesop) and longer narrative poems such as Piramus et Tisbé. The original manuscript comprises 61 different texts of different genres including popular proverbs, translations from Latin, fabliaux, courtly tales, moral poems and burlesque recitations. The anonymous nineteenth-century editor of our manuscript pursues a rather disruptive method of copying much of the original text verbatim, but interpolating his own prose for sections he believes to be repetitive or uninteresting. While frustrating for the medievalist, such a method is interesting as an example of contemporary scholarly method. The editor adds a significant number of additional fables drawn from other manuscripts in the Library of Saint Germain. A 4-volume manuscript copy of the entire codex, apparently made in the eighteenth century, is held by the British Library (Additional MS 15210-15213). A printed edition appeared in 1930. see full details...
Gower is chiefly remembered as a friend of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Confessio Amantis is frequently cited as the origin of William Shakespeare’s play Pericles (who’s story is taken from book 8 of the Confessio) but he should be accepted in his own right as one of the great pioneers of English literature. The plan of the Confessio was doubtless borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, and consists of a dialogue first between the poet, in the character of a lover, and Venus, and afterwards between the poet, in the character of a penitent, and Genius, whom Venus assigns to him as a confessor. In the conversation between the penitent and the confessor the seven deadly sins are discussed and illustrated from Gower’s encyclopaedic knowledge of Ovid, Josephus, Vincent de Beauvais, Statius, the Gesta Romanorum, the Bible, and other sources. In the eighth book, having described the duty of a king and prayed for England, the poet bids farewell to earthly love. The work is a profound meditation on human love and morality and in Gower’s own words in the Prologue it was “a boke for Englondes sake”. The work survives in numerous early manuscripts (attesting to its immediate popularity) and was first printed by Caxton in 1474. Thomas Berthelet’s edition of 1532 is considered textually superior to Caxton. Pforzheimer notes that the “edition was printed from a manuscript, resembling MS. Bodley 294, but inferior in correctness, collated with Caxton’s edition from which several passages lacking in the manuscript were supplied. In the prefatory note ‘To the reader’ Berthelet included the alternative form of the introductory lines Prologue 24-92, also from Caxton’s edition, so that on the whole this edition is textually an improvement over the earlier one. It is also a good example of workmanlike printing much above the average English work of the period” (Pforzheimer). The third edition of 1554 is merely a paginary reprint of the present. The early ownership inscription of William Sotheby is dated 1532. This copy is handsomely bound in the style of Mackinley for the Earl of Stafford, among the richest men in England at the opening of the nineteenth-century. The Earl was himself a latter-day member of the Gower family (he claimed descent in the male line from Sir Alan Gower of Stittenham, supposedly sheriff of York at the time of the conquest). Several antiquaries had previously suggested that the poet’s origins lay in the same place, so this would have been a fitting acquisition for the Earl. see full details...
