John Gower's Manuscripts in Middle English.
- Author/Editor
- Fredell, Joel.
- Title
- John Gower's Manuscripts in Middle English.
- Published
- Fredell, Joel. "John Gower's Manuscripts in Middle English." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 91-96.
- Review
- No manuscript of the CA can be dated earlier than 1399, the year of Henry IV's usurpation (91). Manuscripts containing the CA (forty-nine full MSS and nine fragments) show textual variants that have been used to support a theory of two or three authorial "recensions," as laudatory references to Richard II have been replaced by tributes to Henry Bolingbroke (91-93). More recently, the "recension" model has been questioned as unlikely on several grounds (93-94). The poet's only other work in English, "In Praise of Peace," survives in the pro-Henrician BL Add. MS 59495 (formerly MS Trentham, dated 1399) which may have been owned and even partially inscribed by Gower himself (95). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.]
- Date
- 2017
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis
In Praise of Peace