Confessio Amantis, a small late paper MS, single column, with Latin and French addenda

Provincial centre, probably Chester, s.xv, late in the third quarter

Contents

1

(fols 1r–442r) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3172.

Prologue (fols 1r–17r) wants 728–94, but with no loss of leaf; Book I (fols 17r–68r); Book II (fols 68v–119r); Book III (fols 119r–157v); Book IV (fols 157v–169v and 273r–306v) missing a leaf after fol. 291, with IV.2386–2473; Book V (fols 170r–245v, 306v, explicit and incipit only, then text 307r–326v) wants a leaf before fol. 307, with V.1–78; Book VI (fol. 245v, explicit and incipit only, then text 246r–272v, 327r–330v); Book VII (fols 330v, explicit and incipit only, then text 331r–401r); Book VIII (fols 401r–446r).

Two missing leaves, one with IV.2386–2473 and the other with V.1–78. There is disorder in the text of Books IV and VI, seven quires containing fols 273–326 (according to the present foliation) which would properly have followed the present fol. 169 having been misbound between VI.2132 and 2133. Confusingly, the misbinding brought the two lost leaves into contiguity between fols 306 and 307, though in fact separated by more than two quires in the original collation. In order to provide consecutive text of the poem, the MS would have to be rebound 1–169, 273–326, 170–272, 327–446. Misbinding of leaves also accounts for the present disorder of the Prologue, which runs lines 1–92, 499–860 (loss of leaf in an exemplar accounts for the loss of 728–94), 93–144, 861–1044, 145–498, 1045–end (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.clxiv), but this misbinding took place in the exemplar, since the present quiring shows no evidence of disturbance.

Text discussed in detail by Macaulay ([ed.], Works, II.clxiii–clxv), and allocated to his Recension III, lacking as it does the praise of Richard II and Chaucer, though it contains a wide variety of readings from different textual traditions.