John Gower: Confessio Amantis, Volume 1 ed. by Russell A. Peck (review)

REVIEWS where to find the argument. But complete cross-referencing would, of course, have resulted in an unmanageable book. These problems aside, Morey’s is still an extremely useful source book, and a welcome addition to any Middle English scholar’s set of reference tools. Michael G. Sargent Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York Russell A. Peck, ed., with Latin translations by Andrew Galloway. John Gower: Confessio Amantis, Volume 1. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000. Pp. x, 363. $20.00, paper. This is the first part of a projected three-volume TEAMS edition of the whole of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. It contains the Prologue (in both original and revised forms), and Books I and VIII. Subsequent volumes will include Books II–IV and V–VII respectively. At first blush, the decision to abandon a strictly chronological sequence in this first volume is curious, but the pedagogical case for doing so is strong: to have the key opening and concluding parts of the narrative in one volume is of clear value for teaching so long a work. The text itself is primarily based on Bodleian, Fairfax 3, with some parallel passages from Bodley 902 and Bodley 294 (where the former is defective) for the variant portions of the Prologue. It has been regularized according to the established principles of this series. There are onpage modern glosses for the Middle English. The text itself is preceded by a lengthy Introduction and Bibliography (pp. 1–59) and followed by Explanatory Notes (283–355), Textual Notes (356–58) and Glossary (359–63). In his Preface Peck pays proper tribute to Macaulay’s great edition and his text generally seems to follow his predecessor’s. Occasional forms seem either mistranscribed or to require emendation, as at 1.2092, which reads here ‘‘His brother ne was redi there.’’ The sense seems to require ‘‘His brother he was . . .’’; at 8.2175 where the form ‘‘briest’’ is rhymed with ‘‘prest’’; presumably it should be ‘‘brest’’; at 8.2226 ‘‘ayer’’ should perhaps be ‘‘a yer.’’ The greater potential value of Peck’s work must lie less in textual 411 ................. 10286$ CH15 11-01-10 13:55:18 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER innovation than in its capacity to make the work accessible to a student audience through its glossing and annotation. Glossing is always where an editor will give most hostages to fortune, especially with Gower, where the extent of the difficulty in producing succinct and accurate modern renderings of his Middle English is considerable. At the beginning of Book I, for example, I found myself needing help with such formulations as ‘‘loves lawe is out of reule’’ (I.18) and ‘‘Of love tempre the mesure’’ (I.23), but not finding any. Elsewhere, glossing seems inexact , at times; thus in ‘‘the rihte salve of such a sor’’ (1.33), ‘‘sor’’ is glossed as ‘‘ailment’’; but in the context of ‘‘salve’’ it clearly means ‘‘sore.’’ Again, at 1.565: ‘‘I am topulled in my thought,’’ ‘‘topulled’’ is glossed as ‘‘pulled to pieces’’; it surely means ‘‘pulled this way and that.’’ Throughout I found a steady trickle of words or phrases likely to pose difficulty not just to the undergraduate. Conversely, it hardly seems necessary to gloss ‘‘daies olde’’ (1.2272) as ‘‘olden days.’’ The annotation is largely quite hopeless. The bulk of the notes are not actually annotation but the text and translation of the Latin glosses to the Confessio (not always happily presented; see, for example, 8.1141 ff. where one finds such forms as ‘‘Qualtier’’ and ‘‘relinguqens’’). But this seems the only consistent element in the notes. Although occasionally proverbial phrases are noted from Whiting, a number are not; for example, 1.35 ⳱ Whiting L 518; 8.2102-3 ⳱ Whiting F 466. At times, passages are asserted to be proverbial but no Whiting number is given (see 8.2412; the omission is understandable since the phrase is not). Nor are other suggestive forms of words noted, including ones with insistent Chaucerian resonances. Thus, 1.47: ‘‘For love is blind and may noght se’’ seems to invite some reference to CT IV. 1598, or indeed to 8.2104...