ABSTRACT
A considerable number of the manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis contain a Latin colophon, presumably written by Gower himself, which lists and summarizes his three major works in such a way as to present them as a coherent, unified corpus, held together by an overarching concern with moral instruction. Known by its opening words as “Quia unusquisque,” the colophon is part of the textual apparatus that surrounds and punctuates the 34,000 lines of English verse, comprising Latin rubrics, Latin elegiac couplets, and Latin prose glosses. This elaborate device of auto-commentary makes the Confessio resemble the glossed texts through which Scripture and ancient classical works were transmitted in the Middle Ages, and thereby contributes to the creation of Gower’s self-image as a poet of authoritative stature. “Quia unusquisque” exists in three slightly different versions, one of which describes the Confessio as a work commissioned by Richard II and divided into eight parts. 1 It also states that the poem consists of a series of exemplary narratives drawn from various sources including chronicles, histories, and the works of poets and philosophers, and that its principal themes are the mutability of earthly kingdoms as revealed in the prophecy of Daniel, Alexander’s education by Aristotle, and last but foremost, love and the conditions of lovers. Although Henry of Lancaster replaces Richard II as the dedicatee of the Confessio in the other versions of the colophon, they are all in agreement in their identification of the main themes of the poem. As Winthrop Wetherbee has pointed out, the colophon’s characterization of Gower’s oeuvre is “[s]elective and somewhat misleading.” 2 For one thing, while it describes the Confessio as a collection of exempla, it does not refer to the fact that these stories are told within the frame of a penitential dialogue between Amans, the lover-hero of the poem, and his confessor, Genius; nor does it state that each of the eight books of the Confessio focuses on one of the seven deadly sins, except for two books that deviate from the overall scheme of the poem: Book VII, a book of princely instruction, which devotes much space to an exposition of the central elements of good kingship, and Book VIII, which deals with incest, rather than the seventh sin of lechery. Yet despite its omission of the essential features of the Confessio, the special emphasis that the colophon places on the prophecy of Daniel, coupled with its insistence on the ethical unity of Gower’s major poems, is helpful in calling attention to the ways in which the Confessio was conceived simultaneously as a continuation of and as a new departure from Gower’s earlier works. I would therefore like to begin by comparing how this particular theme is treated in the Confessio and its immediate predecessor, the Vox Clamantis.
