ABSTRACT
90 91John Gower’s manuscripts in Middle English fall into two categories. The first contains forty-nine full manuscripts and nine fragments of the Confessio Amantis. These surviving witnesses for the Confessio pose a particular set of textual problems that must be understood in terms of the poem’s early genesis during the reign of Richard II, and its apparent popularity shortly after Richard’s overthrow by Henry IV. The problems remain important for discussions of the Confessio and indeed Gower’s poetic career, since his political sympathies for Henry undoubtedly infuse his later poetry; furthermore, the earliest surviving manuscripts of Gower’s work (with the exception of the single witness, probably from the 1380s, to Gower’s early major poem in French Mirour de l’Omme) were produced around the time of Richard’s abdication in 1399 and Henry’s ascension to the throne. Scholars group the manuscripts of the Confessio overall according to two sets of variant passages, the first dedicated to Richard and the second dedicated to Henry. Thanks to this confluence of politics and poetry, the fundamental textual questions raised by the manuscripts of the Confessio remain entangled with the histories of these two kings and mortal enemies.
