JOHN GOWER: THE MINOR LATIN WORKS: NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS: CA: Gower, Confessio Amantis; CB: Gower, Cinkante Ballades; Cronica: Gower, Cronica Tripertita; CT: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; CVP: Gower, Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia; IPP: Gower, In Praise of Peace; Mac: Macaulay edition; MO: Gower, Mirour de l'Omme; TC: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Thynne: William Thynne, printer, The Works of Geffray Chaucer (1532) [prints IPP from Tr]; Traitié: Gower, Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz; VC: Gower, Vox Clamantis.

All biblical citations are to the Vulgate text, and, unless otherwise noted, all biblical translations are from the Douai-Rheims. For a list of manuscript abbreviations, please see Manuscripts in the Introduction.

6. ECCE PATET TENSUS: NOTES

The marginal Latin glosses, identified by a capital L in the left margin next to the text, are transcribed and translated in the notes and can be accessed by clicking on the L at the corresponding line.

6. Ecce patet tensus:

Found only in Tr, where it follows CB and, despite an open-ended but nonetheless credible last line, has been taken by Macaulay and others following his lead to be incomplete. (A leaf is missing from the MS after line 36.) Rigg (History of Anglo-Latin Literature, p. 290) projects "a prayer for grace to avoid sin" as a likely finish, and suggests a date "before 1399." Carlson ("Rhyme") also considers it early work, based on the form -- unrhymed elegiac distichs throughout, a number of its lines also turning up in VC (see below); but with nothing solid textually to indicate when Gower recombined them into a separate poem, nothing precludes his doing so in his late years, when demonstrably he was revising VC. Tr itself is datable ca. 1400; and pairing Ecce patet with Est amor as poems composed around 1398, the year of his marriage, achieves an interesting resonance. Many of the lines of this poem draw upon VC V.iii.147-92, a discussion of the wonder and danger of love; see the notes below.

3 Omnia vincit amor. Ultimately from Virgil, Eclogues 10.16; and compare VC V.iii.147, VI.xiv.999; and Chaucer, CT I(A)162.

10 cunta. So Tr. Mac reads cuncta.

15-17 Sic amor . . . resoluit. Verbatim VC V.iii.147-49.

21 Sampsonis vires. Judges 16:4-31. gladius . . . David. 2 Kings (2 Samuel) 11:2-12:24.

22 laudis. Clarified in the margin by a later hand.

sensus . . . Salomonis. 3 Kings (1 Kings) 11:1-14.

23-24 O natura . . . malum! Verbatim VC V.iii.199-200.

25-26 O natura . . . agi! Verbatim VC V.iii.205-06.

27-28 O natura . . . sequi! Verbatim VC V.iii.201-02.