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 (marginalia note) at the corresponding line.
* All things Presumption thinks he knows, but he does not know himself, nor does he think that anyone similar to him is his equal. He who thinks himself more astute in winning the battle falls all the more tightly into Venus's snares. Often Cupid betrays the man who presupposes a lover for himself, and Hope itself turns back down empty roads.
1407 ff. The Tale of Florent is apparently based on the same source as Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale; or, perhaps Chaucer drew upon Gower's story as he put together the marriage group of The Canterbury Tales in the 1390s. The tale joins two folk motifs, that of the loathly lady transformed through love, and the answering of a riddle to save one's life. See Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk-Literature, D 732, and Bartlett J. Whiting's discussion in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 223-68. A similar story is found in The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle; see Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), pp. 41-80. Macaulay (vol. 2, p. 473) notes Shakespeare's allusion to Gower's version of the story in Taming of the Shrew, I.ii.69. For comparison of the three Middle English versions of the tale and the possibility that The Wife of Bath's tale is a playful inversion of Gower's more sober narrative, see Carl Lindahl, "The Oral Undertones of Late Medieval Romance" in Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages, ed. W. F. H. Nicolaisen (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995), pp. 72-75.
1408 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic contra amori inobedientes ad commendacionem Obediencie Confessor super eodem exemplum ponit; vbi dicit quod, cum quedam Regis Cizilie filia in sue iuuentutis floribus pulcherrima ex eius Nouerce incantacionibus in vetulam turpissimam transformata extitit, Florencius tunc Imparatoris Claudi Nepos, miles in armis strenuissimus amorosisque legibus intendens, ipsam ex sua obediencia in pulcritudinem pristinam mirabiliter reformauit. [Here against those disobedient to love and as commendation to Obedience, the Confessor presents an instructive example on the same thing, where he tells that, when a certain daughter of the King of Sicily who was most beautiful in the bloom of her youth but transformed into a most ugly old woman by her stepmother's incantation, Florent, then the nephew of the Emperor Claudius, a knight most strenuous in fighting and committed to the laws of love, miraculously refashioned her, because of his obedience, into her original beauty.] For discussion of the juxtaposition of this Latin text with the vernacular Tale of Florent to create a dynamic ambiguity, a kind of mise-en-page disputatio between the two texts, see Batchelor in Yeager (1998), pp. 3-10.
1413 ff. See Dimmick, pp. 128-30, on Florent as a tale of "wish-fulfilment disguised as an exemplum" (p. 128).
1500 othre. Macaulay emends to other. But see 1.1496.
1625 th'unsemlieste. F: punsemylieste. Macaulay's emendation.
1648 Gif his ansuere. Macaulay emends to Yive his answere.
1719 womanhiede. Macaulay reads wommanhiede.
1769 go we. See Eugene Green, "Speech Acts and the Art of the Exemplum in the Poetry of Chaucer and Gower," in Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical and Practical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric, ed. Rosanne G. Potter (Philadelpha: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), pp. 178-79, on Gower's use of subjunctive mood rather than imperative mood, which he uses very little.
1785 fole. Macaulay emends to foule.
Latin verses viii (before line 1883). On the importance of self-knowledge in Gower and its medieval tradition, see Simpson (1995), pp. 125-33, 203-211.
1887 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur de tercia specie Superbie, que Presumpcio dicitur, cuius naturam primo secundum vicium Confessor simpliciter declarat. [Here he speaks about the third species of Pride, which is called Presumption, whose nature as a vice the Confessor first declares in simple terms.]
1911 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor cum Amante super illa saltem presumpcione, ex cuius superbia quam plures fatui amantes, cum maioris certitudinis in amore spem sibi promittunt, inexpediti cicius destituuntur. [Here the Confessor discourses with the Lover especially about that presumption from the pride of which very many foolish lovers, when they promise themselves hope of greater certainty in love, are suddenly and unpreparedly made destitute.]