Cumulative Revision in John Gower's "Quicquid Homo Scribat."
- Author/Editor
- Weiskott, Eric.
- Title
- Cumulative Revision in John Gower's "Quicquid Homo Scribat."
- Published
- Weiskott, Eric. "Cumulative Revision in John Gower's 'Quicquid Homo Scribat'." English Studies 103 (2022): 547-54.
- Review
- Weiskott looks at revisions made to Gower's brief poem through two lenses (or three, if one accepts lived history as a viewing point): Deluze and Guattari's concept of the rhizome and Julie Singer's of lyric prosthesis. The poem has three versions, identified by their incipits: "Henrici quarti primus," "Henrici regis annis," and "Quicquid homo scribat," which Weiskott prefers to use. David R. Carlson ("Rhyme Distribution") observed what he called "cumulative revision" at work in these versions, i.e., lines from the first and second turn up in the third, while others from both are excluded. (The order of composition is established by noted regnal years 1 [1399-1400] and 2 [1400-1401] of Henry IV for the first two, and no notation on--presumably--the third and latest.) The practice "bespeaks a rhizomatic approach to revision, an ability to hold three texts in the mind at one time (if we are not to imagine Gower consulting his own manuscripts), and a multidirectional understanding of the literary work" (548). Weiskott finds an image of "Gower's self-organization" in this approach (549), and applying Singer's notion of "lyric prosthesis" argues that "Quicquid" "explicitly offers to compensate for its author's deficient body" (549). There follows a careful, detailed analysis of how--and why--Gower assembled his three versions (549-52). Most interesting are Weiskott's speculations that the three revisions show Gower coming to terms with his disability: "Gower's prosthetic poem . . . overwrites Nature's imposition of closure, reframing the "end ('finem')" . . . of sight and a writing career as a starting point for writing" (551). Extrapolating from this view of rhizomatic composition, Weiskott identifies a phrase ("curua senectus") as common to "Quicquid," the "Epistola to Arundel," "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia," and uses a description of Gower as a rhizomatical writer as further evidence in support of R. F. Yeager's theory that "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia" was the text offered to Thomas Arundel by Gower in 1397 (553). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Minor Latin Poetry
Manuscripts and Textual Studies