WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

who sees in his world the very eschatological image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream. It
accordingly labels his description of how “in temporalibus error ubique diffunditur” ‘everywhere
sin has diffused in time’ a “tractatus” ‘treatise’ and not a poetic play of language.
A closer look at this prose frame, however, reveals a careful fashioning of poetic
structures behind a flat allegory of sin. Taking at its starting point the future, “postquam”
‘finally’ or ‘after which,’ the summary treats the poem itself as the prophetic vision of the future,
of the “finally” that its lines should allegorize: “Postquam de singulis gradibus…tratctatum
hactenus exsistit” ‘Finally/After which by means of single steps…thus far the treatise
manifests/steps forth.’ The poem comes forth, like the feet of the statue of time, in ‘single steps’
that treat the “in temporalibus error ubique diffunditur,” the scattering of an “error,” a ‘mistake’
but also a ‘wondering of time.’ Through this “erratic” pun, the summary reflects less on the
poem’s “explicit” theme (the sins of society) as it does on how its puns can create meaning, and
particularly on the metric wondering of the Vox’s feet.
This summary frame goes further than an explanation of the Latinate contents of the
Vox’s poetry. It embodies, through allusion, what the Vox should explain. By using metaphoric
diction, the summary implicitly makes this “visio” a commentary of the process of writing. The
frame describes a world to which “nos ad presens tempus…evidencius devenimus” ‘we, at our
present time…evidently have come’ as only a representation, a “figura,” of deterioration and not
deterioration itself. The “evident” coming to a “representation” echoes how the bible presents
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a pure vision that must be written and not the development of an
interpretation of reality through speech. This explains why this prose frame envisions the poem
as a “tractatum,” from the Latin, “tracto, tractare” ‘to drag’ despite using poetic diction. The
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