WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

of the “Cornish” grammarians responsible but the common way of writing English in Oxford and
London. 353 These dialects, in turn, were proliferated by a small part of the literate classes, the
clerical bureaucracy, as part of literary and not vernacular language, and so would have reflected
a very limited experience of English to his readers. 354 Even Trevisa’s most immediate readers,
his patrons of the Berkeley household, would have known the exaggeration of this nationwide
“leaving” of French for English by merely looking up at the ceiling of the family chapel and
reading the French, biblical inscriptions on it. 355
Trevisa’s commentary, hence, filters reality through a traditional, authorial gesture more
than it attempts to educate a readership. In referencing specific geographic locales, particular
learning strategies, and even proper names—all important material details that would require a
material witness—Trevisa appeals to the medieval understanding of experiential verisimilitude
that stems back to Isidore and Aristotle. As we have seen in the last chapter, the preference of
immediate experience over that of tradition in determining the truth was a way to adjudicate
between witnessed and narrative historical writings. Because Higden explicitly situates history as
emerging from narrative and not direct witnesses, Trevisa’s “first-hand” commentary clearly
attempts to set the translator as a higher authority than his source, who is seen as merely relying
on spoken and written tales to write his history.
The parallel between the content and the structure of Trevisa’s commentary leaves little
doubt that Trevisa is concerned with authorial gesturing. This is because Trevisa’s role as a
commentator and vernacular educator mimics that of the grammar teacher responsible for this
drastic change in the vernacular, John of Cornwall. First, Trevisa could already lay claim to the
name “John of Cornwall” as he was himself a John born in Cornwall, and he might have
353 Waldron “John Trevisa” 185.
354 See John H. Fisher, “Chancery and the Emergence of Standard Written English,” Speculum, 5.4 (Oct., 1977).
355 Fowler The Life 184.
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