WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

exchanging “word vor word” but also explaining “menyng,” betrays his “witnessing” of
vernacular change as a pedagogical posture. He, like Cornwall, teaches English through his
translations.
By taking such a “small” role as a grammar teacher, however, Trevisa does not so much
wish to mimic John of Cornwall as he does Higden, who famously calls himself a dwarfish
chronicler standing on the shoulders of giants. Higden says that he is a pedagogical chronicler
who writes not only to teach history to dwarfish “minores” ‘minors’ (or, as Trevisa translates,
“зongelynes”) but also, in the manner of Ayala, to discipline “maiores” ‘higher men’ by giving
them examples to follow:
Sed etiam de fragmentis cophinorum, quae superfuerunt prandentibus, minutias recolligens,
quippiam adjiciam laboribus auctorum, nanus residens in humeris giganteis, unde non solum
minores ad rudimentum sed et majores ad exercitium provocentur.
But also gathering little things from the fragments of the baskets, which overflow to hungering
men, I would add something to the labors of authors, like a dwarf sitting in the shoulders of giants,
from which not only to little ones are called to the beginning but also older ones to discipline. 357
Although Trevisa does not call himself a “nanus” ‘dwarf,’ he certainly measures the influence of
a text by the shape of his audience. By comparing himself to John of Cornwall, he implies that he
has taught “maiores,” the men who read his translations, as “minores” or “зongelynes” who must
be educated in concepts foreign to a dwarfish English grammar.
Like Higden, who, in the words of Andrew Galloway, “personally responds and critiques
historical authorities,” Trevisa writes in response to a tradition about a linguistic project, namely
that of translation, and about how that linguistic project is a type of authorial discourse of its
own. 358 Unlike Higden, however, he does so without the explicit aid of tradition in the more
“dwarfish” position of a mere vocabulary teacher, and in so doing, he amplifies the importance
of his response to his predecessors. Trevisa does not have to shield himself with the “humeris”
357 Higden Polychronicon 1.15.
358 Galloway “Latin” 48.
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