WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

as gens ou le language de leur païs” ‘things which are grave and of great authority are delectable
and agreeable to people in the language of their own country,’ 396 Trevisa’s Dominus defensively
asks “Þanne what haþ Englysch trespased þat hyt myзt noзt be translated into Englysch?” 397 As
Somerset argues, this defensiveness allows Dominus to voice the paradoxical desire “to speak at
once like a pope and a parishioner,” a desire to valorize immediate everyday language by
disseminating universal knowledge accredited to another linguistic tradition. 398
Still, if this logic drives Trevisa’s translation strategies, we would expect On the
Governance to teach its readers concepts explicitly as if it were explaining a concept but to
repeat traditional ways of articulating knowledge implicitly as if it was solely responsible for the
concepts which they understood. In other words, Trevisa’s aside would follow the medieval
pedagogical tradition even without articulating its debt to it explicitly. At first sight, Trevisa’s
lengthy aside on the relationship of “dyameter” and “costa” appears to do just that. It defines the
terms which Giles neglects quite clearly and even attempts to contextualize those which it must
introduce—through a diagram—to teach how this geometric relationship works. The intent for
pedagogical clarity may be witnessed in that, unlike Giles, Trevisa defines the relationship of a
“dyameter” and a “costa” through an actual figure, a “quadrate,” which he defines as made up of
four lines: “and eche of thilke foure side lynes is icleped costa. And a lyne idraw in lengþe from
þe oo cornere of þe quadrate to anoþer corner in þe oþer side is icleped diameter.” If we liken
Trevisa’s comment and translation to Bartholomaeus’s definition of a triangle, then we can see
that he tries to appropriate a pedagogical tradition of concurrent explanations as if it were his
own by giving a concrete example in everyday vernacular terms to educate the reader.
396 Nicole Oresme, “Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote.” “Maistre Nicole Oresme Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 60. 6 (1970): 44.
397 Qtd. in Waldron “Trevisa’s Original” 292.
398 Somerset 100.
236