WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

classical or exegetical tradition, which taking the word from the Latin “augere” ‘to grow,’
conceives of an author as an active producer even when he displays “humilitas” ‘humility.’ 138
Commonly, infirmity is merely the persona of the “scriptor” ‘writer,’ whose humble
copying of texts repeats tradition without explicitly adding to it. As Thomas Hoccleve excuses
his own gathering of sayings: “Considereth, therof was I noon auctour./I nas in þat cas but a
reportour/ Of folks tales. As they sied, I wroot./I nat affirmed it on hem, God woot.” 139
Hoccleve’s infirmity—as well as that of other such “infirm” authors like Ranulf Higden,
Geoffrey Chaucer, or Francis Petrarch—certainly does not mean that he is not actively
intervening in the narrative or using it to further his independent fame (i.e. that he has a personal
responsibility for the narrative). However, it does mean that he wishes his “authorial”
intervention to be the result of his own narrative game, and that he wishes to prevent his readers
from taking an idealized “authorial” self from his exposition of tales and authors. Similarly,
Gower’s infirmity pretends to be non-productive in repeating the “variis floribus” ‘various
flowers’ of philosophers, chroniclers, historians, and poets, ironically asking us to judge the
“zealousness” of its writer as weakness.
The Confessio, however, goes further than Hoccleve in setting poetic authority literally as
an “in-firmitas,” a ‘lack of foundation’ which precludes a particular viewpoint—even that of an
attentive reader—to guide the play of meaning from outside the text. This is more evident in the
one place where “John Gower” is explicitly called the “auctor” of the Confessio, the colophon
which precedes the table of contents to Juan de Cuenca’s translation, Confisión del Amante:
Este libro es llamado Confisión del amante, el qual conpuso Joan Goer, natural del reino de
Inglatierra, e fue tornado en lenguaje portogués por Ruberto Paym…E después sacado en lenguaje
138 A.J. Minnis, “‘Authorial Intention’ and ‘Literal Sense’ in the Exegetical Theories of Richard Fitzralph and
John Wyclif: An Essay in the Medieval History of Biblical Hermeneutics,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.
Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies,History, Linguistics, Literature, 75 (1975): 6.
139 Thomas Hoccleve, My Compleinte and Other Poems, ed. Roger Ellis (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001)
VII.2.760-763.
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