Scribes and Hypertext Author(s): David Burnley Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol.

25, Non-Standard Englishes and the New Media Special Number (1995), pp. 41-62 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3508817 . Accessed: 20/04/2011 14:11
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Scribes and Hypertext

DAVID BURNLEY
University Sheffield of

Looking through the shelves of the secondhand bookshop recently, I came across a copy of Brewer's edition of the Parlementof Foulys so heavily glossed and annotated in bright blue ballpoint that it ought to have been an object of wonder, the testament to a rare consistency and sense of purpose in the glossator. Hardly any white space survived around the text. I was shocked. How could anyone treat a book in this way? It seemed a kind of desecration. But what justification was there for my perturbation? I can defend my disapproval: such annotation might discourage later readers from exercising their own interpretative judgement on the text. It imposes a particular interpretation, and is therefore coercive. But this is really the rationalization of a more fundamental distaste. A book is the artefact of many diverse skills working towards the form in which it has been issued, a collaborative work of art which should not be carelessly defaced. I think of this defacement much in the same way as I should condemn graffiti on a public monument. Later additions to texts by unauthorized persons may be deplored as vandalism. This view is no doubt dependent upon print culture and a culturally enshrined canon. It is an authoritarian one, and in this it is paralleled by the ideal of a book as the product of its author, inviolate from printer's error or editorial interference, which lies behind the principles of scholarly editing: the editor's role is to restore the author's text as perfectly as possible for the benefit of each reader. Each reader should confront the text exactly as the author intended it should be, and negotiate its meaning in his or her own way. It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is only an ideal, but nevertheless the technical possibility of the text's bearing a message from an author to an audience gained strength from the development and perfection of printing techniques in the last five hundred years. Yet, as a dream of the author and scholar it is by no means a new one, and is eloquently expressed in Classical Latin: Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam. xv. (Metamorphoses, 871)

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And now my work is done, which neither the wrath ofJove, nor fire, nor sword, nor the gnawing tooth of time shall ever be able to undo. When it will, let that day come which has no power save over this mortal frame, and end the span of my uncertain years. Still in my better part I shall be borne immortal far beyond the lofty stars and I shall have an undying name. Wherever Rome's power extends over the conquered world, I shall have mention on men's lips, and, if the prophecies of bards have any truth, through all the ages shall I live in fame. were echoed by Christine de Pizan Ovid's final words in the Metamorphoses1 in both her book in praise of Charles V and in her Avision Christine,2and were perhaps in the mind of her correspondent Eustache Deschamps when he wrote to Chaucer acknowledging him a fellow author writing for posterity.3 In the days before printing, however, when the transmission of texts relied on the skills and attitudes of scribes, authorial control over their product was quite evidently no more than a dream for these authors. Before the invention of printing, the multiplication of the author's text was so hazardous that it might threaten its very survival. Indeed both Christine and Chaucer, in Troilusand Criseyde,expected no more than the survival of the content of their compositions; poetic subtleties were likely to be lost. In the earlier middle ages, tie situation was worse. Old English scribes wrote verse continuously across the page, failing to emphasize its metrical structure. Some apparently did not even understand the language which they were copying, and the one in who wrote a version of the Battle of Brunanburh about io 6 substituted for the line dictated to him: 'Gewitan him pa Nor4men naegledcnearrum' (the Northmen departed from them in their nailed boats), the enigmatic 'Gewiton him pa Nor6men daeg gled on garum'.4 If the copyists were the necessary enemies of the author, users of books are their partners in crime. Books may be designed with chapter divisions, glossaries, indexes, and so on to facilitate whatever uses the author has foreseen, but book users do not always share the priorities of authors and scholars. The book is certainly an intermediary between its author and its users, but there is no necessary communication between the two. Books have always served other purposes than those foreseen for them by their creators: King Alfred's Preface to his translation of the copy of Gregory's Pastoral Care sent to the diocese of Worcester is glossed for arcane purposes known only to the scribe whose peculiarly unsteady script identifies him to modern scholars as the 'Worcester Tremulous Hand'. He was an industrious annotator of

1 Ovid, Metamorphoses, by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, 3rd edn, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: ed. Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1977). 2 Christine de des Meurs SageRoyCharles ed. by S. Solente, 2 vols (Paris: du V, Pizan, LeLivre Fais etBonnes Champion, 1940), II, 132. 3 The Critical with an English translation in Derek Brewer, Chaucer: Deschamps's baladeis quoted 2 Heritage, vols (London: Routledge, 1978), pp. 39-42. 4 British ed. Library, Cotton MSS, Tiberius B IV. See TheBattleof Brunanburgh, by Alistair Campbell (London: Heinemann, 1938), p. 89.

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Old English books, whose purposes we can only guess at.5 Some literalminded early copyist of Chaucer's Envoy to Scogan with an eye for the geography of the Thames valley rather than poetic metaphor supplied for later readers the erroneous gloss 'Windsor' to the phrase stremeshedeof grace and balanced it by the gloss 'Greenwich' for the phrase solytariewildernesse. John But was only one of those who modified Piers Plowman,6 and whoever wrote the London Julius Chronicle(c. I435) appropriated without acknowledgement Lydgate's poem on the entry of King Henry VI into London.7 Tales severely prunes the Squire's Tale The Paris manuscript of the Canterbury to suit the tastes of its owner. The divide between those on the one hand who uphold and practise their right to put books to their own uses, annotating, adapting, or purloining an author's text where desirable, or reproducing it with less than scholarly accuracy, and those on the other whose purpose is to enshrine and preserve the simple relationship between text, author, and reader, is one which is probably as old as books. But the authoritarian cause certainly gained great strength from the technological achievement of printing using movable type. Since the late fifteenth century, the ideal of the enduring artefact of the individual author has become the norm, and has fostered both author-centred literary scholarship and respect for books based on their status as cultural monuments rather than instruments of entertainment or tools of instruction. This is what lies behind our distaste for the maltreatment of books. Although authors in English before the time of Chaucer were aware of the Latin conception of their role exemplified by Ovid and others, a combination of historical factors prevented them from adopting it with confidence. The social status of English limited the patronage available for writers and cut English off from sophisticated new literary themes; above all, the dialectal variety of the language combined with this low status threatened the integrity of any work composed in the language through inevitably careless copying. Very few works in English were regarded as the sacred products of an important author. In the case of anonymous and more popular work, scribes had no such responsibility as they felt in copying Latin masterworks, and the descent of many Middle English romances shows that scribes could enter into unauthorized collaboration with the author. Indeed, this could happen to such a degree that it becomes uncertain whether we are confronted by several different works or several copying variants of the same

Hand of Worcester: Studyof Old English in the Thirteenth A 5 Christine Franzen, The Tremulous Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I991). See also Wendy Collier, 'The Tremulous Worcester Scribe and his Milieu: A Study of his Annotations' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, I992). 6 George Kane, 'The Text', in A Companion PiersPlowman, to ed. by John A. Alford (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 175-200. 7 TheLondon ed. Chronicles, by C. L. Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), pp. 97-I 15.

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work.8 Popular literature could, in other words, quickly become the property of the community, rewritten by copyists, and its original authorship forgotten. The problem of rendering ideas in writing in a way which might be readily understandable to their audience, and which might survive copying led to certain features of medieval writing which will emerge as the discussion continues, but it is a problem worthy of consideration first in a less narrowly contextualized way. In general, ideas do not come to our minds in neatly sequential order, logically related in the most convenient way. They are often complex, admitting exceptions to our categories, alternatives, qualifications, or ranges of choice. We often have to struggle for the words, syntactic structures, and sentence relationships in which to encode them most clearly and effectively. The degree of complexity which we wish to communicate can often be managed more easily in oral exchanges, since conversation permits rephrasing, repetition, and modification of the utterance to the needs of those with whom we are speaking. None of these techniques is possible in quite the same way in written texts. Texts consist of a sequence of visual symbols relatively fixed on the page and unable to respond with any certainty to the needs of the reader. If authors wish to maintain their status in the transaction, they have to try to foresee their audience, and to manage their text to cater for it. They may try to adapt some of the devices of rhetoric which they might employ in speech, but, at its simplest, they have to find a technique of creating a text made from significant units and links which enables their audience to interpret its structure and understand its meaning. The integrity of text depends upon the syntactical rules of the language used, and the usual processes of cohesion, and these rules and processes are superordinate to the devices of either speech or writing. But written language, and within that, verse, also employ techniques of their own. Let us consider a simple, nearly linear, narrative:

8 The uncertainty as to what constitutes an author's text in medieval English literatureis the occasion of great debate, not simply in the expectation of answering the question in any one case, but also in terms of the principles and possibilities of editing such difficult material. For well-argued doubts about the validity of critical editions, see William E. Holland, 'Formulaic Diction and the Desent of a Middle 48 English Romance' Speculum, (I973), 89-109. And for critical editions in the face of extreme difficulties, MS Gg.4.27 (2), ed. by Rosamund Allen, see King Horn. An Editionbasedon Cambridge Library University at Garland Medieval Texts 7 (New York and London: Garland, I984); TheAwntyrs Arthure the Terne off A Wathelyne: CriticalEdition,ed. by Robert J. Gates (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, MS based Bodleian on An at Library Douce324,ed. by Wathelyn: Edition offArthure theTerne 1969); TheAwntyrs Ralph Hanna III, Old and Middle English Texts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, I974). The last two editors are at variance as to whether their text constitutes one or two poems. Similarly, scholars is are in disagreement as to whether the so-called Z-text of Piers Plowman an authorial first draft or a scribal remnant.

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The King asked The Queen, and The Queen asked The Dairymaid: 'Could we have some butter for The Royal slice of bread?' The Queen asked The Dairymaid, The Dairymaid Said,'Certainly, I'll go and tell The cow Now Before she goes to bed.'

The Dairymaid She curtsied, And went and told The Alderney: 'Don't forget the butter for The Royal slice of bread.' The Alderney Said sleepily: 'You'd better tell His Majesty That many people nowadays Like marmalade Instead.'

The self-contained nature of this excerpt from a children's poem is striking. It creates its own imaginary world of talking cows and palace relationships, and, appropriately for children, the experience required of real world things is very little indeed: a king may be referred to as 'His Majesty' and an 'Alderney' is a breed of cow, that is all you need to know. Indeed, it is arguable that this latter is unnecessary knowledge because the cohesion of the piece is so tightly drawn that it could be inferred from the text. Its coherence is internal. The narrative consists of brief conjoined clauses, and the connection between the clauses is most marked in the way in which the object of one clause becomes the subject of the next. It is strongly lexically coherent through the repetition of the words Queen, Dairymaid, and the phrase Royal slice of bread, and through the semantic relationships between King and His Majesty, and between cow and Alderney. In themselves, these kinds of cohesion might be found in any connected discourse, but there are also aspects of the patterning of this text which are characteristic of verse. Two kinds of discourse are apparent: narrative and direct speech, and these are distinguished by punctuation marks. But the patterning of their use is also striking, with the latter occupying much longer verse than the former, and terminated by a rhyme word. The phrases and short clauses of the narration are carefully arranged in the line structure so as to emphasize their parallelism and brevity. There are certainly other devices worthy of comment, such as the amusing 'internal' rhyme cow: now, and the repetitive use of trisyllables of similar stress patterns at line ends, but this is decorative rather than structural and does not concern us, since what is at issue is the way in which a series of verbal objects are distinguished and then linked into decipherable text. In this simple piece, they are so linked through the interaction of the normal processes of syntax and cohesion with a (partly visual) patterning imposed upon them by the poet through punctuation and layout.

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The problem of creating a text which was interpretable and would survive was one which exercised an Augustinian canon, probably in Bourne, Lincolnshire towards the end of the twelfth century. Orm is interesting because he was both the author and the publisher of his work. He wrote his twenty thousand-line work in an ugly and unprofessional hand, but above all he was concerned that the content should reach the consumer in the form in which he had designed it. To this end, he developed his own spelling system, even inventing a new letter form <g>for the plosive /g/, carefully punctuated his text, and begged any future copyists to imitate his method precisely. It has to be admitted, however, that he did not produce an attractive and readily accessible document for his readers. The work is written in two columns in a uniformly black ink. Occasionally, his layout is compromised by holes in the vellum, lines are scored out, omitted lines clumsily inserted, or he will write across the bottom of the page and use unaccustomed abbreviations in order to start a significant sub-section of the text at the head of the next column (as in fol. 70r). But his purpose is clear: he fitted his phrasing into unrhymed lines of precisely fifteen syllables in length, marking the beginning of each line by a capital letter, breaking the line into seven and eight-syllable halves by the use of a punctuselevatusor, after questions, punctus Changes of speaker or of topic are marked by the paragraphus.9 interrogativus. Above all, Orm relies upon his punctuation and spelling system to communicate his content, and perhaps compelled by financial exigency, does not write his verse out line by line, but runs on continuously within each column. The following transcription expands abbreviations, but follows Orm's layout, punctuation, and, as far as possible capitalization. The last is somewhat problematic, because the eight-syllable half-line usually begins with an emboldened Tironian sign or a somewhat larger capital (for which Annd and emboldening has been substituted) and the second, sevensyllable, half line begins with a smaller capital (which is not distinguished in the transcription).

9 For detailed treatment of the marks of punctuation, see M. B. Parkes,PauseandEffect:AnIntroduction to in the History of Punctuation the West (Aldershot: Scolar, 1992). More specific accounts of medieval punctuation practices in English manuscripts can be found in Paul G. Araklian, 'Punctuation in a Late Middle English Manuscript', Neuphilologische 76 Mitteilungen, (1975), 614-24; A. C. Cawley, 'Punctuation MedievalStudies,I (I937), I6-33; Peter Clemoes, Liturgical in the Early Versions of Trevisa', London on in University of Cambridge, Influence Punctuation Late Old EnglishandEarlyMiddleEnglishManuscripts, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Occasional Papers (Cambridge, I952); Pamela Gradon, 'Punctuation in a A Eric ed. Years Words Sounds: Festschriftfor Dobson, by E. G. and Middle English Sermon', in FiveHundred of Stanley and Douglas Gray (Cambridge: Brewer, I983), 39-48; P. L. Heyworth, 'The Punctuation of A. ed. Middle English Texts', in Medieval StudiesforJ. W.Bennett, by P. L. Heyworth. (Oxford:Clardendon Press, I98I), I39-57; P.J. Lucas, 'Sense-Units and the Use of Punctuation MarkersinJohn Capgrave's
Chronicle', ArchivumLinguisticum, n. s. 2 (197

ed. Studiesin the Theory Practice Medieval and MedievalEloquence: Rhetoric, by J.J. Murphy. (Berkeley: of University of California Press, 1978), 127-42; Elizabeth Zeeman, 'Punctuation in an Early Manuscript of Love's Mirror', RES, n.s. 7 (1956), I I-I8.

), 1-24; M. B. Parkes, 'Punctuation,

or Pause and Effect', in

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Annd affterrpatt te tid wass

gan fPe33 wendenn fra

Pe temmple. Annd ferrdenn towarrd nazaraep.An da33ess gang till efenn. Annd wenndenn [P]att te laferrd crist. Wipp hemm patt gate come. Annd he wass pa bihinndenn hemm. Bilefedd att te temmple. Annd tatt ne wisste nohht hiss kinn fAcc wennde patt he come. Annd 3edenn heore we33efor /f Till patt itt comm till efenn. Annd ta pe33misstenn pe33rechild fannd itt hemm offerkuhhte. Annd 3edenn till annd sohhtenn himm fBitwenenn sibbe. annd cupe. Annd te33ne fundenn nohht off himm fforr he wass att te temmple. Annd te33 pa wenden efft onn3aen.f [p]att dere child to sekenn. Annd comen efft till 3errsalaem. seTo kenn him paerbinnen. Annd te33 himm o pe pridde da33. fPaer fundenn ike temmple. Bitwenenn katt iudisskenn flocc. fPatt leredd wass o boke. Annd taerehe satt to fra33nenn hemm. Offpe33re bokess lare. Annd alle patt himm herrden paer.fHemm puhhte mikell wunnderr. Off att he wass full 3aepand wis. fTo swarenn annd to fra33nenn. VAnnd Sannte mar3e comm till himm. annd se33de himm puss wipk worde. Whi didesst tu lef sune puss. WiPP uss forr uss to swenkenn?Witt hafenn sohht te widewhar fIcc annd ti faderr bape. Wipp serrhfull herrte. annd sari3 mod. Whi didesst tu kiss dede? (fol. 70r-)

The passage above is the scene in which Joseph and Mary, returning from Jerusalem, realize that they have left their child behind in the city.10 Orm is determined to explain the circumstances, but does very little to dramatize them. Simple declaratory clauses are connected by the conjunction annd. The counterfactual conjunction Acc is used one in line o, but was equally as necessary in line 7. Only in the last line does Orm rise to a causal relation. Generally he adopts two or three significant words and builds the cohesion of his text on their repetition: till efenn situates the events in time; pe temmple
10 A Book Quoted with revised layout from David Burnley, TheHistoryof the EnglishLanguage: Source (London: Longman, I992).

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which often has counterfactual force defines the place; and the verb wenndenn, in Middle English, illustrates the confusion. Orm relies heavily upon lexical repetition at verbal and phrasal level to carry his message, and on the watchfulness of his reader for his punctuation and syllable count. Orm's efforts to clarify the structure of his text may seem modest enough, even childish, but they nevertheless represent the efforts of an author to communicate his meaning unambiguously. Although human language has its own structures identifiable by linguistic investigations at phonological, syntactical, and other levels, the users of a language may not be keenly aware of the units into which linguists analyse their language, or that they observe certain behavioural patterns even in conversation. People learn to speak without conscious analysis, but when we come to write our language some conscious analysis is necessary. In the longer historical perspective, the degree of analysis and control which Orm attempted was in fact quite considerable. In the western world, from earliest times the spoken language had been divided into phonic segments which were represented by letters; letters and their accompanying sounds were recognized as syllables, and were grouped into words, which represented ideas and objects external to the language, as well as performing intra-linguistic functions. It is a notorious fact that the boundaries between words are often blurred in speech, and prior to the establishment of standard spellings for words, this uncertainty was normally reflected in manuscripts. Manuscript writing preserved something of the continuity of speech. Indeed the earliest Latin manuscript writing is sometimes in scriptio continua,that is, continuously written words without any spacing or punctuation, often using the verse line as the primary unit of textual analysis.11 This was especially the case when the text was viewed as a utilitarian object, the property of the user, who was granted the right to mark it up with word-divisions, pauses, and intonation patterns as best suited his interpretative convenience or his purpose in delivering an oration. Scriptiocontinuawas obsolete by the twelfth century, but in the Roman de la Rose, Jean de Meun still speaks of the responsibility of punctuation falling on the reader rather than the producers of a text: Ifony be that can it say And poynte it as the resoun is Set for other gate ywys It shall nought wel in all thyng Be brought to good vndirstondyng For a reder that poyntith ille A good sentence may ofte spille. (Romaunt theRose,B.2156) of Scriptiocontinuahad fulfilled a practical role in earlier times in school texts or oratorical exercises, but by the twelfth century literature was being studied as part of an ethical education aimed at reforming the soul rather than at any
11 Parkes, pp. io- I.

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short term vocational purpose. The syllabus consisted of auctores,and the name and purpose of the author were always of great importance, forming part of the accessusor introduction to any important Latin work. Authors were highly respected, their works formed part of a recognised (authentici) curriculum, and their texts were copied with special exactness. It was to this body ofauctoresthat Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Deschamps all aspired to belong. The author was considered to transmit his meaning through his art, and it was his duty to communicate his purpose as effectively as possible to his audience. Such a view was the bedrock of medieval literary theory, and even Orm was motivated by this responsibility. Rhetorical arts were composed whose sole purpose was to equip new Latin authors with the compositional skills necessary for transmitting their intention in poetry, prose, sermons and official documents (the artespoetriae, dictamines,praedicandi,and notariae). Medieval poetics was exclusively intentionalistic and some medieval authors, unashamedly admitting that the meaning was the raison d'etre of their writing, sought, like Orm, ways in which they could preserve it to a significant degree. Orm's fellow townsman, Robert Mannyng, writing in 1338, was well aware that in vernacular languages the dream of an imperishable work of art was unrealizable, and he claims deliberately to have written in a verse form and style which could be readily understood.12 This means stripping his verse of the vanities of style and aiming for a simplicity of discourse which could not be easily misunderstood and might survive rough handling: I see in song in sedgeyng tale Of Erceldoun and of Kendale, Non ,am says as bai,am wroght, and in per sayng it semes noght; pat may Pou here in Sir Tristrem; ouer gestes it has ]pesteem, Ouer alle that is or was, if men it sayd as made Thomas; But I here it no man say Pat of som copple som is away; So pare fayre sayng here beforn is liare trauayle nere forlorn bai sayd it for pride & nobleye, Pat non were suylk as Pei; And all kat pai wild ouerwhere, all lat ilk will now forfare. (1.93) No doubt Mannyng was well aware of the presumed responsibility of the author when he came to write his Chronicleof England and he employed a
12

2 vols (London, 1887).

TheStoryof Englandby Robert ed. Manningof Bourne, by F.J. Furnivall, Records Commission, Iv.87,

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device so simple and ubiquitous that we normally regard it as diagnostic of the poetic mode, overlooking its more utilitarian function in a semi-literate culture: that device is rhymed verse. Whatever the decorative qualities of Mannyng's octosyllabic couplets, they imposed a pattern on his discourse which would have facilitated accurate copying, scribes unconsciously registering the eight syllables, perhaps, but responding above all to the rhymes. There is at least a general truth in the statement that scribes tended to preserve the rhymes in the works they copied even when changing words and spellings in the line, and the scribe of London, Lambeth Palace, MS i 3 faithfully followed Mannyng's line structure. Of course, copyists made mistakes and omitted lines, but Hand i of the more or less contemporary Auchinleck manuscript must have been alerted to his errors when copying the Short Metrical Chronicle,since, having omitted a line, he recognizes his omission when he comes to the failure in rhyme, and, on three occasions, he inserts the omitted line at the foot of the column preceded by a letter a and a cross, which refer to a b and cross at the proper place in the text (fols 311 , 312V, 3I7r).13 Mannyng feared that more complex verse forms, such as tail rhyme, might confuse his audience and perhaps copyists, yet in a study of the handling of narrative in that genre Diirmiiller argues that in addition to its rhyme scheme, the tail-rhyme stanza can commonly be broken into four topics which can be combined in various fairly predictable ways.14 In a twelve-line stanza, the first three often tend to introduce a topic, the next two groups of three develop it in some way whilst the final three close it, selecting some aspect which connects to the next stanza: Some tyme there was in Almayn An Emperour of moche mayn; Syr Dyoclysan he hyght; He was a bolde man and a stowte; All crystendome ofhym had dowte. So strong he was in fyght; He dysheryted many a man, And falsely ther londys wan, Wyth maystry and wyth myght, Tyll hyt felle vpon a day, A warre wakenyd, as y yow say, Betwene hym and a knyght. 1. (Erleof Toulous, 13) Thus expectation of the genre smooths the path of understanding for readers of tail-rhyme romances, but at the same time encourages integrity in copying. The editorial doctrine of difficiliorlectio is based on the assumption that where wording is unexpected, scribes will tend to normalize it. It

13 Derek Pearsall and I. C. Cunningham, The AuchinleckManuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates' MS. I9.2.1 (London: Scolar, 1979). 14 Urs Diirmiiller, Narrative Possibilities of the Tail-Rime Romances (Bern: Francke, I975), p. 28.

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follows, therefore, that to preserve a text recognizable patterns and familiar phrasing have an important role to play. The use of rhyme and regular metre defines the line as an object, and helps to preserve the author's content. Stanzaic patterns have a similar function, sometimes extended by verbal links chaining stanzas into larger units. However, none of these devices has validity for prose or for larger units in couplet verse. In these cases authors tended to fall back upon the rhetorical devices proper to oral delivery, and we find devices of antithesis, repetition, and sequence (sometimes enumerated sequences) being used. In legal and administrative prose of record, and in technical prose where clarity was of prime importance, a highly cohesive, and lexically repetitive kind of discourse was developed. The curial style emerged first in Latin, but was imitated in French and appeared in English at the close of the fourteenth century. In the next century it made its transition from utilitarian prose to become a mannered style exploited most elaborately in the prologues and epilogues of translations intended for the broader secular audience of the period. The passage below is from a petition placed before Parliament in 1421 by the Physicians of London.15 Hey and most myghty Prince, noble and worthy Lordes Spirituelx and Temporelx, and worshipfull Communes, for so moche as a man hath thre things to governe, that is to say, Soule, Body, and wordly Goudes, the whiche ought and shulde ben principaly reweled by thre Sciences, that ben Divinite, Fisyk, and Lawe, the Soule by Divinite, the Body by Fisyk, wordly Goudes by Lawe, and these conynges sholde be used and practised principaly by the most connyng men in the same Sciences, and most approved in cases necesssaries to encrese of Vertu, long Lyf, and Goudes of
fortune, to the worship of God, and comyn profyt. But, worthy Soveraines, as hit is

knowen to youre hey discrecion, many unconnying and unapproved in the forsayd Science practiseth, and specialy in Fysyk, so that in this Roialme is every man, be he never so lewed, takyng upon hym practyse, y-suffred to use hit, to grete harme and slaughtre of many men: Where if no man practised theryn but al only connynge men and approved sufficeantly y-lerned in art, filosofye, and fisyk, as hit is kept in other londes and roialms, ther shulde many man that dyeth, for defaute of help, lyve, and no man perysh by unconnyng. Wherfore pleseth to youre excellent Wysdomes, that ought after youre soule, have mo entendance to your body, for the causes above sayd, to ordeine and make in Statuit, perpetualy to be straytly y-used and kept, that no.man, of no maner estate, degre, or condicion, practyse in Fisyk, from this tyme forward, bot he have long tyme y-used the Scoles of Fisyk withynne som Universitee, and be graduated in the same; that is to sey, but he be Bacheler or Doctour of Fisyk, havynge Lettres testimonyalx sufficeantz of on of those degrees of the Universite in the whiche he toke his degree yn; undur peyne of long emprisonement,and paynge XL li. to the Kyng; and that no Woman use the practyse of Fisyk undre the same payne. This is a noteworthy piece of drafting in the curial style, using the referential devices (the whiche, the same ..., the forsayd), paired synonyms (harme and slaughter,londesandroialms), and inflected postposed adjectives (casesnecessaries) characteristic of this elevated style, but also exploiting devices of semantic and
'1 Rotuli Parliamentorumut et petitiones et placita in Parliamento, 7 vols (London, 1783-I 832), IV, 158.

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syntactical patterning more characteristic of work meant for oral presentation. Notice, for example, the introduction and subsequent exploitation of the triad Soule, Body, and wordly Goudes,and the play on connyng the second in and third sentences.16 Thus authors sought to establish by various intrinsic means the links by which their subject matter could be woven into enduring text. Of these, some were internal to the language, as functional in spoken English as on the page, others were the property of rhetoric. Some, combining syntactical and metrical patterning were best exploited or only exploitable at all in writing. The elaboration of the layout or ordinatio,and of the punctuation, of a text were of the latter kind.17 Medieval punctuation of vernacular texts is limited, but, linked with ordinatio; could still indicate intended structures to a considerable extent; but these were the aspect of the presentation of a written work over which the author had least control. The Auchinleck manuscript was produced in London in the generation before Chaucer (c. I330) by six scribes working in collaboration, and the texts in it give us a fairly representative picture of the possibilities of punctuation and ordinatioas interpretative aids. It contains a variety of verse romances and saints lives, and a number of shorter verse pieces, mainly on religious themes. Most of the texts in it are copied from other sources, so that punctuation schemes do not represent those of the authors of the works with any degree of consistency, and they vary between the copyists. Only three punctuation marks are used: the paraph (T), the littera notabilior(any more prominent form of letter, enlarged, capitalized, or decorated, for example), and a raised dot. Rubrics and a few illuminated capitals mark the beginnings of texts. The fundamental unit of the lay-out is the verse line, and this fact sesms to have been particularly carefully observed by the main scribe (Hand I). The first extant item he wrote, the 'Life of St Gregory', consists of eight-line stanzas consisting of four couplets each. He wrote these in an economical way arranged as quatrains with an internal rhyme. The end of each of the eight lines is marked by a dot, and the first line of each stanza is distinguished by a paraph. This layout must have appeared unsatisfactory either to him or to his employer, since he wrote all subsequent items in the collection unambiguously in two columns per leaf, marking the line ends by the final dot and the line initials by a separated and rubricated initial letter. Although two of the other copyists used the separated intial letter, only Hand 6 followed him in use of the final dot. Hand 3 began by using this dot, but apparently came to regard it as redundant and abandoned its use. The paraph is used to mark the first line even of obvious stanzaic arrangements, but both the paraph and the littera notabiliorare also used to
16 For more details of the curial style, see J. D. Burnley, 'Curial Prose in England', Speculum, (I986), 6I 593-6I4. 17 M. B. Parkes, 'The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio the Development of the on and to W. Book', in Medieval Learning Literature: EssaysPresented Richard Hunt,ed. byJ.J. G. Alexander and

M. T. Gibson (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1976), I I5-41.

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mark other subdivisions within the text. Although there is no inherent in distinction in their value, the text of the ShortMetrical Chronicle Auchinleck demonstrates the beginning of a distinction by which major divisions are indicated by litterae notabilioresand lesser, embedded, divisions by paraphs. This distinction is probably one imposed by the main scribe of Auchinleck. It is not found in the version of the text in British Library, MS Additional I9677, where similar textual units are distinguished by invariable paraphs.18 But, even within the Auchinleck manuscript, and within individual works in it, practice varies. Despite their co-operation in constructing the volume, the scribes did not adopt a uniform method of text division through the book. In the ABC poem, the divisions are inevitably marked by capitals, but this practice also extends to the Harrowing of Hell (Hand I). The Seven Sages of Rome, written by Hand 3, has text divisions marked by capitals except on folio 88r, where a single paraph appears before the line 'Pan seide maister bancillas'; Sir Degarre, in the same hand, although perhaps compiled especially for inclusion in the manuscript, evolves from a mixture of capitals and paraphs to capitals only by its close. The process of creating this punctuation was complex. Whilst writing the text, scribes decided the punctuation and placed marks for the paraphs and coloured capitals which were added to the manuscript by rubricators after the scribe had completed his work. This process was not foolproof, and rubricators may have been illiterate or simply bloody-minded: in Arthourand Merlin, line 3510 (Hand I) the rubricator inserted a capital 'S' where the context demanded an 'I'; the paraph was placed opposite line 4113 instead of line 41 I2 despite scribal instructions; and at line 6768 the last of an intended sequence often paraphs is omitted by the rubricator. A technology of production existed, but managerial and organizational weaknesses formed part of the process of medieval book production. The items in the Auchinleck manuscript were originally numbered at the head of the page, suggesting the existence of a lost contents page, providing ready access to any text in a bulky volume.19 Despite omissions and in inconsistencies, the paraphs and litteraenotabiliores the Auchinleck manualso serve as a device to assist access to the text. Although in stanzaic script verse they usually indicate the stanza structure, in couplet verse content not structure determines the placing of paraphs, which serve to draw attention to information worthy of note. There are two major kinds of use, which tend to overlap: those uses connected with establishing the important constituents of the narrative plot, and those with a sententious purpose. Of the former, calls for attention from the narrator (Herkenep,Listenep) are prefixed
18 Ewald Zettl illustrates the variant Short punctuation schemes of the manuscripts in An Anonymous EETS OS 196 (London, I935). EnglishMetricalChronicle, 19Timothy A. Shonk gives strong reasons for believing that the manuscript was produced as a collaborative venture, and not from the compilation of unrelated pamphlets, as had earlier been suggested. 'A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth

Century', Speculum, 60 (1985), 7I-91.

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by a paraph, as are various scene-setting (deictic) devices necessary to the plot, for example, changes of time reference 'It was opon a somers day' (Guy of Warwick,1. 4939); 'In May it was also ich wene' (Guy, 1.4502). Any change in narrative focus upon the actor in events is often marked by a paraph, as is the change of speaker in a conversation. When action follows on from deliberation, a paraph may be used to mark that development ('He hete chese carpenters' (Arthourand Merlin, 1. 486)). References to the source often merit recognition ('Sone after as ich finde in boke' (Arthourand Merlin, 1. 63)). This reference to sources is conceptually adjacent to the second major function of the paraph which may be used to demand attention to items quite marginal to the narrative development of the story. Here it reflects a secondary function of medieval story. In addition to entertainment, and the artistic control necessary to provide it, medieval texts were assumed to have an instructive and exemplary function. The paraph is also used to promote this. Noteworthy acts by individuals, noteworthy utterances, the names of historically significant figures, indeed, any list of factual details, are all likely to provoke marking by paraphs. Thus, in the ShortMetrical Chronicle,litteraenotabiliorestend to mark references to each new king of England as his name appears, and paraphs indicate significant acts, turning the narrative into a readily accessible regnal list and condensed gesta. Although the paraph was often used dramatically to mark change of speaker or a change from narrative to direct speech, it was often used in exemplary mode to draw attention to anything that Chaucer might later have called 'a sovereyn notabilitee' (Nun's Priest's Tale, 1. 318I). The utterance of characters might be marked not as dramatically conceived direct speech, but as remarkable, and quotable, sententiae. More conscientious scribes, such as the main scribe of the Auchinleck manuscript, seem to have used paraphs and litterae notabilioresin some systematic relationship when copying lengthy couplet narratives. The paraphs are used to emphasize sentential content and to highlight narrative shifts, the litteraenotabilioresto mark major structural divisions in the work. In the Hengwrt manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Parson's Tale exhibits a rather elaborate apparatus of presentation, a considerable advance on Auchinleck. This can be illustrated by a short passage from the discussion of the vice of Envy. and ofhir prosperitee/and prosperitee is kyndely matere of Ioye/thanne is Enuye/a synne agayns kynde ? The seconde spece of Enuye/is Ioye of oother mannes harm/and that is proprely lyk to the deuel that euere reisoyseth hym of mannes harm ? Of thise .ij. speces comth bakbitynge/and this synne of bakbitynge/or detraccion/hath certeyn speces/as thus 7 Som man preiseth his neighebore by a wikked entente/for he maketh alwey a wikked knotte atte laste ende/alwey he maketh a .but. at the laste ende/bat is digne of moore blame/than worth is al the preisynge/? The Seconde spece is/lat if a man be good/& dooth/or seith a thyng/to good entente/the bakbiter wol turne al thilke goodnesse vp so down/to his shrewede entente ?TThethridde/is to amenuse/the bountee of his neighebore ?The ferthe

? The speces of enuye ben thise f? Ther is first sorwe of oother mennes goodnesse

DAVID BURNLEY

55

spece of bakbitynge/is this 7 that if men speke goodnesse of a man/thanne wol the bakbitere seyn/par fey/swich a man/is yet bet than he in despreisynge/ofhym that men preise 1 The fifthe spece is/for to consente gladly/and herkne gladly/the harm that men speke ofoother folk/this synne is full greet & ay encreseth/after the wikked entente of the bakbitere.
(Parson's Tale, 1. 49
)

In the manuscript, the passage is identified in the margin by the note 'The speces of Enuye'. It employs not only a careful itemizing structure, but a fairly complex punctuation system to define it. As in the romances of the Auchinleck manuscript, paraphs mark the items of this list in a sequence from one to five. Lesser items, when introduced by a demonstrative declaration (as thus.. ., is this...), are also marked by a paragraphus 7, and important material dependent on what precedes is introduced by a kind of ligature perhaps derived from a punctus elevatus:fJ Smaller sense groups are distinguished by use of virgules, and the metalinguistic status of the word but is indicated by enclosing it between points. It is uncertain how much of this strategy of punctuation derives from the author, but this is unimportant for our present purposes. Its existence demonstrates the activities of a scribe who, not only here but again in the Ellesmere manuscript, was willing to employ a technique of text presentation of considerable complexity when transmitting the work of an author in the English language. It is true that Orm rivalled the complexity of the technique, if not the presentational skills, of the Hengwrt/Ellesmere scribe, but he was working on his own behalf, inspired by a religious motive. By the time of Chaucer, a sophisticated machinery for the transmission of texts was in existence. It was a technology which, although intended to transmit meaning with greater precision, could, by its very existence, distance the author from his audience. The interpretation of the text fell into the hands of copyists, intermediaries who could, if they wished, adapt it for their own purposes, interposing their interpretations between the author and his audience. It has been argued, for example, that the rather simple ordinatiofor the presentation of tail rhyme, as in the Auchinleck rendering of The Simonie, where the tail line is ranged right, has been elaborated into a complex system of columns and brackets in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere versions of Sir Thopas, with a clear satirical purpose.20 Over five centuries, the development of printing abolished many of the uncertainties in the scribal handling of punctuation and layout. The accurate multiple reproduction of the author's intended text and the cherished dream of direct communication with posterity became real possibilities. The development of computer technology and of desktop publishing in the last dozen years seems to have thrown the whole history of the relation between
20Judith Tschann, 'The Layout of Sir Thopasin the Ellesmere, Hengwrt, Cambridge Dd.4.24, and Review,20.4 (Winter, I986), I-I3. Cambridge Gg.4.27 Manuscripts', Chaucer

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author, text, and audience back into the melting pot.21 Desktop publishing facilitates the activities of a modern Orm: a writer who can control and distribute his own work without outside interference, using novelties of presentation or even of characters. There is a certain satisfaction even as I write in generating special characters which I know might cause problems to a conventional publishing operation, but which I could easily have circulated by printing and copying this paper myself. As with Orm, the resultant publication may not have matched the design skills of a professional printing house, but my control would have been absolute. But the title of this paper mentioned hypertext, which is far more than simply a method of distribution. It is also a refashioning of the structure of text: an opportunity not only to re-negotiate the relation between the producer and the user, but also to throw away the traditional punctuation, and the traditional medium, and encounter text organized in quite a different way from those inherited from the past. What foundation is there, however, for this libertarian zeal? The term 'hypertext' was coined in the i96os by Theodor Holm Nelson whose cult book, Literary Structures,describes his idea of hypertext (defined as 'nonsequential [...] writing'), and his progress towards creating software to implement it.22 The book was written in three main parts, the first of which consisted of several alternative Chapter Is, and the last of which offered alternative Chapter 3s. Readers were invited to start with any Chapter I they liked, proceed through a common Chapter 2 to any Chapter 3 which took their fancy, thereafter repeating the process, but varying the ends of the cycle. On any one page, there is a simplified account of the argument as a running gloss on the serious matter. As a book, the layout is unusual, but as an instructional manual, or viewed in parallel with recent magazines produced by desk-top publishing techniques, it is unremarkable. Most popular magazines on computing, for example, now have a page make-up consisting of the main text, inserted graphics, and boxes of text as glosses or expansions of the main part. They are organized, in other words, not unlike of windowing computer screens, or the more complex ordinationes medieval with their miniatures, text, and surrounding glosses, set apart manuscripts, by a distinct writing style (anglicana, perhaps, instead of textura,which was reserved for the text itself). Paper hypertext is neither new nor especially significant. True hypertext is electronic text, and this is the centre ofNelson's conception. Butjust what is it? Nelson's description of it is very much a product of the sixties, and has the nostalgic feel of scientific idealism shared by the phrase 'the white heat of the technological revolution'. It is dedicated to George Orwell and his 'devotion to truth and human freedom' and it envisages a new information-oriented
21 The persistent authority of print is being questioned, sometimes by those who have traditionally been its proselytizers, and the role of other media increasingly explored. See, for example, Andrew Gurr, 'The Grapheme Conquest: Literature and the Post-Print Age' (Nottingham, i992). 22 Theodor Holm Structures, edn (Swarthmore, PA: privately published, I983). Nelson, Literary 5th

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57

society in which 'silverstands', like telephone boxes in the street, permit connection to a central information store, which can be accessed, manipulated, and annotated by any subscriber. This huge information exchange is without limits on the points of access or order of reading. The silverstands are to be manned by technologically aware and appropriately dressed (Star Trek?) young assistants. All this could be dismissed as fantasy were it not for the fact that a project to write the necessary software was initiated, and given the title Xanadu. Some progress has been made, but, although work still continues on project Xanadu, the vision looks extremely unlikely ever to be realized in its appeared, IBM introoriginal form. In the same year that LiteraryStructures duced the personal computer, and the world of computers and computer communications took a different direction, away from the giant centralized mainframes of project Xanadu towards distributed computing and bulletin boards. Hypertext, as it has in fact come into existence, although its distributors pay lip service to Nelson and his ideas, is a very much more restricted phenomenon. Most people encounter it in the help systems ofWindows-based or Macintosh computer programs, and some use ready-made packages such as Guide, Toolbook, KnowledgePro, Hypercard, Hyperdoc, or Authorware to create their own hypertext documents. Hypertext is a convenient method of access to certain kinds of structured information. So far hypertext of this kind shows no special propensity for revolutionizing literary attitudes or structures, although, with future technological development, and in combination with live video, it may well form one of the resources by which electronic forms of communication will seriously weaken traditional literacy in the future. Apart from its contribution as part of a more general assault by electronic media on traditional literacy, will hypertext change the literary world? Does it favour the author or the user in their prolonged tussle for possession of the text? An electronic Orm seems a real possibility; could there be an electronic Ovid, completing the authoring of his hypertext with comparable sentiments? The technique of writing with a pen first on vellum and then on paper endured for thousands of years. The conception of making decisions 'of record' necessarily involved these media. But not all medieval literacy did so. Ancient and medieval writers did not use them for ephemera, preferring a tile, shell, or piece of slate. The thirteenth-century litterateurHenri d'Andeli remarked of thefabliau genre that its representatives were not worthy to be written on parchment, but should be distributed on wax tablets normally used for everyday notes and calculations.23 Which is the electronic hypertext: parchment or wax tablet? Thus far, in terms of function, it seems to be the latter: a place to store useful information, but not the medium of art. There is a good reason for this utilitarian restriction. Anyone who has suffered a system breakdown or inadvertently erased their text by perverse and subtle means beyond the remedy of rescue packages will appreciate that
23 Per Mediivale et Littiraire deStylistique d'Histoire (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, Nykrog, LesFabliaux:Etude 1957), p- 40.

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electronic media are not best equipped to survive the wrath ofJove. It might be objected that, although they are volatile, electronic texts are easily copied, duplicated exactly, and easily distributable, so that their fragility can be forgiven. Yet what computer system can look forward to hundreds of years of readability? University mainframes are everywhere being replaced by incompatible systems less than ten years after purchase. Some degree of compatibility between current personal computers and the IBM of 1981 is likely to be maintained until the turn of the century, but after that the future is uncertain.24 True, if the importance of a work were to be immediately recognized, it could be adapted for the new systems, but it is not just a question of the hardware. Software, too, determines the survival of a piece of electronic writing. Even if it proves possible to display a ten-year-old work, for how long will anyone wish to do so? Presentation is of extreme importance in hypertext, and here the graphically-based environments developed first by Apple and then by Microsoft have made earlier character-based applications seem grotesque. The rapid development of the technology thus threatens the durability of a work more insidiously than by the obsolescence of hardware: simply in terms of public interest, of fashionability. It may be that electronic media will displace traditional publishing in terms of public attention, but it is unlikely that they can replace it in the same cultural role: ephemerality militates against a canon. Although it does not score highly in terms of probable durability, electronic authoring, of course, fulfils the ideal of enabling the author to communicate directly with his audience. But it cannot ensure the integrity of the text. Anyone with the appropriate software can modify a hypertext document, indeed can transform it completely into something that serves their own purpose irrespective of the wishes of the author. Like a folk tale re-worked by a series of redactors into the multiply various versions of medieval popular romance or the scriptio continuaproduced for the owner to punctuate and annotate,the hypertext document becomes the property of the computerliterate community. This might be welcomed; it is after all only a minor modification of the original Xanadu conception. Attempts to restrict this destiny either by copyright legislation or distribution on read-only media such as CD-ROM are likely to prove futile because of the rapid development and wide dissemination of the technology which will enable easy copying and modification. In these respects, too, electronic authoring would, if successfully attempted, tend to undermine a canonical view of literature. In some respects, however, hypertext does not represent the ultimate victory of the user over the producer, the reader over the author. In the
Writing in early 1990, J. Hillis Miller put the case for hypertext euphorically: 'This new form of book will rapidly replace or ought to replace the traditional textbooks used in literature courses'. There is an irony in the fact that what he cited in i990 as 'an excellent example' of this new form of book was being developed on a system (NeXT) which, by early i993, had ceased production.J. Hillis Miller, 'Literary and in Theory, Telecommunications, and the Making of History' in Scholarship Technology theHumanities, ed. by May Katzen, British Library Research (London: Bowker-Saur, 1991), pp. I I-20 (p. I6).
24

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power struggle between author and user for mastery of the text, hypertext favours the former in certain respects. If the user does not possess software with authoring capabilities, then the original author has more absolute control of reading habits than any author of a book. In historical development, bound books succeeded scrolls because they had significant advantages. A book, in contrast to a scroll, enables random access, and rapid look up, using contents pages or indexes if necessary. Its pages can be designed to emphasize those points which the author or editor thinks are important; but the reader has the freedom to ignore such suggestions. If you choose to, you can read a detective novel from the denouement backwards. You can even see two pages at once. Hypertext may be written to imitate either scrolls or books, but denies its user many of the freedoms of the latter. Its highly structured nature fits it best for instructional purposes involving discrete pieces of information, and it is in fact mostly used for these purposes.25 It is worth emphasizing this, since there seems to be a misconception that hypertext offers to the reader previously unavailable means of utilizing the author's text. In fact, hypertext normally consists of a system of objects and links. The objects may be pictures or graphics, or they may be text or executable programs. A link connects, for example, two disparate pieces of text within the same or different documents, or it may connect text to a program. When the link is activated from one piece of text, the other piece of text may be viewed or the program run. Activating the link may cause the reader to jump from one place to another in a book, or it may make a gloss appear from an entirely separate document, switch to another document, or simply cause further text to 'unfold' from that which constitutes the first object. But it is essential to realize that these events do not take place randomly: the links and the objects have been placed in relation to one another by the author at the time of composition. Thus, hypertext may permit unaccustomed ways of reading, but only under the control of the absent author. In this respect, authorial hegemony is not threatened by electronic hypertext: it is ideally suited not to argument, but to the dogmatic presentation of authoritative opinion. The only exception to this determinism is in systems where a particular word in context can be designated as a search term, so providing immediate access to all other occurrences of that word in the document or documents. Writing hypertext presents the author with new challenges, especially with regard to ordinatio:whether to permit scrolling on screen or to imitate the pages of a book? If the latter is chosen, whether to permit navigation through the text by a 'map' or through a traditional contents page? Whether to use graphics, and how they should be placed? Which display scripts to
25 A good brief account of the construction of a hypertext course is by John M. Slatin, 'Text and Hypertext: Reflections on the Role of the Computer in Teaching Modern American Poetry' in Humanities andtheComputer, Directions, by David S. Niall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I990), pp. I23-35. New ed.

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employ in order to distinguish headings from texts? What colour schemes best suit the purposes of the document? All these questions hang on a narrow interpretation of hypertext as simply text, and disregard the rapid development of multimedia facilities: the addition of sound or recorded video to a document. Nevertheless, it is apparent that electronic hypertext presents the author with creative challenges which have not been faced since the middle ages. Since the invention of printing, authors have been content, whatever the drawbacks in terms of lack of immediacy, to hand over problems of design to publishers and printers. The creation of coherence in the text presents to the hypertext author other choices which are not necessarily in the forefront of the consciousness of most creative writers. Hypertext may be viewed as combining the functions of medieval punctuation and ordinatio. It is by its very nature hypotactic in structure, facilitating the breaking of the text into hierarchical levels of relative importance. Hypertext favours sentential subordination. But, instead of imitating writers in the fifteenth-century curial style, with their endless chains of subordinated clauses, the hypertext author simply hides those clauses which qualify the main, or which are subordinate to that which the reader is intended to read first. Imagine the passage from Chaucer's Parson's Tale written in hypertext:

? THE

SPECES OF ENUYE BEN THISE

of oother mennes goodnesse and of hir prosperitee/ and is kyndely matere o Ioye/tianne is Enuye/a synne agayns kynde prosperitee ? The seconde spece of Enuye / is loye of oother mannes harm / and that is proprely lyk to the deuel that euere reioyseth hym of mannes harm ? Of thise .ij. speces comth bakbitynge / and this synne of bakbitynge / or detraccion / hath certeyn speces / as thus 7 Som man preiseth his neighebore by a wikked entente / for he maketh alwey a wikked knotte atte laste ende / alwey he maketh a .but. at the laste ende/pat is digne of moore blame/ than worth is al the preisynge/ ? The Seconde spece is entente/ the bakbiterwol turne al thilke goodnesse vp so down / to his shrewede entente to amenuse/ the bountee of his neighebore

? Ther is first sorwe

/ pat if man be good/ & dooth/ or seith a thyng/ to good

? The thridde/is

? The ferthe spece of bakbitynge/ is this Vthat if men speke goodnesse of a

man / thanne wol the bakbitere seyn / par fey / swich a man / is yet bet than he in despreisynge/ of hym that men preise ? The fifthe spece is /for to consente gladly/and herkne gladly/ the harm that men speke of oother folk / this synne is ful greet & ay encreseth / after the wikked entente of the bakbitere.

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6i

The reader would initially encounter the heading in small capitals and the two distinct types of envy here printed in bold. Concealed at various levels beneath these, represented here by the various degrees of inset, are expansions and qualifications of the initial statements. Consideration of the problem of precisely which segments of text at a superordinate level shall act as a key linked to text at the lower level illustrates that hypertext structures would probably necessitate slight re-wording here. Yet, it is striking how the carefully structured nature of this kind of writing, and the medieval punctuation and ordinatio could easily be transformed into the structures of hypertext. Various cross references to other documents, or relevant parts of the same document could be added. It is equally as striking that hypertext authoring requires of its practitioner analysis of the content which it is intended to transmit. The medium imposes this necessity for clarity in declaration. It has a certain rigidity which is perhaps antipathetic to traditional ideas of literary creativity, but it also has a quality which neither manuscripts nor printed books could easily provide, that is, the possibility of tailoring the same text to audiences of varying interests and abilities without its being obvious that this is intended. It is, for example, possible to write a simple version of any information to be imparted at the surface level, and arrange for access to commentary or expansion required for different interests and abilities from that level without forcing it upon the attention of every reader. Hypertext has a place in the history of text technology. It is neither as different from what has gone before as its proponents claim, nor as inconsequential as its critics would like to believe.26 One can draw analogies, but in terms of the way the text is composed and distributed nothing quite like it has previously existed. The nearest analogies seem to be to the medieval authors and scribes who set out to compose text with a blank piece of vellum and a quill pen. Their intimate possession of the technology, and their control over both the linguistic composition and the presentation of their texts, gave them great creative freedom. This freedom was however traded for efficiency through collaborative production of manuscripts. Some great works of art were produced in Latin manuscripts, but vernacular manuscripts were largely regarded as utilitarian or ephemeral. Authors who chose to write in the vernacular faced an uncertain future. The electronic authors of today are in a similar position: they have the technology and no doubt the creative skills, but the languages and text structures of computers are not culturally analogous to Latin in the Middle Ages. In seeking a technological analogy, it is rather as though the

26 The two points of view may be represented by George P. Landow, 'Connected Images: Hypermedia and the Future of Art Historical Studies' (Katzen, pp. 77-94) and D. F. McKenzie 'Computers and the Humanities: a Personal Synthesis of Conference Issues' (Katzen, pp. 157-69).

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development of paper in the fifteenth century had been accompanied by the invention of the fountain pen; and there may always be a comparable revolution to that of printing just around the corner.