Amplifying Memory

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2Amplifying Memory:The Bibliotheca

Historica of Diodorus Siculus

The radical potential of Skeltons practice is in evidence in one of hisearliest works: his translation of the Bibliotheca Historica of DiodorusSiculus (c.1487). Diodoruss work, composed in the second half ofthe first century , is a highly ambitious undertaking. Drawing on acombination of his own research and a large number of previous writings,it sets out to record the history of the world from the origin of manto Diodoruss own time.1 Diodoruss text, however, is not Skeltonsimmediate source; he translated instead from the fifteenth-centuryFlorentine Poggio Bracciolinis Latin version of DiodorussBibliotheca(1449). Poggios is a partial translation, consisting of Diodoruss firstfive books: those which cover the history of ancient Egypt, India, Arabia,Ethiopia, and include a discussion of the nature of the first gods and themythology of the Greeks.

From the point of view of its subject-matter, then, Skeltons choiceof this work seems idiosyncratic. Composed in the mid-1480s, at atime when most of his writings mirrored precisely those of Bernard

Andre, his translation of the Bibliothecastands in striking contrast toAndres slightly later exercise in history writing, theVita Henrici Septimi(15003).2 Produced in response to a commission from Henry VII,

Andres history is a highly partisan work, one that makes the case for thewriters necessity to the monarch almost as strongly as it makes the casefor the legitimacy of the monarchs rule. As we have seen, the majorityof Skeltons works of this period also present the poet asideallyan

affiliate of and advisor to the monarch. His writing clearly representsan attempt to gain precisely such a position himself. Yet, unlike the

1 See further Kenneth Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1990).

2 See sect. 1.1.


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Amplifying Memory 39

Vita, and unlike the roughly contemporary histories produced by TitoLivio and Polydore Vergil, or William Caxtons publication of variousMiddle English histories of Britain, Skeltons history functions neitheras propaganda nor as a contribution to the writing of nation.3 Far frombeing a history of England, Brutaigne is mentioned only once, andthen in a way that renders it distinctly marginal: it is spoken of as aplace of little importance on the outermost edge of the Roman Empire.4

Although closer investigation shows that Skeltons choice of materialcan none the less be linked to a courtly project, the true importanceof hisBibliothecalies not in its subject but in his treatment of it. Thisprovides the basis for the suggestion in so many of his later works thatthe writers authority is not conferred, but innate.

2.1 The Written Record and the Process of Writing: Historyin the Bibliotheca

Although there was no formal system of patronage at court, Skeltonundertook his translation at a time when Henry VII was manifestly

interested in men of education. In addition to Andre, those writ-ing on Prince Arthurs birth in 1486 and responding to Gaguinsinvective against Henry in 1489 included Giovanni Gigli and PietroCarmeliano. All of these gained preferment: as we have seen, Andre

3 For Andre and Livio, see C. W. T. Blackwell, Humanism and Politics in Eng-lish Royal Biography: The Use of Cicero, Plutarch, and Sallust in the Vita HenriciQuinti. . .and the Vita Henrici Septimi, in I. D. McFarlane (ed.),Acta Conventus Neo-

Latini Sanctandreani(Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,1986). For Caxton, see Lister M. Matheson, Printer and Scribe: Caxton, the Poly-chronicon, and the Brut,Speculum, 60 (1985), 593 614. For contrasting views of Vergil,see Lorraine Atreed, Englands Official Rose: Tudor Concepts of the Middle Ages,in Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico (eds.), Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989); F. J. Levy, Tudor HistoricalThought(San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1967), 53 68; Denys Hay,PolydoreVergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); andFrank V. Cespedes, The Final Book of Polydore VergilsAnglica Historia: Persecutionand the Art of Writing ,Viator, 10 (1979), 37596.

4 The Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus, ed. F. M. Salter and H. L. R. Edwards,EETS os 233 (1956), 263. Cf. Poggio Bracciolini, Diodori Siculi Historiarum Priscaruma Poggio in Latinum Traducti(Bonn, 1472), sig. G5. All citations from Skeltons andPoggios translations are taken from these editions (henceforthBibliothecaand Poggio).There are no signature marks or folio numbers in this edition of Poggios translation;I have used the copy in the Bodleian Library (Auct. K. 3.24a), where the first leaf ofeach signature has been marked in pencil. I have silently expanded the contractions inthe text.


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40 Amplifying Memory

held the semi-official position of court poet, while Gigli was nom-inated Bishop of Worcester in 1497, and Carmeliano received acrown pension from 1486, subsequently becoming Latin secretaryand chaplain to Henry VII.5 Such appointments would have beenapproved by both Diodorus and Poggio. For Diodorus, the histori-an derives considerable status from his subject-matter. He argues thathistory is alone among disciplines in preserving an accurate recordof past events. It thus becomes a corner-stone of civilization, whosevery survival is shown to depend upon the shared remembrance ofthings past.6 For Diodorus, history is exemplary, the repository ofmoral as well as factual truths. Yet it also has a markedly practicaleffect on established rulers, whose knowledge that they will find aplace in the historical records inspires them to virtuous deeds, orat the very least deters them from evil ones.7 Thus, in theory, thecreation of a shared memory may serve socially coercive as well ascohesive ends.

Such claims provide the grounds for the more far-reaching assertionswhich Poggio makes in his own introduction, and which thus recur inSkeltons translation too. Diodorus argues that the relationship betweenruler and historian is one of mutual obligation; the rulers patronageof the writer ensures the glorious survival of his name. Developing thispoint, Poggio attacks patrons who fail to encourage their historians withadequate financial reward, and so endanger the lasting reputation oftheir realms.8 His argument is enthusiastically adopted by Skelton. Justas Poggio gives an exhortatory twist to Diodoruss ideas, so Skelton inturn develops the implications of Poggios, almost relentlessly stressing

the social importance of the writer. For example, when writing ofa former historian, Skelton greatly elaborates on his source in thedeclaration that:

5 See David R. Carlson, King Arthur and Court Poems for the Birth of Arthur Tudorin 1486,Humanistica Loviensia, 36 (1987), 14783; idem, Politicizing Tudor CourtLiterature: Gaguins Embassy and Henry VIIs Humanists Response, SP85 (1988),279304. On associations with the new learning among the royal tutors in Skeltonstime, seeidem, Royal Tutors in the Reign of Henry VII, SCJ22 (1991), 25379.

6 SeePoggio, sig. B2v.7 For adaptations of Diodoruss views contemporary with Skelton, see Samuel

K. Workman, Versions by Skelton, Caxton, and Berners of a Prologue by DiodorusSiculus,MLN56 (1941), 2528.

8 See Poggio, sig. B2. For other instances of this idea in Poggios works, seeIiro Kajanto, Poggio Bracciolini and Classicism: A Study in Early Italian Humanism(Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1987), 334.


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he thurgh his studyous endeuoirment brought theym oute of the dirkelyendymmed cloude of oblyuyon vnto the clere enlumyned light of euery mannesvnderstondynge; euermore arettynge his corage toward empryses of pryncely

honour, tyl he so longe exemplefyed these former faders in all fayttes marcyaland studyous dyrection of polycye & wysedom that he was peregal with theymin glorye of renommee.9

In Skeltons source, there is no mention at all of such authorialendeavours. The historian in question is one Dionysus (or Dionisius)

who shares his name with two predecessors; Poggio writes: Cumtemporum vetustate priorum gesta inventaque multis ignota essent:

solus hic eorum qui ante se fuerant virtutem & gloriam tulit.

10

Themeaning here is that the third Dionysus was given credit for theachievement of his namesakes. For Skelton, however, Dionysuss famestems from his eloquent record of their deeds. Such shifts of emphasis aretypical. Where Poggios text states that history priuatos uiros imperiodignos efficit, Skeltons translation declares that mater historyal hathauaunced persones ful symple of hauoir, and comen of baas & loweprogenye, vnto emperyal resydence & royal domynyon.11 Poggio refers

exclusively to the dignity conferred on the common man by treatinghim alongside the emperor, whereas Skelton takes the line to refernot to the historians subjects, but to the historian himself: a placeat the emperors residence is the reward for his writing. Elsewhere,Skelton adds a lengthy passage to his sources fairly bland explanationof the Muse Eratos name, in which he claims that her task is topromote scholars so that they shal stande in fauour of ryal pryncis,and so atteyne vnto the spirytual rowme of prelacye or other temporal

promocion.12

Skelton further emphasizes the writers merit by his insistence onthe sheer hard labour of authorship. In his version of Poggios pre-face, Skelton places great stress on every mention of the writers work.

A neutral reference to the present task becomes laborious studye,while the declaration that I haue myself applyed vnto the studyousendeuoirment of wrytynge, of purpose & entente that ther shold nosuche tyme be lost thurgh desidious & slouthful sluggysshnes still more

9 Bibliotheca, 338.10 Poggio, sig. H8: since in the long passage of time former deeds and discoveries

had become unknown to many men, he [i.e. the last Dionysus] was given the credit forthem.

11 Poggio, sig. B3;Bibliotheca, 6. 12 Bibliotheca, 359; cf. Poggio, sig. I2v.


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emphatically stresses writing as a demanding activity.13 This emphas-is recurs in Skeltons translation of Diodoruss prologue, where the

writers besy deligence and estudye laborious are contrasted with thebehaviour of alle people, welnyh, [who] thurgh the inconstaunt frayelteof nature contynue the most parte of their lyf in slumbrynge sloutheand sluggysshenes, whos maner of lyuynge here & fynall departyngeout of this lyf present is rasyd with oblyuyon oute of remembraunce.14

The nucleus of this thought is present in Skeltons source-text too, yetSkelton greatly elaborates on it. For example, Poggio writes of Diod-oruss undertaking of the Bibliotheca: Ad uertentes igitur quanta lausscriptoris maneat: exemplo eorum moti: qui scribendo operam praebuer-unt: hanc historiam aggressi sumus. Skeltons translation exaggeratesboth the labours and the resulting fame of the historian: We, therfore,aduertysynge in our remembraunce how famous reporte endureth withtheym that be historyens, of theyr exemplefyed demenour moeued

whiche haue put their dilygent endeuoirment in wrytynge, we haueenforced this historye to recounte.15 On one level, Skeltons emphasissimply supports his assertion that writers deserve preferment: by con-

trast to the slothful population at large, the historian has a claim torecognition and reward as a result of his labour on behalf of others.Yet the example afforded by the historians in Poggios text is largelypassive: by writing, they leave a work behind. The emphasis is on thecompleted object. In Skeltons version, by contrast, the emphasis ison the action of writing, the demenour and diligent endeuoirmentof the historians. Skelton thus startingly emphasizes the act of writingrather than the permanence of the written text. It is this highly personal

emphasis that allows his exploration of authorial stances independent ofexternal sources of authority.Part of Skeltons deviation from his source-text may be attributed

to his reading in a wholly different tradition, that dominated by hisvernacular predecessors Lydgate and Chaucer. One of the most notice-able features of his translation is the way in which he associates truth,memory, and the written record. The tendency is so persistent that itsuggests that history has a rather different meaning for Skelton than it

has in his source. For Poggio, as for Diodorus, memory is also important,yet it is not mentioned nearly so emphatically as in Skeltons work. In histranslation of the prologues alone Skelton writes of historical example

13 Bibliotheca, 1; cf.Poggio, sig. B2.14 Bibliotheca,12, 10, 7; cf. Poggio, sig. B3v. 15 Poggio,sig. B3;Bibliotheca, 9.


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being laid before the eye of our remembraunce and of processe hystory-al. . .had in memoryal; of those who are rasyd with oblyuyon oute ofremembraunce; and of the noble fayttes of vertue [that] be inmortallyregistred in the Courte of Fame specially whan the bounte of materhistoryal cometh in place & is admytted to make reporte.16 Moreover,he asserts repeatedly that memory and, with it, historical truth canbe ascertained only by giving them written form. The strength of theassumption is revealed by its appearance even in casual phrases such astheyr wrytyngis of recorde or reference to a writer who in his volumesof olde recoordes historiously dothe remembre. Elsewhere it is treatedmore extensively. In a series of additions to Skeltons source-text, formerdeeds are said to be registred in

. . .

bokes of record for a memorialvnto alle those that sholde come after, and the fear is expressed thatby oure remyssive negligence [i.e. our failure to write] sumwhat ofthynges done to-fore were left vnremembred. The authenticity of therecord is guaranteed by the fact that it is written: historians speak byrecordes of theire auctorities, while history itself is defined as evident

writyng grounded vppon trouthe and former wrytyngis autentyke.17

Anticipating Dame Pallass argument in A Garlande of Laurell thatwrityng remayneth of recorde, Skeltons translation insists that what is

written is fixed, permanent, and unalterable.This emphasis has a notable precedent in Lydgates work, which

displays a similar tendency to connect history and memory. In theprologue to Book I ofThe Fall of Princes, for example, Lydgate writesof authors who wrote for a memoriall (l. 64) and of the need Thyngescomoun to put in memorie (l. 149).18 Still more explicitly, in the

prologue to Book IV, he declares that:Writyng is cause that herto is remembridLyf of prophetis & patriarches olde

(ll. 43 4)

Finally, in a shift which anticipates Skeltons interest in the writersown fame, rather than his guardianship of the fame of others, he says ofPetrarch that:

16 Bibliotheca, 6, 7. The choice of words is not prompted by their Latin equivalent inthe source-text; cf.Poggio,sigs. B2vB3.

17 Bibliotheca, 85, 240, 64, 227, 287, 349.18 All citations from this work will be taken from John Lydgate, Fall of Princes, ed.

Henry Bergen, 4 vols., EETS es 1214 (19247).


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. . . be writyng he gat hymsilff a namePerpetuelli to been in remembraunce,Set and registred in the Hous of Fame

(ll. 1202)19

Thus far, then, Skeltons vernacular predecessors seem to underwriteDiodoruss claims on behalf of the writer. Yet, even while Skelton drawson Lydgates association of history and memory, his work also gives evid-ence of a much less stable view of writing. By exaggerating his sourcestendencies to dwell on both the permanence of writing and the work ofthe writer, Skelton draws attention to a potential conflict between the

claims for the truth of history and the human error of historians.A number of references to error are already present in his source.Despite Diodoruss insistence on historical truth, he includes numerouspassages that draw attention to divergence of opinion among historians.Perhaps the most extensive of these occurs in the context of a longlament over the difficulties faced by historians, in the observation thatthiese olde historyows wrytars in theyr compilacion emonge theym-self varye and trauerse by grete dissencion.20 Something of what this

means is apparent in practice as well as in such passing references. Thedescription of the source of the Nile is broken down into a discussion ofthe different views of different historians, and the discussion of the threeseparate figures named Dionysus (or Dionysius) is introduced withcircumspection: It is vndetermyned, as farre forthe as we can apperceiveby any writyng of olde recordes, whethere there were many Dionysiusor nay. It is possible to give a balanced view of the difficulty: forasmochas the knowleige of such thynges is passyng diffuse, it inhibiteth not

but where-as we profre many thynges in multitude to shewe andexpounde, of few thynges in nombre the trouthe to diffyne.21 Despitesuch professions of faith, the contrast remains between the theoreticaltruth of history and the way in which individual records contradict oneanother.

In consequence of its emphasis on the writers endeuoirment,Skeltons translation draws attention to such variability. Whereas Poggiofollows Diodorus in arguing for the need to write as inclusive a history

as possible, Skelton declares: yf ony ther be that is desyrous to renne &

19 This idea recurs elsewhere in Lydgates work. See e.g. Lydgate, Troy Book, ed.Henry Bergen, i, EETS es 97 (1906), ll. 147220.

20 Bibliotheca, 341; cf.Poggio, sig. I.21 Bibliotheca, 5260, 31112, 243; cf.Poggio, sigs. Cv, H3v, Gv.


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ouer-see alle historyens in theyr werkis, he shal as wel be surcharged withmultitude of bokes as by dyuerse variete of wryters, so as he shal notmowe couenably trye out therof the trouthe expresyue.22 Even apartfrom the implication that a difference of writer as well as a differenceof subject-matter will alter the truth which is reflected, the phrasetrouthe expressyue is a telling one. Combining the senses explicit,full of expression, and characterized by expression, the adjectivesuggests that truth is not an absolute, but a quality whose persuasivepower depends upon the way it is formulated.23 The realization thathistorical truth varies in the telling is, of course, precisely the problemfaced by Chaucers narrator in the House of Fame, and it is possiblethatjust as Skeltons frequent references to memory may derive inpart from his reading of LydgateChaucer has influenced Skeltonsdeparture from the mere acknowledgement of difference of opinion infavour of a more radical reconsideration of the written record.

In hisGarlande of Laurell, published in 1523 but in part composedduring the early 1490s, close in time to his translation of the Bibliotheca,Skelton makes clear use of the House of Fame, both thematically andby direct intertextual allusion.24 In theBibliothecaitself we have alreadyseen indications of Chaucerian influence in the way in which Skeltonstranslation images fame as a court, and personifies mater historyal asa figure which, like one of the supplicants to Chaucers Fame, comethin place & is admytted to make reporte.25 A fuller assimilation ofthe work can be traced at points where Skelton implies that historyis less than stable. In Chaucers poem, the monumental quality ofhistory is iconically challenged by the narrator Geffreyes vision of the

foundations of Fames palace: A roche of yse. . .

a feble foundement/Tobilden on a place hye where a great number of the recorded nameshave melted away (ll. 1130, 11323).26 Yet its stability is still moreseriously tested by the dubious truth of reputation in general and textual

22 Bibliotheca, 10; cf.Poggio, sig. B3v.23 Each of these senses antedates their first recorded use in OED, s.v. expressive,a..24 See John Scattergood, Skeltons Garlande of Laurelland the Chaucerian Tradition,

in Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt (eds.),Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of DerekBrewer(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and A. C. Spearing, MedievalDream Poetry(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 21118. On the date of

A Garlande, see Ch. 1, n. 30.25 Bibliotheca, 7; cf.Poggio, sig. B3.26 All citations from Chaucers works will be taken fromThe Riverside Chaucer, ed.

Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).


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reputation in particular. Although Chaucers Fame is notorious for theutter arbitrariness of her judgements, this is only one of the problemsin determining whether a given reputation is justified. In the Houseof Fame, reputation is like the ripples on the pond which Geffreyeseagle guide uses to describe the theory of sound: as it travels furtherand further from its source, it is subject to constant alteration. Thus,Fames judgements, whether justified or not, are as much subject to fluxas Didos reputation in Virgil and Ovids contrasting treatments. Thepoem proposes that there can be no truth without record, yet that therecords themselves are only approximate. It thus questions the viabilityof the view that history is a monument, exemplary in itself, suggestinginstead that history should be viewed as a continuous process, somethingthat is altered in the writing.27

A similar emphasis is evident in Skeltons habitual translation ofhistoria as processe historiall, a phrase which stresses less the factthan the narrative of history. The most remarkable instance of thistranslation occurs at the point where Skelton gamely follows Diodorusscondemnation of poets, writing: Somme of these facultees gyue inform-acion craftely, a lesynge to cloke by collusion & colour of trouthe; butonely historyal processe, representynge the wordes equyualent unto thededes, in her compryseth all conuenable auauntage. Here, at the precisemoment in which Skeltons source declares that one of the definingcharacteristics of written history is that the words merely correspond tothe facts, Skelton not only repeats his shape-shifting translation history-al processe but gives a telling mistranslation of pares uerbis res gestasrepresentans.28 The literal sense of the phrase is representing actions

with appropriate words, but Skeltons translation representynge thewordes equyualent unto the dedes makes the words not the servantof the deeds, but themselves one of the matters to be represented. Thetwo adjacent clauses thus express two apparently contrasting views oflanguage; the phrase historyal processe refers to the writers words,and suggests that these influence the facts that are written, while inthe subsequent clause, wordes too are spoken of as part of the writers

27 See Jesse M. Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language The-ory, Mythology and Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 167201;Piero Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,1984), 189215; and cf. Carol A. N. Martin, Authority and the Defense of Fiction:Renaissance Poetics and ChaucersHouse of Fame, in Theresa M. Krier (ed.),RefiguringChaucer in the Renaissance(Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1998).

28 Bibliotheca, 8; Poggio, sig. B3.


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subject-matter. What these views have in common, however, is theimplication that words are not merely subservient to the matter theydescribe, but contribute to its formation.

Skeltons emphasis on preparation and presentation thus reveals amarked deviation from the idea that history writing instructs by theinnate virtue of the material. He implies instead that history possessesthat virtue only as a result of the writers interpretation. In Skeltonssource-text, eloquence is praised as that which distinguishes the Greeksfrom other nations and the learned from the unlearned, but it is nonethe less secondary, dependent on the virtue of the historical subject itdescribes. Conversely, in Skeltons translation of the Bibliotheca, thevirtue of the subject is measured by the standard of eloquence: sythvertue historyall/is onely suche a maistresse by whome men emongetheym-self alle other excelle, thenne it semeth it is thynge as precyousand of so great valewe as euer was the florysshynge courage & polisshedeloquence of lusty vtteraunce. Written history then becomes not therepresentation of fact but the very assured maistresse of trouthe.29

Where his source-text argues that history provides true exempla foremulation, Skeltons translation not only renders the writer himself thevirtuous exemplar, but reveals a strong awareness that the writer altersthe truth in his keeping. Drawing on hints in the works of Lydgateand Chaucer, Skelton thus significantly undermines the idea that the

writers authority is inherent in his subject-matter. Yet even as he doesso, the emphasis on words over matter paves the way for a remarkablynew appreciation of the writers powers.

2.2 The Sources of Eloquence: Amplification in theBibliotheca

Like his alteration of the view of history in his source-text, Skeltonsportrayal of the writer derives in part from his vernacular reading. In thiscase, however, it is not so much a question of the transference of ideas.Rather, Skeltons translation reveals the influence of a stylistic traditionon his perception of the writer. HisBibliothecahas long been noted for

its linguistic exuberance.30

One of its most remarkable characteristics isSkeltons apparent inability to use a single word or phrase if three will do.

29 Bibliotheca, 8, 7; cf.Poggio, sig. B3.30 See e.g. F. M. Salter, John Skeltons Contribution to the English Language,

Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd ser., section 2, 39 (1945), 119217.


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In the prologues alone, Multorum expositam obtrectationi becomesieoparted vnto the dredeful obloquy of sclanderous detraction; areference to brevitas becomes the succyncte & compendious brieueteof wrytynge; and Qua propter licet temporum rerumque uarietate:cum scriptoribus diuersa tradentibus: ardua uideatur becomes thediscripcion of thynges done in tyme passed is very diffuse & harde torecounte with historiens that dyuersefye in theyr tradycions of variableaduentures.31 In the early stages of the work, amplification is largelyconfined to duplication and intensification of what is already presentin the source-text. As the translation progresses, however, Skeltonincreasingly amplifies not merely the phrasing of his source, but thesubject-matter too. In some cases he adds passages of his own devising, as

when he greatly expands Poggios treatment of the nine Muses.32 In othercases he contrives entire passages from a single phrase in Poggios text, as

when a plain reference to things written a graecis scriptoribus promptsa eulogy of This famous Homere that so habundantly was enmoisturedand plenarly refresshed with the hevenly licour of Eliconyes well, whoshed Phebus environd with the laurel victorious, as that poete which/allothere surmounted among the Grekes in glorye of pullished termes andelect vtteraunce.33 This description takes its place alongside Chaucersreference to Petrarch as the writer whos rethorike sweete/Enlumynedal Ytaille of poetrie, and Lydgates description of Chaucer himself asthe English poet who will euer ylyche, with-oute eclipsinge, shyne.34

Just as Chaucers and Lydgates descriptions of earlier writers in thepoetic vocabulary of their own times claim their predecessors as directancestors, so Skeltons description of Homer implicitly renders him one

of his own forefathers, giving English vernacular poetics their roots inclassical writing.Like many of Skeltons interpolations, his elaborate treatments of

Homer and the Muses seem to have been prompted by the subject. Themajority of his additions show Skelton taking some passing reference inthe source-text as a cue to work out ideas about the writers function.35

This indicates something significant about the style of his translation.

31 Bibliotheca, 3, 9; cf.Poggio, sigs. B2, B2v, B3v.32 Bibliotheca, 35760; cf.Poggio, sig. I2v.33 Poggio, sig. H4v;Bibliotheca, 321.34 Chaucer,Clerks Prol., ll. 313; Lydgate,Troy Book, iii. l. 4259.35 For some of the rare exceptions, see Malvern van Wyk Smith, Africa as Renaissance

Grotesque: John Skeltons 1485 Version of Diodorus Siculus, Shakespeare in SouthernAfrica: Journal of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, 13 (2001), 2331.


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His description of Homer clearly shows the influence of the aureatestyle that is most closely associated with Lydgate, characterized by anornately Latinate diction and pronounced descriptive and syntacticalelaboration. It is a style closely associated with thought about thefunction and status of poetry, and with attempts to enhance the latterby the creation of poetic genealogies. Although it has frequently beenregarded as an exercise in window-dressing, or artificiality for its ownsake, Lois Ebin has demonstrated that it should instead be read as thefifteenth-century poets effort to develop a critical vocabulary to definethe qualities of good poetry by coining words where none existed andassigning new meanings to terms that were used in English before fordifferent purposes.36 Lydgates treatment of Chaucer retrospectivelyrenders him a founding father of the style, as he selects terms such asenlumyne, embellische, rethorik, and elloquence, which Chauceruses only infrequently and without any particular poetic associations,for use as the critical concepts that define effective writing.37

Skeltons translation consolidates Lydgates highly specific usage, asis evident in his elaborate description of the island of Nysa:

A contrey which among theym is accompted the contrey of terrestre pleasureand of worldely welthe, distynctly embeawted wt medes lusty, freshly the soileennewed with pleasaunt motles grene wherin goodly flowers grow dilectable tobeholde, redolent of aire and with soueraigne swetenes reflairyng, enmoisturedirriguously with the sailyng and freshly lepyng stremes of watres enwellyng andburbelyng agayne lusty Phebus radiant beme with dropes cristallyne.38

In Poggios Latin there is no such flamboyance. Poggio does, however,present the country as a kind of earthly paradise, full of streams, of treesfor shade, surrounded by cliffs of stones of many colours, and rich inflowers and melodiously singing birds.39 Skeltons extreme elaborationof this passage thus tells us something about the connotations as wellas the linguistic characteristics of aureation. Poggios description ofNysa has much in common with the type of landscape described inChaucers Knights Tale and Prologue to the Legend of Good Women,and subsequently selected by Lydgate and other of Chaucers successorsfor particularly aureate treatment. Skeltons choice of vocabulary setshis description firmly in the context of these vernacular precedents.

36 Lois Ebin, Illuminator, Makar, Vates: Visions of Poetry in the Fifteenth Century(Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. xii.

37 Ibid. 19 33. 38 Bibliotheca, 324. 39 Poggio, sigs. H4v5.


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Dilectable is a Chaucerian term, while swetenes is consistently usedboth by Chaucer and by Lydgate. Redolent, cristallyne, and Phebusused as a term for the sun are all common in Lydgates works, and

were subsequently adopted by Skeltons contemporary, Hawes, whoalso commonly uses reflair and radiant in the sense of shining orsplendid as opposed to the more literal sending out rays of light.Hawes is consistently concerned to place his work in a direct line ofdescent from Lydgate; his use of these terms reveals that he sees them ascentral to the poetics he has inherited.40

By the time at which Skelton was translating, then, each of thesewords is part of a tradition of specifically poetic usage, so that Skeltonsuse of the style suggests that he is consciously aligning himself with hisvernacular predecessors. Like his extensive coining of new words, thisalignment implies that his translation is intended to contribute to anational project analogous to the writing of nation, consolidating andenriching its language at a time when there was serious debate about theability of the vernacular to match Latin for either comprehensivenessor eloquence.41 To an extent, then, his style reinforces the message

inherent in his source-text regarding the writers usefulness to the state.Yet it also ensures that such usefulness is located not in the writersability to give permanent existence to the memory of a nation, but inhis ability to shape that memory. History becomes less translatio, orinheritance, than the means of translation in the sense of change, oralteration.

In one important respect, the vernacular tradition within whichSkelton positions himself is at odds with the view of the writer as truth-

teller so emphatically propounded by his source-text. As we have seen,Lydgate, like Diodorus, believes emphatically in the moral truth and

40 See MED, cristallin(e, adj.; delectable, adj.; redolent, adj.; reflairen, v.;swetenes(se, n., senses 1, 2, and 3a; and OED, crystalline, a., senses 1 and 2a;radiant,a., sense 2a; redolent,a.; reflair,v.. On Hawes, see further Ebin,Illuminator,

Makar, Vates, 13362; A. S. G. Edwards, Stephen Hawes(New York: Twayne Publishers,1983); and Seth Lerer, Chaucer and his Readers: Imagining the Author in Late MedievalEngland(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 17693.

41 See R. F. Jones, The Triumph of the English Language (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-ford University Press, 1953), 331, 68 141, 168213; and Albert C. Baugh andThomas Cable,A History of the English Language, 5th edn. (London: Routledge, 2002),2038, 21433. For the argument that Skeltons interest in amplification is evidenceof a conscious effort to enrich the English vocabulary, see Douglas Gray, Some Pre-Elizabethan Examples of an Elizabethan Art, in Edward Chaney and Peter Mack (eds.),England and the Continental Renaissance(Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990).


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educative function of both history and poetry.42 However, he views itseducative effect as inseparable from the poets treatment of his material;as he says inThe Fall of Princes:

For a story which is nat pleynli told,But constreyned vndir woordes feweFor lak off trouthe, wher thei be newe or old,Men bi report kan nat the mater shewe

(I, Prol. ll. 92 5)

By stark contrast to the insistence in Skeltons source-text on the

primacy ofres in the sense of the extra-linguistic reality apprehendedby the mind and reproduced in the form ofverba, over verba, or thewords themselves, Lydgate emphasizes that it is not the matter itself,but the way that the poet works upon his matter, which ensures itsmoral significance.43 It is the poets task to convey the moral truth ofthe matter as fully as possible; Lydgate envisions the poet essentiallyas an illuminator who uses the power of language to shed light on thepoets matter and make it more significant and effective. He expresses

this view through the use of terms such as adourne, embellische, andenlumyne, each of which emphasizes the ability of the poet to extendlanguage, to make it more striking, effective, and enduring, and henceto give it the power to increase the beauty or excellence of its content.

Aureation thus becomes a form of poetics, revealing the distinct poeticpractices and ideals of good poetry that underlie the poets attempts todevelop a new literary medium in the vernacular.44 Skeltons adoptionof an equivalent style in his translation of the Bibliotheca is then

significant in two ways. First, it confirms that his treatment of historyis at least in part influenced by a developing vernacular poetics, as wellas by considerations of history itself. Second, the style proves intimatelyconnected with his emphasis on the trouthe expresyue rather than onfactual truth, and hence with the changing view of the writers authorityimplicit in theBibliotheca.

Skeltons conscious use of this tradition appears in his echoes ofLydgates sense of the term illumine. In the preface he writes that

42 See e.g.Fall of Princes, ll. 15561, 21154.43 The definition is from Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing

in the French Renaissance(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 19. For the unstablerelationship betweenresandverba, see further his chapter Copia, 334.

44 Ebin,Illuminator, Makar, Vates, 19, 25, pp. xi xii.


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thynge is more illumyned with clerenes of knowlege which is preparedvnto mannes remembraunce than that whiche is brought in-to a confuseof aunciente yeres & tymes passed of olde. Towards the end of thetranslation, Homers works are said to be illumyned with aureatesentence.45 In the preface emphasis is on the clarifying effect of thepoets words, while in the reference to Homer it is on words as the

writers work of preparation or presentation. Knowledge and aureatesentence are thus rendered equivalent, in a process exemplified bythe description of Nysa quoted above. In Poggios text, the island ismerely one of many geographical locations; yet in Skeltons hands, thenatural landscape is turned into art. The birds are said to warble witha solacious lay which farre excedeth the musike artificiall, and thehabitations of the Muses are enstrewed with flowres, not artificially butof theire enstynctive nature.46 Yet the natural world is described inhighly artificial terms: it is not merely beautiful, but embeawted; notmerely green, but ennewed with pleasaunt motles grene; not merelymountainous, but full of crags emboced and encowched with relucentstones precious and gemmes dyuers of colour, so passyngly that therene fawteth colour embeawtied that any man may covet to have in hisymagynative.47 The frequent repetition of terms prefixed en- drawsattention to the landscape as something that is acted upon, and as thedescription progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the agent isthe poet rather than God or nature.48 Similarly, the reference to mansymagynative, his creative or image-making faculty, shows the extent to

which the description of a country has become internalized. As in theworks of Lydgate and his professed disciple, Hawes, the terms used in

description of a landscape are the same as those applied to the poets artand its productions, with the result that Nysa is rendered an exampleof, and a comment on, poetic creation itself. In consequence, evenits attributes become metaphorical. The waters enwellyng suggest areference to Helicon, while the countrys flowers come to stand eitherfor the verbal flowers of rhetoric or for the teaching that can begleaned from the poets garden. The poets art is not only the means ofillumination, but also its subject.

The way in which Nysa changes from a country to a trope descriptiveof the work of the poet reveals how closely stylistic amplification is

45 Bibliotheca, 10, 357. Skeltons choice of words is not prompted by a Latinequivalent in his source-text; cf.Poggio, sigs. B3v, I2v.

46 Bibliotheca, 325, 326. 47 Ibid. 325. 48 SeeOED, en-, prefix.


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linked with the amplification of subject. Skeltons aureation has an effectbeyond that which Lydgate claims for the style; it does not just render the

writers subject-matter more effective; it also alters it in the writing. Whathappens in Skeltons translation, then, is analogous to the process whichRita Copeland has traced in earlier, academic translation. Copeland isconcerned specifically with what she identifies as vernacular receptionsof classical authors through academic commentary, culminating in ananalysis of Gowers Confessio Amantis and Chaucers Prologue to theLegend of Good Women as a last, late manifestation of the tradition.49

Unlike Chaucers and Gowers, Skeltons work shows no immediatetraces of the commentary tradition, yet Copelands findings are nonethe less strikingly relevant. Skeltons writing too exhibits a confusionbetween the parts of rhetoric equivalent to that which Copeland finds inthe medievalartes poetriaeand in earlier works of translation. In classicalrhetoricinventio(the selection of the subject to be treated) is associated

with res, and wholly separate from elocutio (or the choice of wordsin which it should be treated). In the works that Copeland discusses,however, the parts of rhetoric become conflated. For translators, as for allauthors working from existing texts,reshas already been given a verbalexistence. Thus the burden of invention is shifted onto amplificationand variation of materia that has previously been realized in somekind of linguistic form . . . all the important rhetorical work wouldbe transferred to amplification, abbreviation, and ornamentation ofthe materia that tradition has selected. This makes inventio virtuallyidentical withelocutio.50 For Skelton too the givenresis already textualandin direct consequence of the Lydgatian habit of amplification he

has inheritedemphasis naturally falls on elocutiorather thaninventioas the primary means of making his subject-matter his own.This shifts history still further from the truth-telling with which it is

identified in Skeltons source. As we have seen, Skelton consistently linkshistory with memory, and his emphasis on the process of writing ratherthan the writers inherited subject-matter suggests that memory shouldbe viewed not as the fact or the document but asmemoria, the last of thefive parts of rhetoric and a process of mind intimately connected with

49 Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: AcademicTranslation and Vernacular Texts(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 185;and see further 151220. For the commentary tradition, see also Alastair J. Minnis,

Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2ndedn. (London: Scolar Press, 1988).

50 Copeland,Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation, 166.


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the act of creation. As Mary Carruthers has demonstrated with referenceto an earlier period, the medieval memoriaor trained memory was farfrom a passive, recording faculty. Her analysis of the term interestinglydemonstrates how it combined rhetorical and social functions. It was anintegral part of the virtue of prudence . . .for it was in trained memorythat one built character, judgment, citizenship, and piety. However,it was also the means by which historical fact is rendered significant

within the individual mind: it was memory that made knowledge intouseful experience, and memory that made these pieces of information-become-experience into what we call ideas.51 Skeltons Bibliothecapresents the historian precisely as one who makes ideas. Where hissource-text stresses that history writing enables the accurate memoryof past events, Skelton turns the focus away from the idea of historyas collective memory to the idea of history and memory themselvesas constructs. His interest is less in the facts recorded than in theprocess of recording. His practice, as exemplified in the description ofNysa, matches his theoretical emphasis on the labour of writing. Thus,the writers authority comes to rest in the treatment rather than thesubstance of the text, in his independent action rather than his inheritedsubject-matter.

Considering Skeltons practice as a translator, we have come a longway from the view of the writer as advisor that is implied by his choiceof text for translation. While Skeltons choice suggests that he doeshave an interest in presenting the writer as the keeper of the nationsflame, his use of amplification proves to be a significant influenceon his developing views of the writers authority independent of his

contribution to a national or courtly project. Whereas his source-textstresses the virtue of the subject-matter and hence the social importanceof the writer, Skelton proves to be less interested in the facts of historythan in the way in which they are given shape. Although both Diodorussand Poggios prefaces make assertions about the poet in relation to thestate which correspond with many expressions in Skeltons own work,the importance of Poggios text to Skelton lies not so much in theviews it expresses on the subject of writing, as in his treatment of them.

The interaction of the subject translated and the practice of translationcreates ade factorecognition of words influence over matter that pavesthe way for a new sense or self-consciousness of the writer as originator.

51 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 9, 1.


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Yet, even as Skeltons experience provides him with a firsthandrealization of the writers influence over his subject-matter, it also lendssubstance to the objections voiced by the opponents of poetry. As we sawin the first chapter, and as we shall see again later, a recurrent accusationlevelled against poetry is that it is a mere tissue of inventions, or lies.Skelton himself will refute the charge in his last poem,A Replycacion. Inthe Bibliotheca, however, he himself ventriloquizes the same criticism.

Without any prompt from his source-text, he refers to the Greeksfeyned fables of fantasticall poemes, and draws a contrast betweenfeyned fantasyes and fables and verite and trouth.52 Such phrasessuggest a certain anxiety about the contrast between the received ideasabout the writers authority as truth-teller that are expressed in Skeltonssource-text and the implications of his practice as a translator. Theythus prefigure a conflict between the desire to assert the writers own,originary control over his subject-matter and the inevitably attendantdoubt which will itself prove central to much of Skeltons writing.

52 Bibliotheca, 18990, 199. Both phrases are Skeltons own additions (cf. Poggio,

sigs. F

v

, F2

v

).

Documents

Amplifying Memory