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Chapter 2

Works Frozen in Revision

Walter Map’s De nugis curialium survives in a state of textual disarray. In the midst of sections that seem to have been written in the early 1180s, the work occasionally references events that occurred much later, making the internal chronology difficult to accept. Henry II is alive, then dead, then alive once again. Similarly, the De nugis curialium at one point references two “Bretons, about whom more is told above.”¹ Yet, this passage refers to episodes that occur later in the work and not earlier. The rubricated chapter headings occasionally lapse into descriptions that are dull or vague even for the workaday conventions of medieval headings: in a book full of marvelous, otherworldly creatures and miracle-working saints, headings such as “a wonder” or “another wonder” offer little help to readers searching for specific passages. Moreover, the rubricated chapter headings almost disappear entirely toward the end of the work, with several folios having no chapter headings whatsoever. Curiously, the last chapter of the De nugis curialium ends with what the headings call “a recapitulation of the beginning of this book, differing in expression but not substance.”² This recapitulation, however, does not echo the beginning of the book in an artistic fashion—as does the funereal ending of Beowulf, for example—but appears to be merely a different version of the book’s first several chapters, maybe even their first draft. Several other doublets exist in the work as well, which gives the peculiar effect that Walter is at times plagiarizing himself. But perhaps the greatest oddity is that, set roughly in the middle of the work, distinctio 4 begins with a prologue that its editors think is meant for the entire book, and immediately following this invasive prologue lies an equally invasive epilogue. It, too, seems to have been meant for the whole of the work, according to the editors at least. Strange things are certainly afoot in the textual history of the De nugis curialium.

It is therefore hard to disagree with the characterization of the De nugis curialium as an “inchoate book,” of its content as “miscellaneous and unedited,” and of its structure as “jumbled and irregular.”³ It is frequently likened to a commonplace book, laden with personal recollections, topical folktales, fiery invective, and whatever else seems to have struck Walter’s fancy at any given point over the span of a decade or two. Indeed, Walter himself seems to confirm the desultory nature of its composition when he writes, “I have written this little book by snatches on loose sheets at the court of King Henry.”⁴ This remark, coupled with the imperfect textual state of the De nugis curialium, has all but cemented the work’s status as the product of a harried courtier who only took the time to craft a relatively unconnected series of short narratives and vignettes, without any consideration of a larger plan. In this account, the De nugis curialium is a piecemeal work for piecemeal reading.

The confused manuscript of the De nugis curialium has also been taken, unjustly as I hope to show, as evidence for a confused mind. James Hinton, who did much to explain the text, warned against the tendency to equate Walter’s intellect and the sole manuscript of the De nugis curialium, which was written some two centuries after his death: “whether Walter Map had originally a plan, or not, the crudities manifest in the disposition of materials are not due to the author’s slovenliness or mental incoherence so much as to the fact that he never completed his editing, but left his materials fragmentary and unpublished.”⁵ This plea, however, has largely passed unheeded.⁶ Indeed, in reading scholarship on Walter, it takes little time to realize that “dismissive remarks on the nature of Walter’s achievement are the rule.”⁷ Frederick Tupper and Marbury Ogle thought of Walter “as a gentleman, an amateur rather than as a professional author.”⁸ M. R. James believed Walter incapable of organization and driven by impulse: “As to the plan and date of the de Nugis, nothing can be clearer than that there is no plan, and that the work was jotted down at various times, as the fancy struck the author.”⁹ He also believed Walter guilty of a serious literary transgression—“he did not always know very clearly the meaning of the words he used.”¹⁰ Walter’s wide-ranging interests have at times been seen as a fault, rather than the mark of a dynamic mind. He is “an author who struggled to exercise control over his highly varied material.”¹¹ And some of his stories “reveal to us a Map both critical and credulous, divided between reason and irrationality.”¹² Ian Short simply calls him “indescribable.”¹³ David Knowles, who may have felt the sting of Walter’s anti-monastic satire too keenly, was no great fan, saying he “lacked both balance of mind and ethical sobriety.”¹⁴ Walter’s most recent editors also imply that he lacked sobriety, but not of the ethical sort: “The De nugis curialium was the commonplace-book of a great after-dinner speaker; and if one is entirely sober when one reads it, it is easily misunderstood.”¹⁵ Most scholarship on Walter leaves the impression that if he were alive today, he might make a superb blogger: quick with a witty anecdote, an expert aggregator of popular culture, and given to passionate first impressions. The studied discipline of a novelist, however, would elude him.

This chapter and the next reevaluate both the textual state of the De nugis curialium and Walter’s critical reputation. In this chapter, I show that Walter sometimes revised his earlier work and that he did so with meticulous care. And in the next, I argue that medieval readers, and not Walter Map, are responsible for the idea that the De nugis curialium should be considered a single, unified work. The title of the work and its chapter divisions are not Walter’s. Moreover, several glosses, many of which are faulty, have found their way into the main text, adding another layer of textual difficulty to Walter’s work. Overall, I suggest that the De nugis curialium as we have it is best understood as five separate works in various stages of completion that have been bound together, almost certainly after Walter’s death. Seen in this light, it is clear that Walter does not deserve his reputation as a scatterbrained author. It is hardly his fault that the only surviving copy of his work has been taken as the definitive testament of his literary talents. Not only does this reevaluation render Walter’s presence as an auctoritas for the Lancelot-Grail Cycle less incongruous—he had the patience and focus needed for such a work—it also bears directly on his reputation as a writer who worked in the Matter of Britain. As Chapter 4 shows, understanding Walter’s practice of revision sheds new light on one method medieval authors used to write stories set in ancient Britain.

Evidence of Revision in the De nugis curialium

James Hinton was the first scholar to examine the structure and plan of the De nugis curialium in depth.¹⁶ Although he recognized that Walter’s text survives in an unedited state, he proceeded to reconstruct the text in the order in which he believed it had been composed. Identifying as many termini a quo and termini ad quem as possible, Hinton distinguished twenty separate “fragments,” which he thought gave little evidence of a larger design: “From what has been noticed of the casual manner in which Map wanders from one topic to another even while he is writing straight ahead, it is clear that he was not restrained by a definite plan; he wrote willingly upon whatever occurred to his mind, careless of the drift of his discourse.”¹⁷ This is the Walter Map familiar to scholarship. Indeed, I will concede that dividing the De nugis up into small pieces and ordering them on the basis of chronology makes Walter’s text even less coherent, but it must also be admitted that splitting up almost any literary work into the chronological order of its composition would result in disorganization, too. The Canterbury Tales would certainly look the poorer for it. And everyone, it seems, has followed Hinton in claiming that Walter all but announces his lackadaisical style of composition when he writes, “Hunc in curia regis Henrici libellum raptim annotaui scedulis” (I have swiftly [raptim] noted this little book down in pages of parchment in the court of King Henry).¹⁸ Hinton takes raptim with its etymological force “by snatches,” which lends credence to the belief that Walter’s literary activity occurred at intermittent stages. However, this meaning is not attested in Medieval Latin (nor in Classical Latin for that matter).¹⁹ Instead, it is best to take raptim here with its normal meaning of “swiftly” or “hurriedly”—a subtle, but important, distinction. Although Hinton’s contributions remain valuable, especially his observations that the De nugis curialium is an unfinished work and that the chapter titles are the product of a later scribe or compiler, this chronological arrangement is unnecessarily complicated and relies on a rather constrained view of literary composition.²⁰

Brooke and Mynors, Walter’s most recent editors, accept many of Hinton’s arguments regarding dating. However, they propose that the De nugis curialium has more structure than Hinton allows. Instead of a series of fragments thrown together by Walter or a later scribe with little attempt at order, they suggest that the work “was composed more or less as a single book, into which additions small and large were later inserted.”²¹ They show that apart from eight interpolations, the work belongs mostly to the early 1180s. In their view, the manuscript’s current disarray results overwhelmingly from Walter’s subsequent tinkering and erratic insertions.

The bulk of it was drafted in 1181 and 1182, and it lay for a number of years in loose quires, roughly arranged in the order dist. iv, v, i, ii, iii. It was still a draft, not a finished work, and included two versions of the satire on the court; some chapters were never completed. From time to time the author added insertions small and large on slips of vellum; in 1183 he provided the whole work with a prologue. At some date unknown, he decided to make the satire on the court the opening of the book, and so cut his loose quires like a pack of cards, arranging the material in approximately its present order.²²

This explanation has the apparent benefit of originally placing the two versions of the satire on the court in succession, with the more polished version immediately following the earlier draft version (though exactly why this is preferable is left unexplained). Additionally, in the original order proposed by Brooke and Mynors the book begins with the Dissuasio Valerii, Walter’s most popular work, which alone of the contents of the De nugis curialium circulated widely. Since it first circulated under a pseudonym, it would have been a good marketing ploy to open a work of some considerable size with the surprising revelation that Walter himself had composed the popular Dissuasio Valerii. But, as Brooke and Mynors admit, this account does not solve all the infelicities of the De nugis curialium. Here, Walter comes in for yet more criticism. Since they argue that the manuscript’s current form results more or less from Walter’s own meddling, the blame for all the faults of the De nugis curialium lies squarely on his shoulders. Brooke and Mynors, for example, are more inclined to believe the subpar rubricated chapter headings are Walter’s own invention: they are “untidy in every possible way, and with an untidiness which clearly reflects in part the mind of Master Walter.”²³ And what of the internal epilogue, which even in their reconstructed form still sits oddly in the middle of the work? They suggest that “since it was evidently written on a loose slip or bifolium, it is possible that Map, finding his prologue unhappily sandwiched in the middle of the book, with gay abandon attached the epilogue to it.”²⁴ Just to be clear, what Brooke and Mynors propose is that Walter wrote a coherent book, cut it in half so that it began with the satire on the court, neglected to discard his first draft of said satire on the court, perhaps placed an epilogue in the now middle of the work because that is where his prologue lay, and afterward inserted a few stories here and there. This scenario, as they readily admit, is conjectural. Nonetheless, in my opinion it relies too heavily on the supposition that Walter Map is a flighty writer, unable or unwilling to write an orderly narrative—only thus could an author demonstrate such carelessness with his text. However, the only evidence for Walter’s mental “untidiness” is itself the manuscript of the De nugis curialium. This is a significant problem.

There is, however, a way around the tautological explanation that the De nugis curialium is disorganized because Walter Map is disorganized, a fact that is in turn proven by the disorganization of the De nugis curialium. In an astute review, A. G. Rigg suggests that previous editors and scholars have confused “the order of composition with the final intended arrangement, as though only scribal incompetence could account for a nonchronological order.”²⁵ In other words, writers do not work in a strict chronological fashion, starting a work with page one and completing it neatly with the final sentence; this scenario neglects the messy business of drafts, omissions and additions, and innumerable starts and restarts that are familiar to any writer. Walter is no exception. Indeed, Rigg seems to have been the first to grasp the importance that Walter was rearranging and revising previous material, and, as any good reviser will do, he moved sections about, cut some passages, and expanded others, while retaining some phrases verbatim.²⁶ Either Walter never finished this process of revision or the only surviving text reflects an earlier state of affairs. We should therefore view the doublets present in the De nugis not as two versions of the same tale, nor as the handiwork of a particularly inept scribe, but as Walter’s earlier and later revisions of the same episode. Rigg claims that distinctiones 1–3 “are in nearly final state,” while distinctiones 4 and 5 consist largely of outdated drafts and material that Walter either had not yet reworked or had not yet decided where to place.²⁷ While in the middle of reworking the De nugis, Rigg supposes that Walter “took the whole pile of material with him to Oxford in 1197, where it lay until a fourteenth-century editor copied it all out.”²⁸ Walter’s only surviving work lies frozen in the midst of revision.

While I do not agree with all of Rigg’s brief suggestions—I remain unconvinced that Walter was writing a single, unified work and it is certain that the copyist of Bodley 851 was not working from an authorial copy—they do provide a valuable point of departure for a new investigation into the textual state of the De nugis curialium.²⁹ The following study of the doublets in the De nugis curialium confirms that material in distinctiones 1 and 2 has been revised from material in distinctiones 4 and 5. The resulting analysis also rules out the possibility that the doublets might represent Walter’s recording of two separate versions of the same tale or that Rigg has suggested the wrong direction for revision (i.e., that 4 and 5 contain the revised tales, while 1 and 2 represent earlier material). Moreover, this chapter examines the mechanics of Walter’s revision. What can these revisions tell us about Walter’s overall plan or his habits as a writer? Walter, it will be seen, revised thoroughly, with few passages escaping his pen.

A careful comparison of the major and minor differences between the doublets of the De nugis curialium demonstrates that they are not merely two versions of the same story, recorded perhaps at separate times, but rather the same story at different stages of revision. Many passages share exact phrasing, which would be highly improbable had Walter impulsively recorded in his commonplace book the same story, metaphor, or idea ten years apart; he was clearly rewriting with a close eye to his earlier compositions. An analysis of Walter’s diction, prose style, and larger literary aims bears this assumption out. The philologically faint of heart may be forgiven for skipping to the end of this section, but for those who stay, these comparisons offer a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a twelfth-century author at work. For ease of reference, I list the doublets along with their subject matter in Table 1.

I will deal separately with the major and minor differences between the doublets. Under major differences I include the addition and deletion of significant passages and changes in how a tale fits within the larger context of its neighboring tales. Because the minor differences show most clearly the process of revision, I will begin with them.

One of the most easily recognizable differences between the doublets is that small changes in diction are sometimes driven by the desire to insert as much alliterative effect as possible. In several cases the doublets occurring in distinctiones 1 and 2 contain more alliteration than their counterparts in IV and V. Since many Medieval Latin writers of the twelfth century took such a liking to alliteration—Walter is among those who could not resist its pull—it is much more plausible that Walter added alliteration during his process of revision, rather than purposefully omitting it. For example, “Cor autem illud saxo comparatur, quia Dominus ait” becomes “Cor illud bene comparatur saxo Sisiphi, quia scriptum est.”³⁰ And toward the end of comparison of the court with hell, Walter works up a tour de force of alliterative imagery: “obuoluciones autem ignium, nebulas et fetorem, anguium <et> uiperarum sibila, gemitus et lacrimas, feditatem et horrorem” is amplified to “Obuolucionem autem ignium, densitatem tenebrarum, fluminum fetorem, stridorem a demonibus magnum dencium, gemitus exiles et miserabiles a spiritibus anxiis, uermium et uiperarum et anguium et omnis reptilis tractus fedos, et rugitus impios, fetorem, planctum et horrorem.”³¹ The increased alliteration of this passage is hard to miss (i.e., densitatem tenebrarum; fluminum fetorem; demonibus … dencium; uermium … uiperarum). Moreover, Walter has also added the additional effect of rhyme with “exiles et miserabiles.” In the tale of Eadric the Wild, the same process is seen in the sentence “se iussit Herefordiam deferri” becoming “et se deferri fecit Herefordiam.”³² Here the meaning of the two phrases is almost identical, but Walter has changed iussit to fecit in order to answer the f in deferri and Herefordiam. He takes similar care in revising “et relapsum cor in uallem auaricie secuntur” to “et relapsum in auaricie uallem animum reuocare conantur,” where cor is replaced by the closely related animum, thus nicely linking auaricie and animum. In another case, Walter’s earlier material in distinctio 5 shows that he had already decided to include the three judges of the dead, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus, in his satire on the court. In the process of revision, these judges take on ironic epithets, which, of course, alliterate: “Minos est misericors, Radamantus racionem amans, Eacus equanimis.”³³ Furthermore, “Det Deus [sc. cor] et sic faciat curialibus” is improved to “Det Dominus cor curialibus carneum.”³⁴ Likewise, in the tale of the militant monk of Cluny, Walter improves the alliteration of “lethali spiculo perforat inprouisum [sc. monachum]” to “monachum misso letali telo perforat.”³⁵ Walter may have made this change so that the alliteration falls on two stressed syllables (pérforat inprouísum versus mónachum mísso).

Table 1. Revised Passages in the DNC

Revised	Unrevised	Topic
1.1–10	5.7	Satire on the court
1.11	4.13	King Herla/Herlething
1.14	4.7	Militant monk of Cluny
2.12	4.10	Eadric the Wild
2.13	4.8	The sons of the dead woman (though see discussion)

But this last example also demonstrates that as Walter revises he sometimes abandons an alliterating pair of words in order to create alliteration elsewhere. In many cases, however, it is difficult to say why exactly Walter switches his alliterative targets, and it may in the end be fruitless to seek clear explanations for each of these edits. Regardless, these changes confirm that Walter did pay close attention to alliteration as he worked through his drafts. Further examples of this type of alliterative vacillation are not hard to find: “Sunt et hic qui diuiciarum altitudinem adepti nichil actum putant” is revised to “Sunt et hic multi qui montem ascensi diuiciarum nil actum putant.”³⁶ Here, Walter seems to have preferred montem over altitudinem because it allows for the pair multi … montem, even though it cannibalizes the alliterative triplet altitudinem … adepti … actum. Perhaps here Walter shows a preference for consonance over assonance. And in the story of the militant monk of Cluny, Walter eliminates the varied alliteration of “Sentit monachus mortem in ianuis, confiteri cupit, nec adest preter puerum cui possit,” preferring instead a relentless focus on the sound of p: “Ille se morti proximum sciens, puero qui solus aderat peccata fatetur, penitenciam sibi petens inuingi.”³⁷ While these changes in alliteration may not be deeply significant on their own, taken together they show that as Walter revises, he remains in line with the general twelfth-century practice of minding one’s alliteration.

In a few instances, we also see Walter changing his diction with a preference for a more striking or more appropriate term. “Porfirius dicit genus esse …” (Porphyry says a genus is …) becomes “ut Porphirius diffinit genus” (as Porhyry defines a genus).³⁸ The scholastic connotations of diffinire are more appropriate for Walter’s mock intellectual exercise of comparing the court and hell than the commonplace verb dicere.³⁹ Moreover, in the revised version Walter uses diffinire once again: after a few paragraphs on the current state of the court and the degeneration of the modern age, he begins his famous comparison of the court with hell, though he hesitates, asking himself, “Hic tamen dubito an eam recte diffinierim” (Yet in doing so I wonder if I have defined it correctly).⁴⁰ Here, Walter alerts the attentive reader that what follows is in the mold of a scholastic exercise and that he will be as careful in his definitions as Porphyry. Another small change is found in the revision of “Non in omnes loquor iudices, sed in maiorem et in insaniorem partem” (I am not speaking against all judges, but against the larger and madder part) to “sed secundum maiorem et insaniorem loquor aciem” (but I am speaking with respect to the larger and madder fray).⁴¹ That acies (blade; battle line, fray) is much more striking than pars (part; portion) is clear, but its use also picks up on the violence implicit in Walter’s description of foresters, uenatores hominum (hunters of men), that precedes this remark. Moreover, puns, one of Walter’s favorite literary devices, are clearly on his mind as he revises: “Sed parcendum est curie” (But the court must be spared) becomes “Sed curie parcere curiale uidetur” (But sparing the court seems a courtly thing to do).⁴² And in revising the section on Ixion, Walter changes “hinc et illinc” (hither and thither) to “ultra, citra” (on this side, on that side), which, while not in the least rare terms, are however less clichéd than the original.⁴³ Finally, Walter makes a savvy change when describing the court’s wheel of fortune: “nullius in ea sine spe locus est” (nobody’s place on it is without hope) is tweaked to “nullius in ea sine spe casus est” (nobody’s fall on it is without hope).⁴⁴ With its connotations of loss, chance, and the fall of man, casus fits this passage’s context much better than locus.

Perhaps one of the clearest indications that Walter revised with a sharp eye is that many of the revised passages are stylistically superior to the earlier draft material. A good example of this tendency is found in the beginning of the work, just after Walter invokes Augustine’s confusion over the definition of time. Compare the following draft passage with its revision below:

Simili possum admiracione dicere, quod in curia sum et de curia loquor, et quid ipsa sit non inteligo. Scio tamen quod ipsa tempus non est.

(With similar astonishment I am able to say that I am in the court and I speak of the court, and I do not understand what it is. Nevertheless, I know that it is not time.)

Ego simili possum admiracione dicere quod in curia sum, et de curia loquor, et nescio, Deus scit, quid sit curia. Scio tamen quod curia non est tempus.

(With similar astonishment I am able to say that I am in the court and I speak of the court, and I do not know—God knows—what the court is. Nevertheless, I know that the court is not time.)⁴⁵

Walter has replaced the two instances of the pronoun ipsa with curia, resulting in curia—the ostensible topic of distinctio 1—being repeated four times at the work’s opening. Moreover, Walter has emphatically added ego at the beginning of the sentence in order to heighten his witty paralleling of Augustine. Walter also echoes St. Paul’s own struggle to define his mystical experience: “sive in corpore nescio, sive extra corpus nescio, Deus scit” (whether in the body, I know not, or out of the body, I know not; God knoweth).⁴⁶ Thus, both biblical and patristic authority coalesce in these revised opening lines to create satirical astonishment over the precise definition of Henry’s court, neatly leading into the exploration of Walter’s famous question—is the court hell?

Moreover, Walter adds two striking images: the court is “a hundred-handed giant which, though all its hands have been cut off, is still entirely the same hundred-handed giant,” as well as a “hydra with many heads.”⁴⁷ Walter also extends the court-as-time metaphor, adding the line “et hodie sumus una multitudo, cras erimus alia; curia uero non mutatur, eadem semper est” (And we are one multitude today; we will be another tomorrow. But the court is not changed—it is always the same).⁴⁸ This small addition, moving quickly through hodie (today), cras (tomorrow), and semper (always), transforms the initial invocation of Augustine from a mere quip into a prolonged, though still tongue-in-cheek, comparison. Finally, Walter concludes his introduction by offering one more playful comparison. Only now, instead of time, Walter measures the court against Boethius’s definition of fortune—that it is only stable in its instability.⁴⁹ He of course finds this comparison fitting. The thorough revision of this introductory passage apparently found its mark, as it appears with dependable regularity in scholarship that touches upon Henry II’s court.

Another stylistic improvement occurs when Walter rewrites his comparison of the denizens of hell with courtiers.⁵⁰ While many of the same images occur (e.g., Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion), Walter simplifies and systematizes this section. The introduction to this section, which had contained a discussion taken from Macrobius on the human body as hell, as well as a brief passage on the allegorical significance of the four rivers of the underworld, is reduced to a few sentences. Thus Walter seems to have taken his own advice in omitting his discussion of Macrobius: “Quod quia longum est distinguere, leuiterque potest alias haberi, dimittimus” (But we put this aside, since working it out takes some time and it is easily found elsewhere).⁵¹ Instead of dwelling on the body as hell, a conceit that while somewhat pertinent does little to set up the comparison between court and hell, the revised passage concisely defines the court as a place of punishment and ends on the simple question: “Quis ibi cruciatus qui non sit hic multiplicatus?” (There [i.e., in hell] what torment exists which is not amplified here?).⁵² This ibi-hic (there-here) formula then repeats in each of the figures of hell that Walter introduces. The revised passage on Ixion, for example, begins “Sibi sepe dissimilis, super, subter, ultra, citra, Yxion ibi uoluitur in rota. Nec hic desunt Yxiones” (Never able to keep himself still, there Ixion spins about in his wheel—up and down, over here and over there. And here there is no lack of Ixions).⁵³ “Nec hic desunt Yxiones” (And here there is no lack of Ixions) replaces an earlier “Habemus et nos Yxiones” (We too have Ixions), thus bringing this passage into line with the those of Tantalus and Sisyphus and adhering to the newly introduced ibi-hic question now anchoring this section.⁵⁴

In this revising of the comparison of courtiers with those in hell, we see Walter tempering his ever-present desire to quote from the ancients in order to create a more focused piece of prose. Moreover, the newly systematized ibi-hic formula creates a strong sense of stylistic unity in this passage. It is a shame that a folio is lacking in this section, which originally continued on to make courtly comparisons with Tityus, the daughters of Belus, Cerberus, and Charon. (We know what passages are missing here because the table of contents for the De nugis curialium was written before the loss of this folio.) Had these survived, we would have even more evidence of Walter’s revision of this section. But from what remains, it is clear that Walter could recognize and correct one of his supposed faults: his inability to refrain from learned digressions. Moreover, Walter’s care in developing the ibi-hic formula demonstrates that he had a clear rhetorical plan for this section and that he could execute it.

Yet another stylistic improvement appears in the ending to the section on Ixion, whose transgressions caused Zeus to bind him to a fiery wheel. Walter here takes Ixion’s spinning wheel as a courtly rota fortunae, capriciously lifting up and casting down courtiers, who despite this fickleness find the mere possibility of advancement difficult to resist. A comparison of the first draft with its revised version below shows that Walter stays close to the original.

Tota terribilis est, contra consciencias tota militat, nec inde minus appetitur.

(It is completely terrifying, completely at odds with good conscience. Nonetheless, for these reasons it is sought out.)

Tota terribiliter horret, tota contra consciencias militat, nec minus inde proficit alliciendo.

(It is completely and terrifyingly dreadful, completely at odds with good conscience. Nonetheless, it therefore succeeds in luring them away.)⁵⁵

However, he makes a few small changes to improve the balance of the sentence. In his revised version, the first two clauses now both begin with tota, and the change of terribilis est to terribiliter horret results in both clauses having the same syntactic structure (i.e., predicate adjective + adverbial phrase + intransitive verb) and thus a pleasing balance. Finally, the change of logical subject from appetitur (it is sought out)—in which the courtiers seek the wheel—to proficit alliciendo (it succeeds in luring them away)—in which the wheel actively seduces them—not only makes the rota the logical subject of every verb in the sentence but also heightens the menace of the court. Rather than being sought out, the court now seeks its own victims.

Major Changes During Revision

While the above serves as representative of the nature of Walter’s minor revisions, it is not an exhaustive treatment. His countless adjustments would require much more space to discuss in full. But equally revealing are Walter’s major alterations: his addition or omission of entire passages, his repurposing of earlier tales for a different use, and his close attention to narrative continuity. In considering this type of revision, I first approach chapters 1 through 15 of distinctio 1. Here we have the best evidence for Walter’s technique and aims, as we can watch as he composes a coherent narrative in both theme and structure. I will then address the revised sections of distinctio 2, which, while less extensive than those in distinctio 1, nonetheless show Walter working with the same consideration. I will, however, omit discussion of the tales of King Herla and Eadric the Wild, since I discuss them elsewhere.⁵⁶

First of all, Walter has reworked his introduction in order to better reflect his subsequent critique of Henry’s court. (Here I consider the first chapter the introduction, i.e., everything up to the beginning of the comparison of the court with hell.) Three new sections now follow the original introduction. The first new section addresses the court’s distribution of gratia (favor) to the undeserving. The next describes cupiditas (cupidity) reigning as Lady of the Court. Cupidity reverses the natural correlation between a happy demeanor and inner righteousness; the good now appear sorrowful and the bad happy. To a reader even passingly familiar with the medieval court, the presence of both cupidity and ill-deserved favor needs no explanation—but Walter’s next addition may. He begins his longest addition to the introduction by asking, “Quid autem est quod a pristina forma uiribus et uirtute facti sumus degeneres, cetera queque uiuencia nullatenus a prima deuiant donorum gracia?” (Why is it that we have degenerated from our original beauty, strength, and virtue, while no other living creature strays from the grace of its gifts?).⁵⁷ Walter, relying on common medieval conceptions of the prelapsarian state of man, explains that only mankind and the devils have fallen from original grace, and with that fall has come a reduction in the life span and physical vitality granted to man.⁵⁸ The ancients, because of their longevity, had the time to develop new technology and acquire great knowledge. In contrast, Walter finds the modern age intellectually degenerate and wholly dependent on the wisdom of the past: “non est a nobis nostra pericia” (our expertise is not our own), he laments.⁵⁹

A common twelfth-century topos, the pessimistic view of the present often, as it does here, constitutes “a form of social criticism,” since highlighting the corruption of the current age has the potential to prompt reform.⁶⁰ Pessimism, then, is not out of place in satire, as both draw attention to moral decay. All three of these additions expand the critique of the court; its inconstancy was the sole concern of the earlier version. By widening the scope of the introduction to include jealousy, hypocrisy, and the promotion of the undeserving—all commonplaces in twelfth-century critiques of the court—Walter gives a more accurate representation of what follows. Moreover, this new section anticipates the juxtaposition of moderni and antiqui—another favorite topos of twelfth-century literature, and one that Walter often invokes.⁶¹ In particular, this passage ironically sets up one of the better jokes in the De nugis curialium, in which the incessant wandering of Henry II’s court is not a creation of the present, but rather an inheritance from an ancient king’s entourage, who “have passed down their wanderings” (suos tradiderint errores) to the present court.⁶² Walter took pains to get his introduction right: he added three sections that introduce common themes in distinctio 1. Moreover, he has altered the original introductory paragraph to extend the court-as-time metaphor, and he has incorporated an apt reference to Boethius.

Given this thorough revision, it is in some ways ironic that Walter decided to conclude the new introduction with a passage that reinforces his critical reputation as a flighty writer:

De curia nobis origo sermonis, et quo iam deuenit? Sic incidunt semper aliqua que licet non multum ad rem, tamen differri nolunt, nec refert, dum non atrum desinant in piscem, et rem poscit apte quod instat.

(The beginning of our discussion concerned the court, but it has already gone off course! Yes, some things always arise which are perhaps not very relevant but refuse to be put off. Yet as long as they do not end in a black fish and as long as the discussion at hand fittingly calls for the matter, it does not make a difference.)⁶³

Certainly, these lines have served as one of the first indications of Walter’s “waywardness”—he is incapable of finishing the introduction without embarking on a distracting tangent!⁶⁴ However, the care with which Walter has revised the entire introduction shows that this waywardness is a carefully constructed conceit, and not a spontaneous, unaffected moment of self-awareness from our harried courtier. To ward off accusations that his digressions are inappropriate, Walter slyly invokes the beginning of Horace’s Ars poetica, in which the narrator describes a painter setting the head of a lovely woman on top of a horse’s neck, which itself is attached to a feathered body composed of various limbs. This ungainly image “shamefully ends in a black fish” (turpiter atrum / desinat in piscem).⁶⁵ For Horace, one of Walter’s favorite authors, such a painting shows that a unified form is expected in art; deviations will be met with ridicule. Walter’s own claim that diverse topics are acceptable “as long as they do not end in a black fish” (dum non atrum desinant in piscem) shows that his writing, in his own estimation at least, holds to a unified form.

Perhaps a better illustration of what a unified order meant for Walter is found in his contemporary Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova (ca. 1208–13), a work that became extraordinarily popular. This treatise explains that order over one’s material can be imposed naturally, with a straightforward order, or through “the by-paths of art”: “This order, though reversed, is more pleasant and by far better than the straightforward order. The latter is sterile, but the former fertile, from its marvelous source sending out more branches from the parent trunk, changing one branch into many, a single into several, one into eight.”⁶⁶ This principle helps explain Walter’s system of arrangement not only in the introduction, but also the work as a whole. Rather than a general satire of twelfth-century life, systematically exhausting one topic before moving to another, distinctio 1 moves organically from topic to topic, following strands before doubling back to return to the point. This technique is visible throughout the De nugis curialium, as almost all episodes move to the next with clear transitions. Walter’s defense of his digressions thus explicitly announces that his narrative will not proceed in what Geoffrey of Vinsauf calls a “natural order,” strictly following chronological or logical arrangement. Another useful point of comparison is the Disciplina clericalis of Peter Alfonsi, a work that Walter probably knew.⁶⁷ Walter’s interlinking of chapters is so similar to Peter’s own technique of linking together groups of similar (and sometimes dissimilar) stories that he may well have modeled his own narrative style after it, especially in distinctiones 1, 2 and 4.⁶⁸ Indeed, most of the De nugis curialium progresses steadily in an artful, leisurely manner, with Walter linking stories together with quick transitions. The apparent digressions are exactly what give long sections of the De nugis curialium their self-sustained unity. Walter’s seemingly candid admission of waywardness is in fact a planned and studied conclusion to a meticulously rewritten introduction.

Whoever invented the chapter headings for the only surviving copy of the De nugis curialium has done Walter no favors in this regard. (As discussed in detail in the next chapter, Walter did not write these headings.) The entire introduction up to Walter’s defense of his digressions is served by one chapter title, “Assimulacio curie regis ad infernum” (A comparison of the king’s court to hell).⁶⁹ But like many of the headings, this one poorly describes what follows. Consequently, Walter’s own organizational strategy is often obscured in modern editions and translations of the text. A better heading for the first twelve chapters of distinctio 1 might be something along of the lines of “Diffinicio curie” (A definition of the court), since they all consist of Walter trying to make sense in one way or another of the court—its changeability, judgment, avarice, torment, and ungovernableness. And, as noted above, Walter twice makes explicit mention of his attempt to define (diffinire) the court. Moreover, in a lively example of arrangement through the “by-paths of art,” these first twelve sections move seamlessly from defining the court, to arguing that the court, like hell, is a place of torment, to describing Walter’s own ungovernable household (which explains in miniature why the court is ungovernable), to narrating the history of King Herla, which itself humorously provides an explanatory myth for the court’s inconstancy, the very subject that opens the work. These chapters end with the tale of the king of Portugal, which illustrates the deceit and envy typical of courtiers. All of these episodes work to satirically explain and define the twelfth-century court. And, to adapt Walter’s own phrase, all of these episodes are called for by the discussion at hand.

Another major addition to the beginning of the De nugis curialium is Walter’s apology for Henry II. In the earlier version, the king takes some blame for his court’s misconduct: “The king of this court, if he knows it well, is not free from blame, since he who is a ruler is obligated to be a reformer.”⁷⁰ Most of the blame, however, lies with deceitful courtiers who purposefully misdirect the king, distracting him with hunting and flattery. The king, Walter explains in a memorable phrase, “is like a husband who is the last to learn that his wife has strayed.”⁷¹ In this earlier version, the king is guilty of ignorance. In rewriting this section, however, Walter adopts a more conciliatory tone toward Henry, saying, “Nor can we cast blame upon our lord and ruler, since in this world nothing is free from disturbance, and no one is able to enjoy any kind of tranquillity for long.”⁷² In lieu of blaming deceitful and ambitious courtiers for the king’s ignorance—matters that have already been discussed—Walter rewrites this section to include a long but very humorous analogy that excuses the king’s inability to manage his own court. Walter admits that through fraud and trickery his own household servants have thoroughly defeated him, with the result that his household no longer belongs to him but to his servants. After describing a few of these entertaining deceptions in detail, Walter announces that he has cataloged his own humiliation “for the benefit of our king.”⁷³ “How,” he asks, “will he keep thousands and thousands in check and guide them toward peace, even though typical householders like us are unable to control a few servants?”⁷⁴ Why Walter changes his tone toward the king in this passage is hard to tell. Certainly, while Walter’s exasperation at his own household is more charming and original than stock complaints against scheming courtiers, there remains the possibility that he thought better of airing a grievance against the king in public.⁷⁵

The tale of the militant monk of Cluny also undergoes major revision. In the earlier version in distinctio 4, Walter tells of a well-heeled man who, after leaving his land and wealth to his sons, decides to become a monk of Cluny.⁷⁶ After a few years in the monastery, he is asked to return to his native country to serve as an adviser. His abbot grudgingly permits him to leave the monastery but asks the monk to swear not to take up arms. The monk accedes to his abbot’s wish. Eventually, however, war engulfs the monk’s country, and, in the heat of the battle, the monk finds himself unarmed in the middle of his force, which is outnumbered and in retreat. Against his oath, he dons his armor, seizes his weapons, rouses his men, and leads his army to victory. Unused to such exertion—monastic life has apparently dulled his martial skills—he takes off part of his armor to rest and is promptly struck by an enemy’s well-aimed arrow. Dying and finding no one fit for receiving his confession, he enjoins a small boy to do so, after which the repentant monk dies.

In this early version in distinctio 4, the tale of the Cluniac monk falls in the middle of a series of tales “about deaths in which God’s judgment is uncertain.”⁷⁷ In the tale that follows that of the Cluniac monk, God’s judgment remains uncertain in a very literal fashion.⁷⁸ A knight of Brittany finds his deceased wife among a great band of women at night in a deserted area, in what seems to be a gathering of otherworldly fairies. Working up his courage, the knight snatches his wife away. Seemingly against the laws of nature, they live together for many years, and she even bears him children. Was she really dead? Moreover, the tale preceding the Cluniac monk’s concerns Eudo, an impoverished nobleman who makes a deal with the devil to regain wealth and influence. With eternal damnation imminent, Eudo seeks penance from an angry bishop who hastily replies that for his extraordinary sins Eudo should leap into a fire. Without hesitation Eudo jumps into the flames and burns to ashes. The readers and hearers of this tale are then asked to debate “if this knight had the correct zeal”—that is, will he be saved?⁷⁹ Indeed, the ending of the Cluniac monk’s tale echoes this question in its last words: “The monk passed away in the faith of Christ and with good hope and inflamed zeal of penance.”⁸⁰ Readers here are also asked if the monk’s confession to the young boy outweighs the breaking of his oath of pacifism to his abbot: the tale begins, “One can also question the salvation of a monk of Cluny.”⁸¹ All three of these deaths involve some type of uncertainty, whether spiritual or literal.

Dubious deaths, the context of the early version of the tale of the militant monk of Cluny, are one of Walter’s favorite topics, but in his revision of this tale Walter leaves them aside in an effort to focus on the elements of sin and penance. Here in distinctio 1, it fits comfortably into the series of stories concerning “recent events” that Walter places immediately after the tale of King Herla.⁸² Its new context contains an exemplary story of the king of Portugal, a small encomium of the bishop of London, Walter’s distress at the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, and, most important, an account of Guichard III of Beaujeu (d.1137). Guichard retires to the monastery of Cluny in his old age and becomes an excellent poet. However, much to the dismay of his abbot, Guichard interrupts his leisure to retake his land from his rebellious son. After a successful military campaign, Guichard returns to Cluny, remains faithful to his vows, and dies a good death. Walter follows Guichard’s tale with the militant monk of Cluny, which, though removed from its earlier context of dubious deaths in distinctio 4, sits happily in its new surroundings in distinctio 1. Walter has, however, made several adjustments to the tale. First of all, he has added an appropriate transition between the two tales of extra-claustral activity: “But for others it can turn out otherwise. Far more pitiful was what happened to a noble and robust man who was likewise a monk at the same place and who was similarly called back to arms by the very same necessity.”⁸³ Aside from the increased attention to continuity, Walter has excised material deemed unnecessary. Gone is any discussion of the monk’s broken vow, a crucial element in the earlier story that concerns the efficacy of the monk’s repentance. Similarly, in the unrevised tale the monk attempts to make a truce with the enemy, but they double-cross him and secretly gather a large force to ambush him and his men. This betrayal sets the scene for the monk’s fateful battle and provides some extenuating circumstances for breaking his vow: it is only when the monk’s own men are in dire need that he decides to take up arms. However, in the revised tale Walter has apparently decided that all these details are superfluous, and he removes any trace of the attempted truce and the monk’s desperate situation. Instead, he quickly describes how the monk “suffered repeated reverses in battle with magnificent and unbroken spirit” and how he “rose again from defeat as if newborn to the fight; kindled as it were with quickened rage.”⁸⁴ This compression curtails the nuances of the monk’s dilemma by excising any discussion about betrayal and any explanations for the monk’s breaking of his vow, with the result that the monk’s moral dilemma has disappeared completely. Instead, in its revised form in distinctio 1 this tale illustrates another dilemma, one closer to Walter’s everyday experiences in court: obtaining and keeping a peaceful, unharried life.

The first fifteen chapters of distinctio 1 do not concern moral quandaries or the afterlife. Indeed, although the court is the ostensible subject of these chapters, the theme that binds them all together is Walter’s frustrated quest for quies, “quiet.” The court, with its instability and torment, is the greatest manifestation of disquiet in Walter’s own life. But, as he admits while excusing his lord Henry, disquiet is a symptom not merely of the court but of the fallen world in general: “in this world nothing is free from disturbance [quietum], and no one is able to enjoy any kind of tranquillity [tranquillitate] for long.”⁸⁵ Henry’s court, so Walter glibly claims, has inherited the ghostly wanderings of the ancient King Herla: “But from that time, that phantom circuit has been at peace [quieuit], as if they have passed down their wanderings to us for their own peace [quietem].”⁸⁶ Ironically, the only place in the world that seems to have peace in Walter’s day is Jerusalem, where, after the defeat of the crusaders, Saladin and his forces “established peace [pacem] with the firmest of occupations, so that their will is now done on earth as it is in hell.”⁸⁷

For Walter, the chaos of the court and the world at large is antithetical to literary pursuits; he admits no romantic notions about inspirational chaos. Walter replies to Geoffrey, the unknown and possibly fictional person urging him to write:

Writing poetry is for someone with a peaceful [quiete] as well as a collected [collecte] mind. Poets desire a completely safe abode [residenciam] where they can maintain a constant presence, and when the body and material wealth are at their peak, it will not do any good unless the mind is set at ease [tranquillus] by internal peace [interna pace]. Therefore, what you are asking of me, that an ignorant and inexperienced man write from this place, is no less a miracle than if you were to command new boys to sing from the furnace of another Nebuchadnezzar.⁸⁸

Walter again accuses Geoffrey of handing him an impossible task in another passage: “And although the mother of our afflictions and nurse of our wrath surpasses others in its storminess, you command me to be a poet in the midst of these discords [discordias]?”⁸⁹ Understandably, Walter is jealous of those men of letters who have the leisure and means to compose undisturbed. After singling out Gilbert Foliot, Bartholomew of Exeter, and Baldwin of Worcester, he writes, “These men are the philosophers of our time who lack nothing, who have abodes [residenciam] stuffed with every abundance and peace [pacem] outside: they have begun properly and will attain a good end. But where is a haven for me, who scarcely has the leisure to live?”⁹⁰ These first fifteen chapters form a lament for the courtier-cleric with literary pretensions, and they end with the clearest symbols of the vita actiua and vita contempliua known to the medieval mind—Jesus’s visit to the house of Martha and Mary.⁹¹ Walter, it is clear, prefers the constancy and calmness of the vita contempliua. Yet the court, to which he is both “bound and banished,” refuses him peace and stability.⁹² Walter’s complaints about the difficulty of literary pursuits while in the court manifests what John Cotts has termed “the clerical dilemma”: “the balancing of the professional, educational, and spiritual concerns in an uneasy synthesis,” which is found in the writing of many twelfth-century secular clerics.⁹³ Walter’s duties as a member of the court stymie (so he claims) his literary pretensions.

The two stories of the monks who leave Cluny to fight for their land exemplify the pressures of the secular world on those who would lead a life devoted to more elevated pursuits. Guichard’s new life at Cluny is a matter of envy for Walter: “when [Guichard] had obtained an easy living and taken up newfound quiet [quietem], he brought his strength together into an undivided mind, which had previously been distracted when he lived as a soldier [milicie secularis]; he suddenly felt himself to be a poet, and shining forth brilliantly in his own way, that is, in the French tongue, he became the Homer of the laity. Ah, if only there were such a truce for me, to keep the wandering through the many beams of a scattered mind from creating barbarisms!”⁹⁴ Like Gilbert, Bartholomew, and Baldwin, Guichard’s literary productivity directly—almost miraculously—results from his withdrawal from the commotion of the world. After necessity forces him to revisit his life as a soldier, he returns to his vow and to the monastery without any complications. The nameless monk of Cluny, however, has no such luck. In the moment of his triumph, he is struck down by a covert enemy’s arrow, never again to enter the peaceful confines of Cluny. Revised and in a new context, the tale of the militant monk of Cluny offers a counterpoint to Guichard’s experience: leaving the cloister, or any peaceful refuge from the world, can be fatal.

Understandably, in rewriting this story Walter focuses not on the monk’s attempt at penance but on the dangers of the outside world. Moreover, the revised tale also acts as a transition in the larger narrative structure of distinctio 1. Up until this tale, the subject matter of the distinctio 1 almost exclusively concerns the court and the uneasy place of a writer in it. With the tale of the militant monk of Cluny, Walter begins to address the instability and tumult of the world outside the court. As in its original form, the tale ends with the militant monk asking for penance from a boy. However, in the revised version, Walter adds a few “words of mercy,” quoting a well-known phrase, “In whatever hour the sinner laments, he shall be saved.”⁹⁵ Given such mercy, Walter wonders how the Lord could not grant the militant monk salvation. This concluding discussion of penance, mercy, and salvation allows Walter to transition to these same topics in the world at large. He begins with jubilee years, which are years of “forgiveness and grace, of safety and peace, of exultation and pardon, of praise and joy.”⁹⁶ For Walter’s contemporaries, jubilee years—and the remission they offer—were closely associated with crusading. A few decades earlier, Bernard of Clairvaux had explicitly connected the two, and Walter has skillfully made use of this connection to move to the starkest reminder of instability in the late twelfth century—the fall of Jerusalem in 1187.⁹⁷ Thus, with the newly revised tale of the militant monk of Cluny Walter moves from private penance to public penance, and from the instability of court to the instability of the world. It is worth noting that this section, too, ends with a smooth transition to the next section on monastic satire. After cataloging Saladin’s victory and the apparent absence of the Lord’s mercy, Walter wonders why the prayers of so many thousands of monks are unable to alter the current discord of the world. These monks say that they serve the Lord as Mary does, devoutly sitting at Christ’s feet in pursuit of the vita contempliua, but perhaps, Walter suggests, they are too involved with worldly pursuits. With these words the first half of distinctio 1, with its focus on quies and the court, ends, and Walter’s famous satire on the monastic orders begins.

The survival of earlier versions of most of the material in chapters 1 through 15 shows that there is nothing haphazard in the organization of distinctio 1 of the De nugis curialium. In the foregoing discussion, I have, however, omitted Walter’s revision of chapter 11, the tale of King Herla, because it is the subject of Chapter 4. As will be seen, this tale also shows all the hallmarks of careful revision found in the rest of distinctio 1.

On the surface, distinctio 2 seems to contain two stories that have been revised from earlier material: the tale of Eadric the Wild and the story Walter calls “The Sons of a Dead Woman.” As I have explained elsewhere, in revising the tale of Eadric the Wild, Walter adds a famous Anglo-Saxon thane to an earlier story in order to shore up the rights of the bishop of Hereford.⁹⁸ One more doublet, then, remains to be explained. Both distinctio 2 and distinctio 4 contain broadly similar stories concerning the offspring of humans and fairy lovers, classifying them as “sons of a dead woman” (filii mortue).⁹⁹ Rigg considers these stories to represent the same episode in revised and unrevised forms. Thus, I have included them in Table 1. However, although these two chapters do touch upon the same subject matter, their identification as the same story is unwarranted. The only direct verbal similarity between the two tales is the tag “sons of a dead woman” (filii mortue). Moreover, distinctio 2 does not actually recount the story of one of these sons of a dead woman. Instead it directly follows the tale of Gastin Gastiniog’s son Trunio Vagelauc and Eadric the Wild’s son Alnoth, both of whose mothers are fairies.¹⁰⁰ (Fairy-bride stories have a certain pull on Walter.)¹⁰¹ Walter explains that fairies and their ilk, or “phantasms” (fantasma) as he terms them, are merely demons whom God has permitted to change their appearance. This explanation would not surprise contemporary readers, as succubi and incubi, with which he equates these phantasms, have long been treated as demons in Christian thought. But what, Walter wonders, is one to make of cases in which the offspring of these unions “which remain and propagate themselves in good succession, as in this case of Alnoth or that of the aforementioned Britons, in which a certain knight is said to have buried his wife who was truly dead, and to have gotten her back after he snatched her from a ring of dancers, and afterward to have received children and grandchildren from her, and their offspring endures to this very day, and those who trace their origin from this source have become widespread—all of them are therefore called ‘the sons of a dead woman’ ”?¹⁰² Walter does not have a satisfactory explanation for these cases, gesturing merely to the incomprehensible ways of the Lord. Nonetheless, I think it is clear that Walter has not rewritten or retold the story of the sons of the dead woman here; he simply provides another version of the same type of story to increase his examples. This little vignette is made to stand on its own and requires no reference to the story in distinctio 4. No revision has taken place.

However, modern readers of the De nugis curialium have also found something puzzling about this passage, though not its demonology. The reference to “the aforementioned Britons” (Britonum de quo superius) here certainly seems to describe the story found in distinctio 4, in which a “knight from Brittany” (miles quidam Britannie minoris) rescues his dead wife from a great band of women and begets several children with her, the offspring of which are still numerous in Walter’s day.¹⁰³ Problematically, no preceding story matches the description here. One suggestion is that Britonum here means “Welsh” and refers to the story of Gastin Gastiniog and his son Trunio Vagelauc, which does in fact precede this passage. But although Trunio does have a fairy mother, the particulars do not align: Gastin catches his fairy bride in a lake, and Trunio dies without any mention of his offspring. The erroneous de quo superius may be one more clue that distinctio 2 is still under revision. However, as I show in the next chapter, the De nugis curialium does include several interpolated glosses. I would suggest this de quo superius originally began its life as an interlinear gloss—it is certainly unnecessary and does feel rather awkwardly inserted.¹⁰⁴ Indeed, since Walter immediately and fully explains what he means by ille Britonum, there is no need for him to direct readers to another part of his work to gain the full story. Walter, in fact, never directs readers to another distinctio, except for this suspicious passage. Given this, I think it likely that de quo superius first existed as an interlinear gloss, not for ille Britonum, but for Alnoth, whose story we have just heard. When a scribe moved this gloss into the main text of the De nugis curialium, he was a few words off, and de quo superius became confusingly attached to ille Britonum. At any rate, I see no convincing evidence to consider this brief discussion of the sons of a dead woman as a revision of the thematically similar tale in distinctio 4.

Walter the Reviser

The above certainly does not document every change that Walter makes as he revises. It provides enough of an overview to address one major issue concerning the textual state of the De nugis curialium. The minor revisions all point to the same direction of change: if we grant Walter even the least bit of authorial competence, in each of the alterations discussed above the stories found in distinctiones 4 and 5 seems to be the earlier version of their counterparts in distinctiones 1 and 2. The major revisions, which focus mainly on narrative structure, also point to this direction of revision. However, to my mind the minor changes most convincingly demonstrate that the doublets do indeed result from the process of revision. Otherwise, one would have to suppose that as Walter rewrites, he is reducing his alliteration, choosing less striking or appropriate words, and generally impairing the rhetorical success of his work. A few may prefer this view of Walter; I find it unlikely. The man who could gleefully write “si me ruditus ruditas ridiculum reddiderit” almost certainly did not restrain his alliteration and wordplay as he revised.¹⁰⁵ Alternatively, one could suppose that the doublets are merely different versions of the same story, recorded decades apart. However, the direct verbal similarities, often exact, in the doublets prove that Walter had an earlier version in front of him as he reworked his prose. The unfinished textual state of the De nugis curialium has even tidily provided us with another group of doublets with which we can compare Walter’s revisions. In distinctio 1, Walter twice recounts tales of the Carthusians and the Order of Grandmont. And while these doublets revisit the same material, they do not represent the same story at different stages of revision; Walter has composed them at different times with different aims. Aside from the broadest of generalizations, they share no direct verbal or thematic likenesses. After comparing these tales, the revised nature of the other doublets stands out in stark contrast.

Comparing Walter’s revision of his own tales with his use of other sources also demonstrates that Walter was a careful reviser of his own work as well as that of others. Like most medieval writers, Walter saw no harm in reworking stories from other authors and sources, but in this respect, Walter is no verbatim transcriber. When he uses another source, he tends to shape it to his needs, editing and rewriting it with a strong focus, unafraid to make radical, and felicitous, changes. Nowhere in his work do we see the wholesale borrowing that is not altogether uncommon in medieval composition, as in the Gemma ecclesiastica of Gerald of Wales, which lifts several passages from Peter the Chanter.¹⁰⁶ For example, Walter has carefully reworked a passage ultimately from Cicero’s De officiis to good effect in his story of Earl Godwine of Wessex.¹⁰⁷ The tale of Sadius and Galo, one of Walter’s most celebrated pieces, has been skillfully stitched together from several narrative sources.¹⁰⁸ And Walter’s refashioning of a story from the collection known as the Analecta Dublinensia is, according to one critic, “more coherent and more satisfying” than the original.¹⁰⁹ While an examination of Walter’s use of sources is outside the scope of this book, initial studies all agree that Walter was an adroit adapter who carefully modified earlier material. Clearly, Walter took the same approach when it came time to revise his own work.

That Walter revised the material in the De nugis curialium sheds light on another textual mystery. The Dissuasio Valerii, Walter’s anti-matrimonial tract found in distinctio 4, circulated separately from the De nugis curialium. Its popularity—it remains most famous as one of the major sources for Jankyn’s “book of wikked wyves” in The Canterbury Tales—has ensured a complex and rich manuscript tradition. The work’s most recent editors have argued that the transmission of the text was bifid, meaning that all witnesses of the Dissuasio stem from two families representing separate, irreconcilable archetypes.¹¹⁰ These archetypes, which they term “alpha” and “beta,” may well represent two different authorial versions of the Dissuasio Valerii.¹¹¹ Alpha appears to be the earliest, and seems to have been in circulation by 1184.¹¹² The copy of the Dissuasio found in the De nugis curialium, on the other hand, belongs to the beta family of manuscripts (though it is interestingly not the best representative of this family). This state of affairs would to be expected if the beta family represents a revised version of the Dissuasio, since by Walter’s own testimony the Dissuasio was already popular by the time Walter revisited it in the De nugis curialium. It seems then, that these two families of manuscript are best thought of as earlier (alpha) and revised (beta) versions of the Dissuasio Valerii. This works well with what we know about the circulation of the alpha and beta groups. The alpha group appears to have spread rapidly throughout the continent and is by far the larger of the two families. Only eight manuscripts belong to the beta group. It is very revealing that in addition to the copy of the Dissuasio in the De nugis curialium, only one other manuscript, British Library Additional 34749, names Walter Map as the text’s author—and both of these belong to the beta (revised) group.¹¹³ In other words, the only manuscripts that name Walter Map as the author of the Dissuasio Valerii belong to the small family of manuscripts that I believe represents the revised version of the text, a situation that accords with what Walter himself tells us: that he only added his name after the Dissuasio became incredibly popular. Tellingly, lines 284–317, which contain an overtly Christian exhortation and thus destroy the illusion that the text is indeed ancient, seem to have their origin in the beta version.¹¹⁴ Walter seems to have added this passage only after he revealed his own authorship of the Dissuasio. Only a thorough comparison of the alpha and beta traditions can confirm that he did in fact produce two separate versions—a task that the lack of a good alpha edition renders impossible for the moment. Nonetheless, internal evidence from the De nugis curialium has already shown Walter to be a thorough reviser. It is not surprising in the least that he revised his most successful work.

As a reviser, Walter is no anomaly in the twelfth century. Gerald of Wales wrote five versions of Topographia Hibernica.¹¹⁵ Peter of Blois seemingly could not resist the urge to fiddle with his letters, and later in his life he gave his letter collection a fairly radical overhaul.¹¹⁶ Likewise, the textual tradition of Nigel Wireker’s Speculum stultorum suggests that this popular satire also underwent one revision.¹¹⁷ Walter, like these and other authors, worked through his text with care, tinkering with words, rearranging phrases, and repurposing stories. Importantly, this care does not suggest a careless anecdotist who has hastily jotted down witty sayings. Walter Map may in fact have more in common with William Langland, the most well-known reviser in medieval England; it is a pleasant coincidence that an important copy of Piers Plowman resides in Bodley 851, a happy companion to the only copy of the De nugis curialium.