Cumulative Revision in John Gower’s Quicquid homo scribat

Abstract

ABSTRACT John Gower’s twice-revised short Latin poem on his blindness, incipit “Henrici quarti primus” / “Henrici regis annus” / “Quicquid homo scribat,” provides an opportunity to observe the author at work on self-revision. Gower was a compulsive reviser, and Quicquid homo scribat clarifies special details of his procedure. In bringing the poem into a new form, Gower saw fit to draw on two different prior iterations. This decision bespeaks a rhizomatic approach to revision and a multidirectional understanding of the implications of the literary work. Rather than work a poem up from nothing, Gower preferred to start with some metrical phrases already composed on the same or a related subject, either by another author or, often, by himself. To see Gower’s decision to revise as a compulsion, and therefore something less than a voluntary decision, is to understand the text on the page as a prosthesis constructed to enable the author to confront difficult circumstances. This essay reads revision in Quicquid homo scribat between Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of the rhizome and Julie Singer's concept of lyric prosthesis.