The English Language in Modern Times (Since 1400). Warsaw: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers; London: Oxford University Press, 1959.

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1 "A Polish Vernacular Eulogy of Wycliff." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 18 (1957): The English Language in Modern Ties (Since 1400). Warsaw: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers; London: Oxford University Press, "King Arthur in the Baltic Towns." Bulletin Bibliographique de la Societe Internationale Arthurienne 11 (1959): Antecedents ofthe English Novel, (fro Chaucer to Deloney!. Warsaw: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers; London: Oxford University Press, "Realisrn and Convention in Medieval Literature." Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny 11 (1964): Language and the StUdy of Languages TOday. Warsaw: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers; London: Oxford University Press, "Geoffrey of Monrnouth and Early Polish Historiography: A Supplernent." Speculu 44 (1969): "The Rhetoric of Public Speeches in Old Scandinavian (Chiefly Icelandic)." Scandinavian Studies 41 (1969): "Chaucer's Constance, Jonah, and the Gesta Roanoru." Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny20 (1973): "A Polish Analogue of the Man of Law's Tale." In Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, edited by Beryl Rowland, London: Allen and Unwin, "A Late Icelandic Saga as Parallel to Old French Literary Parody." Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny 23 (1976): THE AGONY OF INFLUENCE Faced by the prospect of identifying (let alone discussing) the influence of y work on others, I was at first nonplussed. How could I tell? Surely others are better placed to do this than I a. After soe reflection I realized that the proble I was having had ore really to do with how y work has been shaped by y experiences, both as a scholar and as a professor (the two are not synonyous, as we all know) in the Aerican acadey at a certain tie and place. So I'going to start by talking about the influences on e, and then I can perhaps begin to suggest soe ways y own work has shaped others. About a year ago, I was asked by a graduate student in art history for soe "insight" (as she was pleased to call it) into y ethods and approach to y work. She was writing a paper for her Methodology course, and was focusing on The Book ofmenlory. Flattered as I was, I also quickly realized that I hadn't ever actually thought out systeatically either y "ethodology" or y approach,

2 beyond what I have said about both in y recent work. Actually I've said quite a lot about both over the years, but I have coe late to pardigatic pronounceents about why I do what I' doing; that wasn't in the air when I was a pup. I responded to her soewhat as follows: y background is in English literature, language, and textual study, including the detailed lexical and rhetorical study associated with "New" Criticis, which then (the 60s) doinated the field. But I have always identified yself with uch broader interests than the strictly disciplinary. I never seeed to ake a happy fit with anyone discipline, any ore than I fitted into anyone place. I was born and raised in India, of Aerican Canadian parents, in a part of India where the overt presence of the British raj was inial (it was a "princely state" ruled by a Brahin faily), and in a edical center where Indianprofessionals greatly outnubered whites. I went to school in the far southof India, the high hills of Kerala state. There was nothing idyllic about any of this, but it sure was "different," as I discovered when y faily, for health reasons, returned peranently to the US. After a couple of unhappy years in upstate New York, we oved to New York City, where everybody was different, and at that tie, in the late 1950s,that was a relief to e. I did set about getting a first-rate education; in it fantasy and fiction generally played a great role. I acted in school plays (of course), I read lots of historical novels, including Anna Seton's story of Katherine Swynford and Iris Origo's book, The Merchant of Prato. As a sall child in India, I had played at Robin Hood with two of y friends, dropping out of a tree onto the "sheriffof Nottingha" (the younger brother of one of the) until his other found out and forbade any ore such play. The current investigation of "wonder" in the aking both of the Middle Ages and of edievalists certainly resonates with y own early experiences. I also think that growing up in rural India, at that tie distinctly a "edieval" country, played its role, and I a profoundly influenced still in y understanding of edieval works by such coplex sensory eories as being in a dark, sokey one-roo hut with only an opening in the thatch for a door and filled with dung and chickens and tiny children. Or listening at dawn to the eandering falsetto song of an ox-cart driver, carrying over the rhythic squeak of the wheels and the regular plod of the oxen's hooves in the thick road dust. I went to college (Wellesley) before one was required to specialize-y English ajor was inial (and uch of that I spent writing stories and poes rather than taking criticis courses), and we students were encouraged to explore any areas of the curriculu. I forally inored in both history and philosophy; I also had an inforal three-year tutorial in theology and church history fro two priests, I studied as uch natural science as I could, and soe art history (particularly a fine course on edieval sculpture). I read a great deal in college, finding books in part via the return cart when I worked at reshelving in the college reserved books roo. By the tie I'd graduated I'd developed a focus in "edieval studies," though no one called it that, but I was interested in a lot ore. My relationship to the discipline of English literary criticis has always been distinctly aslant and ranging widely away fro it.

3 So when I was required to subscribe to a single discipline in graduate school (Yale) and in the early years of y acadeic career, I was able to keep it fro constricting y ind too uch. I continued to read broadly in other disciplines. I focused on edieval literature at Yale again because I found that being a edievalist allowed e to roa far further in other fields than those of y cohort who did ore odern literature seeed able (or willing) to go at that point (this was the id-sixties). Furtherore when you are a edievalist, I found, the odernists pretty uch left you alone to wander as you pleased: the endeic back-biting and territorial disputes seeed far less wrenching aong edievalists. There was the faous quarrelbetween Robertson and Donaldson, but no one but edieval literature scholars cared about it or even understood the point. When I wrote a dissertation on Piers Plowan under Donaldson that was both a close, continuous "reading" of the text and exained Augustinian concepts of language, he thought it was ausing rather than a betrayal. In fact just after I'd turned it in, he reinisced a bit about the relationship between G. L. Kittredge and his students, coentingeorablythat Kittredge "ate" his students. He then said to e "of course, you've never been anybody's student." He was right. This has been less of a blessing than one ight at first think. Were the acadey truly a eritocracy, it wouldn't atter how or where one did one's work for all decisions would be taken on the erits. It is a profound hope to which even the ost apparently cynical of y friends have clung throughout their careerssoehow erit will shine through, the good guys will finally win (or at least I will finally win). My own belief was shattered copletelywhen 1was denied tenure in y first job (at Sith), after being constantlytold by y senior colleagues how wonderful 1was, as a teacher and as a scholar (1 was one of very few in the departent at that tie who published articles). The proble was that 1didn't fit in. So when 1was reviewed for tenure, 1was flatly turned down by the departent (I got the letter on Thanksgiving eve, 1971). My research was described as derivative, tendentious, and unpublishable-that last characterization was ade of a draft chapter fro The Search for St. Truth. I was "too close to" soe of y students. I'd been huiliatingly divorced. This being 1972,when a second woan in y departent was denied tenure, we filed a discriination grievance with the state of Massachusetts, and then our troubles really started. The college defended itself. Soe senior faculty said that 1had to be stopped because "the lesbians" were trying to take over both the college and Northapton. 1was "outed" aong the Sith alunae clubs in the east coast, and perhaps elsewhere. But the ost extraordinary experience for e was when y departent colleagues, one by one (all ale), testified under oath to the hearing judge why they had voted against e. That has to be every acadeic's worst nightare-but it actually wasn't so bad. The senior edievalist said it was because I couldn't "properly" pronounce the Middle English diphthong "ai" (I' not aking this up). Another (the one who'd hired e) had such nice things to say about e under oath that even he couldn't figure out why he'd voted against e. Another said 1was better off professionally being out of Sith anyway, so he'd voted against e out of concern for y future success. The

4 college lawyer said I was "copetent but not excellent"-later I had a tee-shirt ade up with this slogan. Legal proceedings take a very long tie to settle: this one ended ten years later under ters that I a not peritted to divulge even now. When y "terinal year" was up, I still had no job for the fall. I got y last check in the iddle of May. I applied for uneployent. In early June, having spent a week on Cape Cod with a friend, I returned to y house to find the phone ringing. It was Talbot Donaldson, telling e iediately to call the chair at Case Western Reserve University. A position had opened up because the person who had initially taken the job had resigned. I was hired by the Chair and the Associate Huanities Dean. When the "real" Dean returned fro France later in the suer, he called up the departent Chair deanding to know why she had "hired that trouble-aker fro Sith." It was then that I discovered that a couple of y forer colleagues had taken it upon theselves to be sure that I never worked in the acadey again (their words). They did this by calling their friends and by planting bad recoendations in y file. It was thanks to tips fro people who interviewed e for other jobs that I found this out, and I a grateful to the for their help and their good sense. This experience taught e to respect luck ore than erit, to understand just how circuscribed and weak the criteria of "erit" are in actual practice, and how very uch erit needs vigilant protection. It also taught e that huanintervention, for good and ill, really does shape the fates of actual people's careers. I "lucked out" through the decency of any people, soe of who were y friends, soe of who didn't know e in person but thought I deserved better than I'd gotten. I have tried to reeber this when I've had a chance to help the careers of others; I ake no apology for doing so, because lowe everything to the critical invention of other scholars at crucial points in y career. The experience also turned e into an optiist, perhaps paradoxically. I was also fortunate to have spent fifteen years in id-career at a low-profile university, in a city where I had great colleagues but which was distinctly not an acadeic hot-spot. I et these colleagues not so uch on capus but at the Newberry Library, which had an "education and research director" (Richard Brown, an Aerican historian) who believed, correctly, that the library should serve as a eeting-place for scholars in a variety of lesser-represented areas (such as edieval studies), affording the both study space and also the opportunity to offer graduate seinars in subjects their hoe institutions couldn't support. Being isolated in this way allowed e the luxury to forulate y own set of questions and discover y own subject atters in conversation with a steady strea of edievalists in other disciplines, both fro around the area and fro abroad, who were vital to e in forulating the paraeters of y research both for The Book ofmeory and The Craft ofthought. I've both observed and been told that people in English have been perhaps the slowest to pick up and work with the aterial and concepts in those two books-this used to puzzle e,

5 but I realize now that it is because any of y ethods and approaches are not those of literary criticis. I think they are iensely illuinating of literature, as well as other arts, but it is true that scholars in usic, art history, religion, psychology, archival design, and anuscript studies have taken y work up far ore quickly and fruitfully than people doing literary criticis. I was asked by a student in a seinar a few weeks ago just what use y ethods and approaches were to a reader for uncovering the eaning of a poe like Pearl (he'd just read y piece on Pearl and Psychoachia in Tavorina and Yeager's The Endless Knot). I had to say "not uch." I said it cheerfully. My work (even as far back as y book on Piers) has tended to focus on "aking" and on process rather than on literary eaning per se. I find coposition (all coposers start as readers) ore copelling intellectually than I do hereneutics, and I suppose that is in part why y work has been taken up ore readily by those dealing with siilar probles in usic, architecture, design, and anuscript art. In forulating this set of questions about the cognitive function and procedural nature of various aspects of reading and coposing an artistic work, rhetoric, especially in its aspect of invention, has proven ore useful to e than ost later literary theory, and as y career has atured I have coe to think of yself ore as a historian of rhetoric than a literary critic. (Actually I never was a literary critic.) Richard McKeon observed long ago that the arts of the Middle Ages could well be studied together as essentially rhetorical expressions; I have recently taken that to heart in y work, I hope with soe success. One result is that the activity of "reading" can be readily understood as varieties of perforance, as of a script or score, rather than as an ever-elusive "interpretation" of a work. Coposition can be understood, at least in part, as a procedure involving an indefinite nuber of re-readings and"sortings" of known texts. "Truth" belongs to ethics (ethos) and intention ore than to logic. Psychology as pathos is an attribute of audience ore than of individual, and it requires varieties of intensely affective perforance-by author, text, and audience-to persuade. In rhetoric, eoria relates to coposition rather than to accurate repetition. And all coposition (invention), like all subsequent reading, is "occasional," ebedded in tie and location. Ifsoe edievalists learn these approaches fro y work, I will be well satisfied. But I hope ost of all that y life in the acadey has been of soe real help to soe actual people-that's the optiist in e. And I learned it during a very hard tie. Mary Carruthers

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Scripture used from the KJV of the Bible. Published by: WinSome Learning Copyright 010 John & Pa Page No part of this book ay be reproduced by any eans without the written perission of the authors. However, if you have purchased this book, you do have the authors' perission