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 Rigg claims that distinctiones 1–3 “are in nearly final state,” while distinctiones 4 and 5 consist largely of outdated drafts and material that Walter either had not yet reworked or had not yet decided where to place.27 While in the middle of reworking the De nugis, Rigg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
