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
