Pomel, Fabienne
The Problems in Rewriting: The Incipits in Guillaume de Digulleville's Pelerinage de Vie Humaine and Their Later Revisions
- 2003.
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Guillaume de Digulleville (1355), the Angers cleric (who rewrote the work in prose in 1465), and the Clairvaux monk (who revised it in verse around 1500) both rewrote the P?lerinage de Vie Humaine. The incipits enable us to analyze the way the text was transmitted and represented. While self-rewriting seems to be a disavowal or a form of redemption, later rewritings attempt either to update the text or to restore it to its original state. The removal of the oral aspect in Guillaume's version indicates a move toward an individualized and silent reception, which promotes a fragmented way of reading. His rewriting makes partial re-use of the first version, while the shift from verse to prose involves lexical and syntactical work. The Clairvaux monk's position is interesting in that he defends the text in verse against the "depraved" prose, and thus the first version as opposed to the second.