[Milton-L] Re: authorship and the survival of evidence [was: Milton and Marx]

[Patrick Scott]

One relevant factor in the dei-dealization of authorship is differential
production and survival of evidence. Contractual and morte recently pre
and post contractual negotiation and worriting produce paper, paper that
tends to be in the hands of those with an interest in keeping it, while
motives and ambitions and hopes and dreams may eventuate in drafts and
even oems, but only from certain kinds of personalities get written
down, and only in some of those instances are to be taken wholly at face
value. It doesn't mean de-idealization is the truth about authorship,
but it does mean that evidence-based scxholaraship tends to incline that
way.  And surely Marx was saimply misremembering or mutating the
self-image of authorship of one of the first commercially-successful
poets, Pope, who lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came, but
nonetheless (if I remember rightly) did well for himself not only with
the Homer, but even with Windsor Forest. 

Patrick Scott
Director of Special Collections, 
Thomas Cooper Library,
& Professor of English,
University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
Tel: 803-777-1275
Fax: 803-777-4661, attn Dr Scott
E-mail: scottp at gwm.sc.edu