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08664_Field_TCGG T429.txt
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1996-04-10
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992b
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16 lines
What I have tried to demonstrate is that the Middle
Ages for various reasons and from various causes did not
possess the concept of ‘authorship’ in exactly the same
significance as we have it now. Much of the prestige and
glamor with which we moderns invest the term, and which
makes us look upon an author who has succeeded in
getting a book published as having progressed a stage
nearer to becoming a great man, must be a recent
accretion. The indifference of medieval scholars to the
precise identity of the authors whose books they studied
is undeniable. The writers themselves, on the other hand,
did not always trouble to ‘quote’ what they took from
other books or to indicate where they took it from; they
were diffident about signing even what was clearly their
own in an unambiguous and unmistakable manner.
The invention of printing did away with many of the