How to Read Walter Map. For years people thought that they were reading Walter Map, and they were not'. In their haste to bestow the highest approval on Walter Map i. In modern times, trivializing Map begins most formidably with the very fine edition and occasionally squeamish translation provided by M.
Max Manitius offered a more comprehensive judgement when he. Cum a palacii descendunt palatini negociis, regalium operum immensitate defessi, placet humilium inclinari colloquia, ludicrisgue leuare pondera seriorum. Hoc tibi vultu placeat, philosophice vel divine pagine senatu respiraveris, voluminis buius innobiles et exangues ineptias audire vel legere recreacionis et ludi gracia. In such a mood may you be pleased, when you snatch a respite from grave counsel with the philosophic or the sacred page, either to read or listen to the insipid bloodless follies of this book for recreation and sport.
As Lewis Thorpe, however, points out 7, Walter himself never describes his text nu gae. Medieval readers, however, also did not easily tolerate the full range of possibilities for serious play; at least two of Walter's contemporaries objected to his writings. Jam nugas dedisse tuas vel fine dierum,. Quod decuit juvenem non decet esse senem Ludicra nugarum nisi sint deleta tuarum. Fletibus hat vita, delusus es, Archilevita. Non ergo studia nostra sint haec, sed remedia quaedam tionis subsidia, ut tum demum scilicet ad haec respiciamus cum a majoribus respiramus.
Therefore let them not be our studies, but our relief, as aids to recreation, so that we may finally turn to them to rest from greater things. When once he discards his Euphuistic balance and alliteration, puns, conceits, and classical mythology, he is a spirited narrator, with a curt, rapid style, and a natural felicity in words». Curtius, however, devotes his attention to its origin in pagan and Christian notions of literary decorum and does not consider the satirical use of the topos.
Walter's use of the topos is, in a sense, impersonal, and functions as part of his diatribe against the court, which he regularly compares to hell Reversing the conventional panegyric in which the poet represents himself as incapable of doing justice to his glorious patron, Walter indicates that, in the face of courtly enormity, no poet could possibly perform competently.
