Reading, Writing, and the Sel Petrarch and His Forerunners* Brian Stock x oF Tite TecHNIQUES for describing the self that evolves during the later ancient period involves the real or imagined ‘use of reading and writing. The notion of the self thereby becomes interdependent with the subject's literary understanding. ‘Augustine brings the method to perfection in the Confessions, and largely ‘through his influence its imporance grows during the critical period between ancient and early modera culture. By the end of the Middle ‘Ages, the literary approach to the self occupies as important a place as the venerable concer with the seifas an aspect of sout or mind. Petrarch plays a major role in the last phase of this development, which takes place between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. He describes relationships between reading, writing, and the self in unprec- cedented detail. His much discussed “modernity” and “individuality” are best understood in the context of his search for the manuscripts of ancient authors and his accompanying reflections on his own literary activities. His voluminous correspondence also bears witness to his desire to leave a predominant literary portrait of himself for posterity. ven allowing for features of his approach which are his alone, it can be asked whether his manner of depicting the self belongs to a recogniz- able tradition of thinking. Ifo, who are his forerunners? What are the direct and indirect channels by which their ideas find their way into his ‘his ie the reveed text of lecture dlvered at the Pacific Northwest Rensiuance ‘Conference, Univer of Brith Columbia and a the Commonwealth Centr for Literary ‘and Gaara Change, Universi of Virginia, both in 1908, and subaequendy in French at the Ecole des Haotes Etades en Sciences Sociales, Pats. The bibliography on the topic ‘iscused is much larger than indicated. Some relevant studies are found inthe note of ‘ny euler paper, “The Self and Literary Experience in Late Anny and the Middle ‘Agen New Litmoy History, 2 (194), 89952. The Lain text of Petarch's De seco ‘confi var mea qcted inthe edition of Eugenio Carrara in Francesco Petre, Prox, ed. G Martello, P. G. Ricci, E Carara, and E. Bianchi (Milan, 1955) the twanaaione are mine. Na tay Wry 1985, 2877-789ns [NEW LITERARY HISTORY books? Also, can chronological boundaries be placed around the development, which grows from modest ancient roots! into a major ‘medieval language for describing the self? The chronology can be briefly traced through two quotations that are widely separated in time. The first is taken from Augustine's De Usiitate (Gredendi: “Cum legerem, per me ipse cognovi.Itane est?” (When I read, it was I who gained knowledge through myself. Or was it?)? These enigmatic words form a part of his review of his youthful reading of ancient poetry, especially Virgil, in Madaura and later in Carthage, ‘writen during the year of his ordination. He proposes that one learns nothing through the act of reading itself, just as in De Magist, written two years earlier, he maintains that knowledge about realities cannot be acquired uniquely through spoken words. In both cases (in facta single ‘ase), one does not gain information about things through linguistic signs but through a type of interior instruction whose origins can be traced ultimately to God. Furthermore, what one learns when one reads potentially instructive text like the Aeneid or the Bible is what one has {in mind beforehand, although that knowledge may be tucked away in the memory. far from conscious thought. When Augustine wrote the Confesions in 397-401, he transferred this manner of thinking to the problem of self-understanding. The reading of a book and the under standing of the self became analogous intentional activities. The autobi- ‘ography thus emerged as a canonical document in self-education in which the figure of the reader was both utilized and transcended. ‘The second quotation by which this tradition's chronology can be illustrated is from Part One of Descartes’s Discours de la méthode, Well aware of the tribulations of Augustine's education, he also mentions that he was “nourished on letters” from childhood, and he too rejected the ‘standard classroom experience, He was taught to believe “that by means [of books) a clear and certain knowledge could be obtained of all that ‘was useful in life." Yet, the more he acquired booklearning, the less he ‘was convinced that this was the case: “I found myself embarrassed with so ‘many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own jgnorance."* In contrast to Augustine, to whom truth is revealed in a single book, he repudiates the entire “scholastic method,” that is, the typically medieval way of establishing valid knowledge by comparing and consolidating different interpretations of texts. He shares with August- ine a skeptical outlook 28 well as the theme of deca ignorantia. Yet his solution to the problem of philosophical uncertainty is a return to ideas prevalent before the rise of the notion that truth can be found in ‘canonical “scriptures"—a solution, needless to say, which is definitively rejected by the bishop of Hippo in his lengthy reassessment of Hellenis-READING, WRITING, AND THE SEL ng tic thought in The City of God. Asa response to doubt, Descartes truss the logic of his own thinking, not the knowledge that he acquires from ‘books. As he puts it, he refuses to travel to foreign lands; he prefers to stay at home. ‘These two statements, which were made respectively in 391 and 1687, loosely frame the age of discovery of relations between reading, writing, and the self. Augustine stands atthe entry point; Descartes is witness (0 the conclusion of a lengthy phase of thinking that takes place during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. His solution to the traditional problem of self-definition involves rational demonstration rather than, literary models from classical or Christian antiquity. Yet he remains a part of an earlier period in placing his logical, ahistorical approach within a narrative of an individual's education in which books play a large if ambivalent role. The other great figure who concludes this age is Montaigne, who uses a different strategy to show that no certainty concerning the self can arise from literary models of the self. Petrarch offers his readers a summing up of this tradition in the Secretum (De secrto confit curarum mearum), the work of spiritual edification that he wrote between 1547 and 1358, partly in response to the entry of his brother, Gerard, into the Carthusian monastery at Montrieux, near Toulon, in April, 1343. ‘The presence of the theme can be ilustrated by the source for the appearance of virgin Truth in the work's preface. This is Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae 1, posal, where the comparable allegorical figure Cf Philosophy appears before the author, who has been unjustly con- demned and imprisoned by the emperor Theodoric. Boethius begins prose I with the verses of meter 1 already in his head; in his tearful complaint, he is “turning them over silently in his mind” before “sealing them through the office of his pen": “Haec dum mecum tacitus ipse reputarem querimoniamque lacrimabilem sili officio signarem."* Im- portant in this opening sentence is the phrase “tacitus...reputarem,” Which refers to mental writing and rereading in advance of committing thoughts to the permanent record of parchment, which becomes another realm of silence. Boethius’s cell is a Neoplatonic common- 1place—the imprisonment of the soul. What is new isthe suggestion that he can somehow write his way to freedom, or at least ascend through literary activity rather than through a purely spiritual elevation. In keeping with the Platonic hierarchy of the senses, the eye supersedes the ‘ear as Philosophy appears before him in a striking visual image, driving