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3. From Utterance to Text: Authorizing the Mystical Word This book is not tvritten in order, everything after the other just as it was done, but as the matter came to this creature's mind \i~hen it was written down, for it was so long before it was written that she had forgotten the time and the order in which things befell. TheBook ofMagery Icempe And with the same traversing, dispersing gesture . . . ,she breaks with explanation, interpretation, and all the authorities pinpointing localization . Sheforgets. Sheproceeds by lapsesand bounds. Sheflieslsteals. Hiltne Cixous, TheNewl?,Born Woman The search for authority is a common practice among medieval texts, although the authorizing procedures of medieval texts vary across genres. Fourteenth-century literary texts, for example, often imitated the Aristotelian prologues of scriptural ccrnmentanr by ascribing the authority of their works to the primary author, God, and to human auctores.' Nevertheless , their reference to authority difered from the authorizing idioms of exegetical texts in that their self-conscious manipulation of auctores drew attention to their own creativity.The art of preaching, by contrast, drew its authority not from any personal creativity or from ancient authors, but from the office of preacher itself. Artes praedicandi, in fact, disavowed personal responsibility for auctoritas, using instead the model of scriptural authors and deferring to divine a~thority.~ The difference in authorizing procedures among medieval texts calls attention to the importance of authorization itself to medieval discourse. No matter what method is used, the validity of the medieval text depends on its inscribed authorizing gesture, even if that gesture is purely rhetorical. Medieval literary practice, like medieval exegetical practice, consists in this authorizing gesture which founds the text as \!dl as establishes the author as an auctor for the authorizing of future texts. A medieval text thus 98 Chapter 3 practices intertextuality to authorize itself at the same time that it sets itself up as "intertext" to some future work. Medieval mystic texts, as we saw in chapter 2, depart from this tradition of authorization. The chief difference is that, while literary and theological texts appeal to a written tradition in order to authorize their omin writing, mystic texts seek to authorize the oral text within their written texts. Utterance is central to mystical discourse. It is the sign of God's grace and the signal of His authorization. The mystic is required to verik the source of this utterance-that it comes from God rather than the devil. More importantly, she must verik that the place from which God speaks in her text is separate from that of the magisterium language. Her locus of utterance already threatens the Church's role as author of God's utterance. The mystic must authorize this utterance as the same as, and vet distinct from, the utterance proclaimed by the Church and her ministers. Such authorization can be trickv, since the position of utterance is ex cathedra.The mvstic text does not vie with the magisterium language of the Church for its position; rather, it defines and asserts an alternative location for divine speech altogether: the mystic's desire. The oral text is neither accurately rendered nor explicitly authorized by the written text. It lies beyond the capacity of the written text to apprehend except through varioussigna of the mystic's desire.The goal of mysticaldesire, as the Monk of Farne laments, is to imprint itself upon the hearts of readers even as written characters are presented to their eyes. Because this desire remains hidden in the mystic utterance, the mystic text must find other means of authorizing itself than the written text or the archive of authors availableto other kinds of texts. The task of authorizing the oral text is particularly problematic in the The Book ofMargery Kenzpe. Kempe's illiteracy raises the question of the relationship of author to book and of author to the mvstical tradition. Modern scholarship tends to privilege the \vritten text, often ignoring the oral text of Kempe's Book. Furthermore, her very authorship is often called into question where evidence of familiarin. with Latin or English mystical works may be found in her narrative. scholars prefer to attribuie the scriptural and mystical subtexts of Kempe's Book not to herself but to her scribe.3 Those scholars who do ascribe the book to Kempe's authorship often do so by way of criticism. Its lack of order, narrative repetitions, digressions , and general lack of spiritual depth are faults that some readers might attribute to...

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