Cento

Use in the book

The first cento follows Burton’s admission that he belongs among the excessive producers of books. A good housewife makes one cloth from different fleeces, and a bee gathers wax and honey from many flowers. His literary collection likewise becomes a new whole. He adds that he has wronged no author and given each his due. The next paragraph makes the claimed distinction concrete: named borrowing is opposed to stealing whole verses, pages or treatises while concealing their authors. This is Burton’s account of his practice, not a verification of every source or attribution.

The gathering images continue into digestion: the material is mostly other writers’ and yet his, recognizable in origin but different in its new form. He claims to arrange what he takes; the following Maceronicon gives composition and method as his own contribution. Concoction, especially concoquo · conquoquere–V079, explains the digestive wording of this same passage. Here it matters because the cento’s patchwork is presented as organized transformation, not an unarranged heap.

That defence is deliberately unsettled. After allowing that a later writer can add to predecessors, Burton confesses a catalogue of faults, including a rapsodie of rags from several dung-heaps. But he calls the faults partly deliberate, then admits that accusing himself first can forestall an opponent. He will neither claim too much nor take too much from his own merit. The ugly patchwork is thus a staged adverse description, not a simple withdrawal of the defence of compilation. Excrements, excrement · excrements of authors, already explains the neighbouring ‘excrements of authors’ in this same catalogue.

The second Cento changes the practical use of the word without changing its basic meaning. Answering an imagined objection that the preface is too satirical for a clergyman, Burton distinguishes an assumed part from the person acting it. The collection speaks through others: ‘not I, but they that say it.’ He invokes the ancient satirists’ freedom and proceeds to defend speaking against vices rather than persons. Yet the subsequent defiance turns into recantation, fear, a confession of having wronged himself and a request for forgiveness. Borrowed voices are one resource in that unstable defence, not proof that every sharp statement is someone else’s responsibility.

Related entries

Humane learning: secular learning and the self-implicating satire of compilers.

Science: learned knowledge and its disciplines.

Schoolmen: scholastic authorities and their treatment.

Parrhesia: frank speaking and the preface’s reversals.

Fustian and bombast: inflated literary expression and the author’s disclaimers.

Concoction: literary digestion in the shared passage, concoquo · conquoquere–V079.

Excrements: ‘excrements of authors,’ excrement · excrements of authors.

Habit and disposition: assumed costume and persona, assumed habit; Action, act · acts · local use 2, and Affection, affect · affects, retain acting and assuming the part.

Satire and satirical writing: genre, practitioner and the risk of injury.

Cacoëthes and scribbling: the urge to write and the scribblers who reject citation.

Stationers and printing: material publication and revision, distinct from the cento’s method.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 15, 1–4; Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 1self-inclusion among book producers; weaving, bees, acknowledged borrowing, digestion and the claimed work of arrangement. The central passage is the passage.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 5–8possible improvement upon predecessors, the rapsodie of rags, and the explanation of pre-emptive self-criticism.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 21–36the second Cento, assumed person, claims of satirical licence, subsequent recantation and the memory of injury.

In this edition

‘This Cento’ becomes ‘this patchwork’; the second Cento likewise becomes patchwork. The equivalent retains the material image and makes the learned literary name accessible. It does not itself imply an absence of purpose or organization: the claim for method in the next paragraphs supplies the opposite possibility. The note explains the garment and literary senses; the accompanying note explains the later relation to assumed costume and voice.

Maceronicon becomes medley; the edition’s note explains its mixed, macaronic character. Rapsodie also becomes patchwork, but ‘of rags’ and the dung-heaps make this occurrence derogatory. These are distinct original words brought together by an English access term. The act of digesting borrowed material and the phrase for assumed costume retain their fuller explanations in Concoction and Habit and disposition, rather than acquiring different meanings merely because they surround Cento.

cento

A literary patchwork assembled from other writings; here Burton’s name for his own gathered composition, used both to defend compilation and to assign provocative words to borrowed voices.

Grammar: Singular count noun, printed Cento; object of collected and predicative noun after is.

Original text: “this Cento out of divers Writers”. In the modern column: “this patchwork from various writers”. The assembled book is compared with cloth woven from several fleeces and the bee’s gathering. Burton’s first-person defence claims labour and acknowledged borrowing; it does not independently verify every attribution. Cento corresponds to patchwork; this and the source phrase remain separate components.

Original text: “it is a Cento collected from others, not I, but they that say it”. In the modern column: “This is a patchwork collected from other writers: they say it, not I.” The same compositional term serves a disclaimer of responsibility for satirical words. A response to the objection that a clergyman is too satirical. Borrowed voice does not establish immunity: defiance is followed by recantation, fear and apology. Cento supplies patchwork; collected from others specifies provenance; the reordered final antithesis allocates speech to others.

Maceronicon

A medley of borrowed material and languages, the mixed composition Burton says his arrangement makes his own.

Grammar: Singular noun after this my, object of set out; supplied spelling Maceronicon retained.

Original text: “this my Maceronicon”. In the modern column: “this medley of mine”. Burton claims arrangement and method rather than invention of all the material. First-person claim, surrounded by claims of borrowing and earlier writers’ appropriation; not a certification that the named sources are correctly cited. Maceronicon gives medley; my becomes of mine. The editorial note explains the mixed or macaronic suggestion.

rapsodie

A patchwork or miscellaneous gathering, here contemptuously imagined as scraps taken from rubbish heaps.

Grammar: Singular noun in a rapsodie of rags; part of the catalogue of alleged stylistic faults.

Original text: “a rapsodie of rags gathered together from several dung-hils”. In the modern column: “a patchwork of rags gathered from several dung heaps”. The assembly image is turned against the book in an exaggerated confession of faults. Burton confesses the anticipated charges while saying the faults are partly deliberate; the passage calls this a pre-emptive accusation and resists both over- and undervaluing himself. Rapsodie corresponds to patchwork, not to the complete rubbish-heap image; rags and gathering supply its derogatory material.