Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling

Abstract

"Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling." This article takes a lexicographical approach to a central literary activity of the Middle Ages, compiling. Considering that medieval notions of composition can best be understood by looking at the writers' own vocabulary in context, it proceeds to look in that fashion at the verb compilo and its noun forms compilatio and compilator, beginning with the classical and late antique use of compilo to mean "plagiarism" and tracing the change to the neutral meaning "compile" in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This change, set against current scholarship which treats only the later and neutral meaning, illustrates attitudes of ancient and medieval writers toward borrowed and authoritative material. Since this look at one term of medieval composition relies on generous quotation of a variety of sources, it illuminates other vocabulary, and some of the topoi, of composing and collecting in the Middle Ages.

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