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Introduction
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a scrivener is defined as 1) "a professional penman; a scribe, copyist; a clerk, secretary, an amanuensis"; 2) a notary; 3) an author; 4) a notary, or a financial broker or someone who invests other peoples' money. The term is ultimately derived from the Latin scribere, "to write." The important point is that the scrivener works for other people: copying their writings, notarizing their documents, or manipulating their money. One might ask if any writer is anything more than a scrivener: copying down the word of God (the biblical "authors"); the inspiration of the Muse (Plato's Ion, as Socrates instructs Ion: "This gift you have of speaking well on Homer is not an art; it is a power divine ..." [533d]); or the manners and mores imbedded in a particular genre (e.g. the novel, as noted in Roland Barthes' essay, "The Death of the Author"). As followers of Jacques Derrida have noted, the relationship between author and text is, at best, problematic.
As the OED definition reveals, the scrivener can be a mere copyist, or he can play a more active part in manipulating and interpreting the writings of others. The most famous scrivener in western literature is Herman Melville's Bartleby, who refused to degrade himself by copying out his employer's thoughts, and brought on his own death in the process. In this paper I would like to place the Bartleby experience in a historical perspective, relating Melville's Bartleby to other scriveners, both before and after Melville, in roughly chronological order.
Scriveners
Dante (1265-1321), not known for his self-effacement (he considered himself to be one of the greatest poets who ever lived), does at one point humble himself before the greatness of his theme. In the tenth canto of the Paradiso (the third canticle of his Commedia), Dante suddenly shifts from his self-proclaimed image as a great epic poet comparable to Vergil and Homer, and redefines himself as a humble scribe, like the biblical writers. "Stay on your bench now, reader ... I have set your table. From here on feed yourself, / For my attention now resides / In that matter of which I have become the scribe" (11. 22-27). His attention will now focus on the...