John Clare and the Ubiquitous Editor Essay -- Clare Poet Poem Poetic E

John Cl are and the ubiquitous Editor Editors have always played an important and powerful occasion in the feats of John Clare, from Clares aver time until the present. An take in to Eternity presents a model of that relationship between text and editor in chief in chief in microcosm, from its composition inside the walls of a noetic institution to its placement by an asylum attendant, to its early publication and its modern re-presentation today. Written in the 1840s, no extant multiple sclerosis of the numbers exists in Clares own hand and each version of the poem is inflected by its editor in different but always significant ways. In late years, this is reflected in the sole copyright cook over Clares work exercised by his most prominent editor, whose own interpretation of Clare governs the way the poet and his poems are presented to a modern audience.The publication history of all of John Clares work is, in the end, a history about editorial control and influence. Eve n An Invite to Eternity, written within the confines of a mental institution seemingly distant from the literary world, is not an exception to this rule, for it and Clares other asylum poems do not escape the power and fuss of the editor. And, further, this problem of the editor is not one confined to the past, to the actions of Clares real publisher John Taylor or to W.F. Knight, the asylum house steward who transcribe the poetry Clare wrote during his 20 odd years of confinement. In fact, debates continue and grate over the role of the editor in re-presenting Clares work to a modern audience should the modern editor present the unadulterated, raw Clare manuscript or a cleaned up, standardized version as Taylor did? Only alter and exaggerating this problem o... ...(29)Haughton.(30)Hugh Haughton and decade Phillips, Introduction Relocating John Clare, John Clare in Context. Ed. Hugh Haughton, Adam Phillips, Geoffrey Summerfield. (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1994) 19 .(31)Haughton and Phillips, 19 see Robinson, xii.(32)Robinson, xii.(33)See The John Clare Page for a bibliography of news and daybook articles concerning the controversy.(34)Robert Mendick, Poets Protest as US Scholar Corners Clare, Independent on Sunday, 16 July 2000. Online.(35)John Goodridge, Poor Clare, The Guardian, July 22, 2000. Online.(36)Goodridge The John Clare Page.(37)John Clares Copyright (letter), Times literary Supplement, July 14 2000, p. 15.(38)See Times Higher Education Supplement(39)See the Robinson version of the poem and the Grigson version, an example of the standardized Clare.