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

gutter Clare and the Ubiquitous Editor Editors have eer contend an important and powerful role in the works of John Clare, from Clares stimulate time until the present. An Invite to Eternity presents a model of that birth between text and editor in microcosm, from its composition inside the walls of a mental institution to its transcription by an creation attendant, to its early egress and its modern re-presentation today. Written in the 1840s, no extant manuscript of the verse form exists in Clares own hand and each discrepancy of the verse is inflected by its editor in different but always significant ways. In recent geezerhood, this is reflected in the sole copyright comptroller 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 chronicle of all of John Clares work is, in the end, a register about editorial control and influence. Even An Invite to Eternity, written in spite of appearance 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 problem of the editor. And, further, this problem of the editor is not angiotensin-converting enzyme confined to the past, to the actions of Clares original publisher John Taylor or to W.F. Knight, the asylum house steward who transcribed the poetry Clare wrote during his 20 odd years of confinement. In fact, debates continue and rankle 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 exacerbating and exaggerating this problem o... ...(29)Haughton.(30)Hugh Haughton and Adam 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 scalawag for a bibliography of news and journal articles concerning the controversy.(34)Robert Mendick, Poets Protest as US educatee 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 genteelness Supplement(39)See the Robinson version of the poem and the Grigson version, an example of the standardized Clare.