DRAFT

Kalamazoo 2002

Louise M. Bishop
Clark Honors College
University of Oregon
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~lmbishop

Handout: "Noli me tangere" and a medical recipe: discursive intersections

Bod. 591, fol. 56 r:

Ffor Noli me tangere// ffor noli me tangere take oyle of whete and of almondes and anoynte about hit and hit shall sece.

Modern English: For Noli me tangere [Latin: "Do not touch me"]: For Noli me tangere take oil of wheat and almonds and anoint about it and it shall cease.

From Bod. 591, fol. 107 r:

Her begynnethe a proscesse for wemen that ben in travell of childryn and how the mydwyffe shall do and helpe in every cawse as it aperithe after wretyn in latyn.

Modern English: Here begins a procedure for women that are laboring in childbirth and how the midwife shall treat them and help in every case, as it appears written below in Latin.

Petrarch, Rime sparse, poem 190

Una candida cerva sopra l'erba
verde m'apparve con duo corna d'oro,
fra due riviere all'ombra d'un alloro,
levando 'l sole a la stagione acerba.

Era sua vista si dolce superba
ch' i' lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro,
come l'avaro che 'n cercar tesoro
con diletto l'affanno disacerba.

"Nessun me tocchi," al bel collo d'intorno
scritto avea di diamante et di topazi.
"Libera farmi al mio Cesare parve."

Et era 'l sol gia volto al mezzo giorno,
gli occhi miei stanchi de mirar, non sazi,
quand' io caddi ne l'acqua et ella sparve.

A white doe on the green grass appeared to me, with two golden horns, between two rivers, in the shade of a laurel, when the sun was rising in the unripe season.

Her look was so sweet and proud that to follow her I left every task, like the miser who as he seeks treasure sweetens his trouble with delight.

"Let no one touch me," she bore written with diamonds and topazes around her lovely neck. "It has pleased my Caesar to make me free."

And the sun had already turned at midday; my eyes were tired by looking but not sated, when I fell into the water, and she disappeared.

Petrarch's Lyric Poems trans. Robert Durling (Harvard UP, 1976)

Who so list to hount, I knowe where is an hynde
But as for me, helas, I may no more:
The vayne travail hath weried me so sore.
I ame of theim that farthest commeth behinde:
Yet may I by no meanes my weried mynde
Drawe from the Diere: but as she fleeth afore,
Faynting I folowe. I leve of therefore,
Sins in a nett I seke to hold the wynde.
Who list her hount, I put him owte of dowbte,
As well as I may spend his tyme in vain:
And, graven with Diamonds, in letters plain
There is written her faier neck rounde abowte:
Noli me tangere, for Cesars I ame;
and wylde for to hold, though I seme tame.

Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. K. Muir (Routledge, 1955)

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