1) the myth of unsullied work is the myth of unlimited opportunities.

2) about thirty years ago every major english department in the us had at least one person who held a nominal professorship but drew no salary. they had independent means and taught for the love of the work.

3) pope was the first english poet to support himself by writing.

4) at a recent renaissance conference a provocative suggestion was made (i didn't catch the name, eek.) to reorganise renaissance texts not by author but by patron. this, it was thought, would dispel the myth of unsullied work or at least reduce our attachment to the idea of an individual author's "sensibility," and to render impossible the desire to generalise about an author's "body of work," or to imagine a kind of authorial unity so that you can say, this is early so-and-so, and that's late so-and-so. i like that idea very much and would love to meet the person who proposed it and to see a list of texts organised by patrons. it sounds so logical, so interesting, i don't know why no one has thought of it before.