Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius

Forms of Writing and Rhetorical Spaces in the City

By (author) Jakub Niedzwiedz

Book cover: Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius

Extent: 810 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Early Modern & Renaissance Studies, Language & Linguistics, Medieval Studies

Series: Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy

Series volume number: 55

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(September 2023)

ISBN: 9782503604305

Price: $175.00

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Synopsis
Contributing Authors

This study shows how a variety of oral and written registers of rhetoric informed the ways the inhabitants of the multi-ethnic and multilingual city of Vilnius on the north-eastern border of Europe went about their daily life, while they also played their role in a region that is usually overlooked in studies of urban language, liter

Late medieval and early modern cities in Europe could not exist without the use of the written word. Based on a case study of Vilnius – the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the fourteenth-eighteenth centuries – this book shows how rhetoric influenced all the spheres of urban literacy: the rules of writing, rhetorical genres and their functions, and the social practices of producing, preserving, and disseminating texts. Vilnius was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-scriptural city, and its literary culture was particularly rich. What was the legal basis of the city? Who were the professionals of the written word? What was the role of schools and books in the literary culture of the city? How did women participate in Vilnius’s textuality? Which rhetorical genres were used? This study is based on research into the different types of texts used in Vilnius: contracts; last wills; sermons; municipal, state, and church records; primers; shopping lists; poetry; manuals; and letters, in Polish, Latin, Ruthenian, Lithuanian, Yiddish, and other languages written or printed in five alphabets. The rhetorical organization of Vilnius can serve as a model for examining other towns of the time. It also shows the complexity of the use of script in the multi-ethnic urban communities of North-Eastern Europe.

By (author) Jakub Niedzwiedz

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