Oral and Written Communication in the Medieval Countryside
Peasants - Clergy - Noblemen
Edited by Anna Adamska Edited by Marco Mostert
Much has been published over the last decades on the uses of literacy by the clergy, nobility, and town dwellers of the Middle Ages. By comparison, very little attention has been devoted to the use of writing by the inhabitants of the medieval countryside. This book aims to remedy this situation. In many different regions of medieval Europe, the vicinity of even the smallest of towns and market places suggested the use of the written word. Even peasant communities and individual peasants came into contact with writing, and on occasion wrote texts themselves – or had them written for them. The professionals and semi-professionals of the kinds of writing we associate mainly with urban literacy proved to be real ambassadors of pragmatic literacy in the European countryside. The Church was present there as well, with clergy engaged in pastoral care. And the landowners, many of whom belonged to the lower nobility, also played a role in the process by which the countryside slowly but steadily acquired literate mentalities. These fundamental developments are seen against the background of the persistence of those oral and non-verbal forms of communication that continued to be vital in peasant societies. This book offers a selection of scholarly work made available for the first time in English; in addition, articles have been commissioned to augment what has been available for some time in other languages.
Much has been published over the last decades on the uses of literacy by the clergy, nobility, and town dwellers of the Middle Ages. By comparison, very little attention has been devoted to the use of writing by the inhabitants of the medieval countryside. This book aims to remedy this situation. In many different regions of medieval Europe, the vicinity of even the smallest of towns and market places suggested the use of the written word. Even peasant communities and individual peasants came into contact with writing, and on occasion wrote texts themselves – or had them written for them. The professionals and semi-professionals of the kinds of writing we associate mainly with urban literacy proved to be real ambassadors of pragmatic literacy in the European countryside. The Church was present there as well, with clergy engaged in pastoral care. And the landowners, many of whom belonged to the lower nobility, also played a role in the process by which the countryside slowly but steadily acquired literate mentalities. These fundamental developments are seen against the background of the persistence of those oral and non-verbal forms of communication that continued to be vital in peasant societies. This book offers a selection of scholarly work made available for the first time in English; in addition, articles have been commissioned to augment what has been available for some time in other languages.
- Edited by Anna Adamska
- Edited by Marco Mostert
Other Titles in this Series
Homo Legens
Styles et pratiques de lecture: Analyses comparees des traditions orales et ecrites au Moyen Age / Styles and Practices of Reading: Comparative Analyses of Oral and Written Traditions in the Middle Ages
Volume 26
Writing Names in Medieval Sacred Spaces
Inscriptions in the West, from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages
Volume 56
Manuscript Communication
Visual and Textual Mechanics of Communication in Hagiographical Texts from the Southern Low Countries, 900-1200
Volume 32
Medieval Women in Letters
Letters by Women, to Women, and about Women in Medieval Literatures
Volume 66
Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius
Forms of Writing and Rhetorical Spaces in the City
Volume 55
Documenting the Everyday in Medieval Europe
The Social Dimensions of a Writing Revolution, 1250-1350
Volume 42
Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages
Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green
Volume 12
Understanding Monastic Practices of Oral Communication (Western Europe, tenth-thirteenth centuries)
Volume 21
Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Papers from Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible, 400-1000 (Utrecht, 11-13 December 2003)
Volume 14
Stilus – modus – usus
Regeln der Konflikt- und Verhandlungsfuhrung am Papsthof des Mittelalters / Rules of Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at the Papal Court in the Middle Ages
Volume 44
The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries)
Volume 47
Reading Images and Texts
Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication. Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7-9 December 2000
Volume 8
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