Oral and Written Communication in the Medieval Countryside
Peasants - Clergy - Noblemen
Edited by Anna Adamska Edited by Marco Mostert
Hardback (Published)
(December 2022)
ISBN: 9782503589053
Price: $150.00
On back order
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
Transforming the Medieval World
Uses of Pragmatic Literacy in the Middle Ages (A CD-ROM and Book)
Volume 6
Ruling the Script in the Middle Ages
Formal Aspects of Written Communication (Books, Charters, and Inscriptions)
Volume 35
Epigraphic Literacy and Christian Identity
Modes of Written Discourse in the Newly Christian European North
Volume 4
Sins of the Tongue in the Medieval West
Sinful, Unethical, and Criminal Words in Middle Dutch (1300-1550)
Volume 36
Diplomatics in the Netherlands
The Use, Editing, and Study of Charters by Dutch Historians from the Middle Ages to the Present
Volume 63
Strategies of Writing
Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages: Papers from Trust in Writing in the Middle Ages (Utrecht, 28-29 November 2002)
Volume 13
Looking Back from the Invention of Printing
Mothers and the Teaching of Reading in the Middle Ages
Volume 40
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
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