New Approaches to Medieval Communication?1

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24 MARCO MOSTERTsion of saga knowledge; 28 on the literacy of the late medieval Yorkshiregentry; 29 on Anglo-Saxon England; 30 on the Lollards; 31 Byzantium; 32 late medievalFlorence and Venice; 33 ... The list is almost endless. Simultaneously, attemptswere made by medievalists to further refine the concept of literacy, forinstance by adding adjectives to it. Thus we have visual, female, lay, cultural,early, professional, runic, Jewish, verbal, Christian, pragmatic and religiousliteracy. 34 In most cases the use of an adjective is elucidating; in some it createsmetaphors for something which ought not to be termed literacy. It is merelyevidence of the use of the current buzzword.Quite often ‘literacy’ is used in opposition to ‘orality’. ‘Oral’ has beencommon to denote spoken as opposed to written modes of communication fora long time. 35 The techniques of ‘oral tradition’, the transmission of knowledgewithout recourse to writing, have been a preoccupation of historians and literaryhistorians for some time. 36 The use of the term, however, seems relativelyrecent. Spencer Cosmos used it in 1977 in his study of Bede’s Life of St.Aidan. 37 Since then, among other things due to the influence of the Belgiananthropologist Vansina, who was trained as a medieval historian, 38 the term hasbecome current. In 1986 a journal called Oral Tradition started to appear. 39The word ‘orality’ seems to appear in medieval studies as late as 1986,when Evelyn Birge Vitz uses it in a study of the Old French octosyllabic couplet.40 She explicitly refers to Walter J. Ong’s synthesis of 1982, Orality andLiteracy: The Technologizing of the Word. 41 Ong can indeed be said to havedone for orality what Goody and Watt did for literacy. In the third chapter of28 No. 328 (TOMMASSON, 1975).29 No. 302 (VALE, 1976).30No. 291 (WORMALD, 1977).31 No. 1509 (ASTON, 1977).32 No. 175 (BROWNING, 1978).33No. 252 (HYDE, 1979).34Visual: No. 410 (MCCLINTOCK, 1981); lay: No. 258 (LAWRENCE, 1985); cultural: No. 44(GATCH, 1986); early: Nos. 306 (HARVEY, 1987) and 333 (FRANKLIN, 1987); professional:No. 768 (GONZALEZ CASANOVAS, 1990); runic: No. 284 (DEROLEZ, 1990); Jewish: No. 343(REIF, 1990); verbal: No. 422 (DIEBOLD, 1992); female: No. 1116 (MCKITTERICK, 1992);Christian: No. 342 (BEDOS-REZAK, 1993); pragmatic: No. 1137 (ed. BRITNELL, 1996); religious:No. 1519 (RITARD, 1997).35Cf., e.g. No. 1280 (CURSCHMANN, 1967).36Nos. 651-722, 205, 327, 1531.37No. 1531.38 Nos. 647-649.39No. 667.40 No. 1389 (VITZ, 1986).41 No. 129 (ONG, 1982); No. 1389 (VITZ, 1986), p. 300.
New Approaches to Medieval Communication?25his book, “Some psychodynamics of orality”, he outlines the differences betweenthinking in oral and literate societies 42 – and, as Goody and Watt, seesmajor adjustments to consciousness thanks to access to literacy. 43 Because ofthe debate about orality in anthropological circles, 44 medievalists, apart fromliterary historians who used it in a restricted sense, 45 have tended to avoid theuse of ‘orality’ for about a decade; 46 since 1990 the term has gradually becomeaccepted. 47 In general, though, the use of ‘orality’ remains restricted to certainforms of oral communication; and there is a tendency among medievalists notto speculate about orality’s possible implications for thought or the organizationof society.The German terminology for literacy and orality had a slightly differentdevelopment. The nearest equivalent to ‘literacy’ is ‘Schriftlichkeit’. In a posthumouspublication of Fritz Rörig, published in 1952, he distinguished between‘Schriftwesen’, the technical term for the conditions of the productionof the written word in document or book form, 48 and ‘Schriftlichkeit’, thedegree to which the written word was used in any period. If this degree is soextensive that the use of writing may be assumed for everyone, then ‘generalliteracy’ may be said to exist; if the use of writing in public and private life isabsent or virtually absent, then ‘illiteracy’ (‘Schriftlosigkeit’) may be said toexist. 49 The development of the meaning of ‘Schriftlichkeit’, influenced byAnglo-Saxon studies of literacy, 50 is parallel to the development of the meaningof ‘literacy’. In German, too, adjectives have been developed, so that onehas, for instance conceptual, vernacular, and pragmatic literacy. 51 ‘Schriftkul-42 No. 129 (ONG, 1982), pp. 31-77.43 No. 129 (ONG, 1982), pp. 78-116.44 Nos. 61 (ONG, 1987), 70 (STREET, 1987), 48 (HENIGE, 1988), and especially Nos. 82(FINNEGAN, 1988) and 42 (FINNEGAN, 1990).45Nos. 1390 (VITZ, 1987), 46 (GREEN, 1990), 273 (GREEN, 1990), 174 (BEATON, 1990).Green, e.g. (No. 46) focuses on the implications of orality for the history of reading (preparingNo. 896 (GREEN, 1994)).46An exception is No. 233 (GELLRICH, 1988).47See, e.g. Nos. 781 (MEWS, 1990), 290 (VANDERBILT, 1990), 286 (MILLER, 286), 718(MURRAY, 1994), 316 (STEVENSON, 1995) and 268 (INNES, 1998).48 See W. WATTENBACH, Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter, 3rd edn. (Leipzig, 1896), dealingwith the production of written texts and its conditions.49No. 207, p. 29. ‘Illiteracy’ is also used in No. 31 (BÄUML, 1980), written by an AustrianbornGermanist, and in No. 415 (CAMILLE, 1984). ‘Illiteracy’ exclusively refers to absence of thewritten word; it should not be confused with ‘orality’.50 See, e.g. the literature referred to in No. 75, 24 (1990), pp. 390 ff.51 ‘Konzeptuelle S.’: No. 57 (OESTERREICHER, 1993); ‘volkssprachliche S.’: No. 421(CURSCHMANN, 1996); for ‘pragmatische Schriftlichkeit’, see infra, p. 26.
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