New Approaches to Medieval Communication?1

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28 MARCO MOSTERTEnglish. In 1989 Christoph Daxelmüller wrote of “literalized orality”(“literarisierte Mündlichkeit”) and “oral literacy” (“mündliche Schriftlichkeit”);67 four years later, Franz Bäuml talked of the same intermediate formsbetween absolutized orality and literacy. 68 Recently, ‘Verschriftung’ and‘Verschriftlichung’ have been used in relation with changes in the media ofcommunication, 69 a use of terminology which may contribute towards theneutralization of certain still prevalent value judgments on the various oral,written and non-verbal forms of communication.The rapid review of the English and German terminologies for the study ofmedieval communication, literacy and orality could be repeated for the otherlanguages in which work on the subject is being written. The word ‘communication’seems the least ambiguous (although French titles sometimes use ‘communication’in the titles of studies dealing with roads and waterways). There areproblems with the other words we have examined. French, for instance, lackswords for ‘literacy’ or ‘Schriftlichkeit’ (although ‘culture de l’écrit’ comesclose in meaning to ‘literacy’ and ‘Schriftkultur’), but has ‘oralité’ for ‘orality’.Dutch has the same flexibility as German, so that ‘verschriftelijking’ canbe used and understood as German ‘Verschriftlichung’. But Dutch scholarsshare the problems of their German colleagues when they try to translate theirterms in English 70 The Slav languages have their own problems with ‘literacy’and ‘Verschriftlichung’. 71 But although the notions of literacy and the developmentof literacy are difficult to put into words in some of the European languages,this has by no means stopped work to be done on the subject of medievalcommunication – even if some scholars, when they published their studies,were not aware that they might be extremely useful to self-confessed studentsof communication.What has been accomplished in the study of medieval communication?Perusal of the bibliography makes clear that publications whose titles lackthe words we have discussed have a bearing on our subject. Medieval communicationas it is understood by the authors of this volume has been studied in67No. 1060 (DAXELMÜLLER, 1989).68No. 267 (BÄUML, 1993).69 No. 137 (ed. EHLER and SCHAEFER).70The inept ‘literalization’, proposed in the translation of the Utrecht “Pionier projectVerschriftelijking” leads to misunderstanding.71 See the contribution of Anna Adamska to his volume (No. 330).
New Approaches to Medieval Communication?29one way or another from the beginning of this century – and even long beforethat. Although the bibliography represents only a small selection of work publishedbefore the 1960s and 1970s, it may be helpful to see roughly since whenpublications appeared, perusal of which may still be worthwhile at the end ofthe twentieth century. 72Not surprisingly, palaeographers, diplomatists, codicologists and historiansof reading have produced valuable work on the production and use of writtentexts long before the subject of medieval communication had been given aname. The topic of publication before the advent of printing was treated atleast as long ago as 1913; 73 that of the production of books in the vernacular in1920; 74 and the 1925 and 1927 publications of Joseph Balogh on praying,reading and writing aloud are still unsurpassed in the history of late antiqueand medieval reading. 75 The interest of the palaeographical study of punctuationfor the history of reading, however, did not become apparent until 1968, 76and the study of what space between words might mean for literate behaviourstarted only in 1979. 77The study of non-verbal communication, too, including as it does the objectsstudied by art history and musicology, has a long pedigree. Studies ofsmells, colours, clothes and symbolic objects other than what we nowadaystend to call works of art, are relatively scarce. The study of gestures, though ittoo has been broached before the Second World War, 78 has been vigorouslytaken in hand by August Nitschke from 1967 onwards. 79 He has been joinedmore recently by other scholars. 80 Important work has been done on the interactionbetween the visual arts and other media, especially texts. 81 MichaelCamille’s 1985 publication “Seeing and reading: Some visual implications of72 With the exception of the symbolism of the book, correspondence, and mandarin literacy,the sections on which are too short to warrant any serious consideration. Similarly, the ‘empty’section on the preservation of written texts has not been taken into account. It is clear, however,that, had these four sections been developed fully, the earliest publications included ought tohave dated from the nineteenth century ...73 No. 833 (ROOT, 833).74 No. 842 (DEANSLEY, 1920).75Nos. 859 (BALOGH, 1925) and 860 (BALOGH, 1927).76No. 968 (MOREAU-MARECHAL, 1968). See Nos. 946-991.77No. 983 (SAENGER, 1979).78Nos. 379 (LOMMATZSCH, 1910) and 374 (DELLING, 1925).79Nos. 382-389.80 Of whom the most important are Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (Nos. 392-394) and Jean-Claude Schmitt (Nos. 395-397).81 Nos. 413-457. Early examples are Nos. 449 (STAMMLER, 1962), 454 (ed. FRÜHMORGEN-VOSS and OTT, 1975) and 437 (MOIRAND, 1978).
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