The growth of literacy

1. The theory of orality and literacy.

Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (New York, 1965) and Epic Singers and Oral Tradition (Ithaca, NY).

Walter Ong, Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca, 1977), The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History, (New Haven, 1967; second edition, Minneapolis, 1981), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982).

Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context (Cambridge, 1977) and Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford, 1988).

Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1981), The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986), and The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987).

Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition. A Study in Historical Methodology, trans. H. M. Wright (Chicago, 1965) and Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985).

William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge, 1987).

Armando Petrucci, Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture, trans. Linda Lappin (Chicago, 1993).

Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago, 1994).


2. Oral traditions and written texts in the Middle Ages: General considerations.

Michael Richter, The Oral Tradition int he Early Middle Ages (Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental; Turnhoult, 1994).

D. H. Green, "Orality and Reading: The State of Research in Medieval Studies," Speculum, 65 (1990), pp. 267-280.

Oral and Written Traditions in the Middle Ages (New Literary History, 16.1; Baltimore, 1984).

A. N. Doane and Carol Braun Pasternack (eds.), Vox intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages (Madison, 1991).

Stephen Nichols (ed.), The New Philology (Speculum, 65.1; Cambridge, MA, 1990).

Jesse Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology, and Fiction (Ithaca, 1985).

Mark Jordan and Kent Emery (eds.), Ad Litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval Readers (South Bend, Ind., 1992).


3. Language and literacy in antiquity.

Peter Daniels and William Bright (ed.), The World's Writing Systems (Oxford, 1993).

Eric Havelock, The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences (Princeton, 1982) and The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven, 1986).

Jean Bottéro, Mésopotamie: L'écriture, la raison et les dieux (Paris, 1987); ET as Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods, trans. Zainab Bahrani (Chicago, 1992).

Berthold Ullman, Ancient Writitng and Its Influence (New York, 1932; reprint Toronto).

William Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, 1989).

Deborah Steiner, The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1994).

Jesper Svenbro, Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (Ithaca, NY, 1992).

Rosalind Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989).

Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, 1995).


4. Latinity and language in the early middle ages.

Martin Irvin, The Making of Textual Culture: "Grammatica" and Literary Theory, 350-1100 (Cambridge, 1994).

Mario Pei, The Language of the Eighth-Century Texts in Northern France (New York, 1932).

Carlo Battisti, "Latini e germani nella Gallia del nord nei secoli VII e VIII," and Dag Norbert, "Le développement du latin en Italie de Saint Grégoire à Paul Diacre," Caratteri del secolo VII in Occidente (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medio Evo, 5; 1958), pp. 445-84 and 485-503.

Roger Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France (ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs, 8; Liverpool, 1982) and Roger Wright (ed.), Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages (New York, 1991).

Pierre Riché, "L'instruction des laïcs en Gaule mérovingienne au VIIe siècle," Caratteri del secolo VII in Occidente (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medio Evo, 5; 1958), pp. 873-888; "La survivance des écoles publiques en Gaule au Ve siècle," Le Moyen Age (1957), pp. 421-36; "Les bibliothèques de trois aristocrats laïcs carolingiens," Le Moyen Age (1963), pp. 87-104.

Jacques Fontaine, "De la pluralité à l'unité dans le 'latin carolingien'?" in Nascita dell'Europe ed Europe Carolingia: Un'equazione da verificare, 2 vols. (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 27; Spoleto, 1981), pp. 765-805.

Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, "La 'renaissance carolingienne:' modèles culturels, usages linguistiques et structures sociales," BEC 139 (1981), pp. 5-35.

Michael Richter, "Kommunikationsprobleme im lateinishcen Mittelalter," Historische Zeitschrift 222 (1976), pp. 43-80 and "Die Sprachenpolitik Karls des Grossen," Sprachwissenschaft 7 (1982), pp. 412-37.

Marc van Uytfanghe, "Histoire du latin, protohistoire des langues romanes et histoire de la communication," Francia 11 (1983), pp. 579-613.


5. The vernacular languages of the earlier middle ages.

5A. The languages of Anglo-Saxon England.

Richard Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume I: The Beginnings to 1066 (Cambridge, 1992) and Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume II: 1066-1476 (Cambridge, 1992).

Orrin Robinson, Old English and its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages (London, 1992).

Fran Colman (ed.), Evidence for Old English: Material and Theoretial Bases for Reconstruction (Edinburgh, 1992).

Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 4; Cambridge, 1990).

Seth Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Lincoln, NB, 1991).

Charles Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English LIterature (Cambridge sTudies in Anglo-Saxon England, 6; Cambridge, 1993).

Simon Keynes, "King Athelstan's Books," in Michael Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds.), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143-201.

Donald Bullough, "The Educational Tradition in England from Alfred to Aelfric: Teaching utriusque linguae," in La Sculoa nell'Occidente Latino dell'alto Medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medio Evo, 19; Spoleto, 1972), pp. 453-94; revised and reprinted in Donald Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 297-334.

5B. The Germanic traditions.

D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800-1300 (Cambridge, 1994).

Jerold Frakes, Brides and Doom: Gender, Property, and Power in Medieval German Women's Epic (Philadelphia, 1994).

G. Ronald Murphy, The Saxon Savior: The Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth Century Heliand (Oxford, 1989) and Murphy's more recent translation of the Heliand.

Stephen Mitchell, Medieval Sagas and Ballads (Oxford, 1992).

R. G. Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace: A Study in Skaldic Narrative (Toronto).

5C. The Romance traditions.

Peter Haidu, The Subject of Violence: the Song of Roland and the Birth of the State (Bloomington, IN, 1993).

Urban Holmes, A History of Old French Literature from the Origins to 1300 (New York, 1948); Urban Holmes, and Alexander Schutz, A History of the French Language, revised edition (Columbus, Ohio, 1952).

E. R. Binué, El lenguaje tecnico del feudalismo en el siglo XI en Cataluna (Barcelona, 1957).


6. Literacy and the laity.

Herbert Grundmann, "Litteratus-illitteratus. Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter," Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 40 (1958), pp. 1-65.

James Westfall Thompson, The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1939).

Ralph Turner, "The Miles Literatus in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England: How Rare a Phenomenon?" American Historical Review 83 (1978), pp. 928-45.

Alfred Wendehorst, "Wer könnte im Mittelatler lesen und schreiben?" in Schulen und Studium im sozialen Wandel des hohen und späten Mittelalters, ed. Johannes Fried (Vorträge und Forshungen, 30; Sigmaringen, 1986), pp. 9-33. Primarily treats the later middle ages.


7. Literacy and the growth of record keeping.

Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990).

Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989).

M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England, 1066-1307 (Cambridge, 1979); Literacy and Law in Medieval England (London: Hambledon Press, 1992).

Bernard Guillemain (ed.), Temps, mémoire, tradition au Moyen Age (Aix-en-Provence, 1983).

Peter Classen (ed.), Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1977).

Janet Coleman, Medieval Readers and Writers, 1350-1400 (New York 1981).

Charles Radding, A World Made by Men. Cognition and Society, 400-1200 (Chapel Hill, 1985).

Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978).

Benoît-Michel Tock, Une chancellerie épiscopale au XIIe siècle: Le cas d'Arras (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1991).


8. Literacy in the later middle ages.

J. K. Hyde, Literacy and its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy, ed. Daniel Waley (Manchester, 1993).

Caroline Bourles and Annie Dufour (eds.), L'écrit dans la société médiévale. Divers aspects de sa pratique du XIe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1991).

Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors and Libraries in Europe Between the 14th and 18th Centuries, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Polity Press, 1993).

Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge, 1994).

A. G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066-1422 (Cambridge, 1992).

John Robinson (ed.), Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation: With the Manuscript at Arundel Castle (London, 1993).


9. The Arts of Memory.

Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory (Cambridge, 1990).

Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Mmroy and Oblivion at the End of hte First Millennium (Princeton, 1994).


10. Forgery.

Hubert Silvestre, "Le problème des faux au Moyen Age (A propos d'un livre récent de M. Saxer)," Le Moyen Age 66 (1960), pp. 351-70.

Giles Constable, "Forgery and Plagiarism in the Middle Ages," Archiv für Diplomatik 29 (1983), pp. 1-41.

Béatrice Fraenket, La signature: Genèse d'un signe (Paris, 1992).

Fälschungen im Mittelalter, 5 vols. (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 33; Hannover, 1988).


11. Literacy and the arts.

Conrad Rudolf, The "Things of Greater Importance": Bernard of Clairvaux's "Apologia" and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia, 1990).

Michael Camille, "Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Literacy," Art History, 8 (1985), pp. 26-49.

Celia Chazelle, "Pictures, Books, and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I's Letters to Serenus of Marseilles," Word and Image, 6 (1990), pp. 138-53.

Leo Treitler, "Oral, Written, and Literate Process in the Transmission of Medieval Music," Speculum, 56 (1981), pp. 471-91.

Rencontres de cultures dans la philosophie médiévale: traductions et traducteurs de l'antiquité tardive au XIVe siècle (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1990).


12. Prayer, sermons, and oral culture.

Marianne Briscoe, Artes praedicandi and Barbara Jaye, Artes orandi (Typologie des sources du moyen age occidental, 61; Turnhout, 1992).

Jacques Berlioz and Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (eds.), Les "exempla" médiévaux: Introduction à la recherche, suivie des tables critiques de l'"Index exemplorum" de Frederic C. Tubach (Carcassonne, 1992).


13. Paleography.

M. P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiqity to 1600 (1990).

Berhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge, 1990).

Julian Brown, A Paleographer's View: The Selected Papers of Julian Brown, ed. J. Bately, M. P. Brown and J. Roberts (1991).

Berthold Ullman, Ancient Writing and Its Influence (New York, 1932; reprint Toronto).

Jacques Lemaitre, Introduction à la codicologie (Textes, etudes, congrès, 9; Louvain-La-Neuve, 1989).

David Dumville, English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, 950-1030 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993).