Reading and Literacy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

212 Pages·2004·55.104 MB·English

by  Ian Moulton

R
eading
and
L
iteracy
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Arizona Studies in the M iddle Ages and the Renaissance
General Editors
Robert E. Bjork
Helen Nader James Fitzmaurice
Volume 8
R
eading
AND
L
iteracy
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Edited
Ian Frederick Moulton
BREPOLS
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Reading and literacy : in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. - (Arizona studies
in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ; v. 8)
1. Literacy - Europe - History - To 1500 - Congresses
2. Literacy - Europe - History - 16th century - Congresses 3.Books
and reading - Europe - History - To 1500 - Congresses 4.Books and
reading - Europe - History - 16th century - Congresses
I.Moulton, Ian Frederick, 1964- II.Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies III.Renaissance Society of America
302.2'244'094'0902
ISBN 2503513964
© 2004, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2004/0095/27
ISBN: 2-503-51396-4
Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction xi
IAN FREDERICK MOULTON
à*
Revertere! Penitence, Marginal Commentary, and the Recursive
Path of Right Reading 1
MARTHA DANA RUST
The Trope of Reading in the Fourteenth Century 25
BURT KIMMELMAN
English Auctores and Authorial Readers: Early Modernizations of
Chaucer and Lydgate 45
MICHAEL ULLYOT
A Survey of Verse Translations from French Printed Between
Caxton and Tottel 63
A. E. B. COLDIRON
Inscribed Meanings: Authorial Self-Fashioning and Readers’ Annotations
in Sixteenth-Century Italian Printed Books 85
BRIAN RICHARDSON
VI Contents
“Vaine Books” and Early Modern Women Readers 105
KATHRYN DeZUR
Poems as Props in Love ’s Labor’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing 127
FREDERICK KIEFER
The Masque as Book 143
LAUREN SHOHET
Rhetorics and Practices of Illiteracy or The Marketing of Illiteracy 169
HEIDI BRAYMAN HACKEL
Notes on Contributors 185
Index 187
Acknowledgments
Many of the essays collected in this volume were presented as papers at the joint
meetings of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Ren­
aissance Society of America in Scottsdale, Arizona, in April of 2002. Thanks are due to
all who contributed to making that conference a success, especially Robert Bjork, Di­
rector of ACMRS, William Gentrup, Assistant Director, and Laura Roosen, ACMRS
program coordinator.
I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all the anonymous readers who
gave useful and insightful suggestions on each of the essays in the volume. You shall
remain anonymous here, but you all know who you are (and so do I).
And lastly thanks are due to Karen Lemiski and the editorial staff at Medieval and
Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS), for doing such a lovely and efficient job on the
production of the volume.
When you have so many good people to work with, editing doesn’t seem like much
of a job, really.
IAN FREDERICK MOULTON

Introduction
IAN FREDERICK MOULTON
O dysseus, for all his craftiness, cannot read.
In contemporary society we automatically equate literacy with intelligence. It
is hard for us to imagine a culture in which reading is not the primary measure
of intellectual ability. But even the most intelligent of the Homeric heroes has no knowl­
edge of written language. Odysseus devises the Trojan horse, outwits the Cyclops, es­
capes Circe, survives the wrath of Poseidon, and journeys to Hades and back without
once setting pen to paper or reading a word. The illiteracy of Odysseus reminds us that
there is no necessary connection between literacy and intelligence. Our equation of in­
telligence and reading is culturally determined rather than natural or universal.
Odysseus is a fictional character, but one who embodies some of the highest ideals
of a highly intellectual and imaginative culture. For a more radical rejection of reading,
one has only to turn to one of that culture’s most innovative thinkers: According to
Plato, Socrates could read, but preferred not to. Socrates argued forcefully that reading
weakens the intellect because it encourages lazy reliance on written texts rather than
memory. He also criticizes books because they cannot answer reader’s questions, and
merely say the same thing over and over again, no matter how often you read them
(Phaedrus, 275). Clearly Socrates would have little patience for reader response theory.
Nonetheless, it is striking that a figure commonly renowned for his intellect is so dis­
missive of the intellectual value of reading — something we now all take for granted.
Of course, ancient Greek attitudes about the value of literacy derive in part from
their historical context. Homeric poetry evolved in a culture more oral than written. A
few hundred years later, Socrates himself was a conservative figure as regards writing.
Those who reject Socrates’ critique of reading often point out that Plato, his pupil, cer­
X IAN FREDERICK MOULTON
tainly wrote things down. Indeed, if he had not, we would know much less about
Socrates.
It is tempting, perhaps, to construct a history of literacy which is linear and progres­
sive. In such a history, Western civilization, arising from the primordial mist of Homeric
oral culture, would emerge into the sunlight of literacy in fifth century Athens, and then
move onwards and upwards to the highly literate civic and legal culture of the Roman
Republic and Empire. But such a history is fantasy. Over two thousand years after
Homer, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath still cannot read (although that does not stop her lib­
erally quoting authoritative texts to support her arguments and opinions). In ancient
Rome literacy was confined to a small proportion of the population, and it was limited
to an even smaller group in the centuries after the fall of the Western Empire. Majority
literacy had to wait for the nineteenth century in industrial countries, and later else­
where. Even now, 2500 years after Homer, there are estimated to be one billion illiterate
people worldwide, about 26% of the global population. Two thirds of these are women.1
In Bangladesh in 2003 the basic literacy rate is only 41.4%. In Egypt it is 55.3% and in
Saudi Arabia 163%.2 And rates for women’s literacy are lower than these national
averages. Using a somewhat stricter definition, 22% of all American adults are said to
be “functionally illiterate,” and in Miami the figure is as high as 63%.3 In Washington,
DC, the capital of the most militarily powerful and technologically advanced country
the world has ever seen, 40% of the population are said to be reading at a third grade
level, which means, according to the mayor’s office, “4 out of 10 residents can't com­
plete a job application or advance beyond an entry-level position.”4
If Odysseus serves as a reminder that reading and intelligence are not necessarily
related, the Wife of Bath demonstrates the ways in which literacy is socially determined:
Even in the most literate cultures — and Chaucer’s England was not one of these —
who reads, what they read, and how they read are affected by social factors such as
gender, ethnicity, class, wealth, and status. It is an interesting exercise to go through the
social panorama of the pilgrims introduced in Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Can­
terbury Tales and to see what role reading plays in each of their lives.
At the top of the social scale is the Knight. Can he read? No one cares. What
matters is that he can fight well in his Lord’s war. The elegant Squire can “well purtreye
and wryte” (96), but in his case writing is a fashionable accomplishment, like singing,
drawing and dancing. He is being praised for his calligraphy as much as for his reading.
1 UNESCO figures, released on International Literacy Day, September 7, 2001: cited on
http://www.sil.org/literacy/LitFacts.htm, accessed July 18, 2003.
2 The Economist Pocket World in Figures, 2003. These rates are based on the UNESCO
definition of literacy — “ability to read a simple sentence.”
3 Literacy Volunteers of America website, accessed July 18, 2003:
http ://www. literacy volunteer s. org/.
4 Washington DC mayor’s office website, accessed July 18, 2003:
http://www.dc.gov/mayor/issues/2003/february/02_13_03/literacy_rate/Lshtm.