The Emergence of a Tradition: Technical Writing in the English Renaissance, 1475-1640

259 Pages·1996·15.462 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Tebeaux

THE EMERGENCE OF A
TRADITION:
TECHNICAL WRITING IN
THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE,
1475-1640
Elizabeth Tebeaux
Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.
AMITYVILLE, NEW YORK
Copyright 0 1997, Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., Amityville, New York.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free recycled paper.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-49606
ISBN: 0-89503-175-2 (Cloth)
http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/ETT
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tebeaux, Elizabeth.
The emergence of a tradition : technical writing in the English
Renaissance, 1475-16 40 / Tebeaux, Elizabeth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-89503-175-2
1. Technical correspondence- -History.
T11.3.T43 1996
808’.0666- -dc21 96-49606
CIP
Preface
I have long believed that scholars of technical communication should know the
history of their subject. Such knowledge not only provides a sense of the genre’s
development but also sheds light on current practices. However, until recently,
little work had been done to provide a picture of the development of technical
communication; in fact, few resources existed that offered an historical perspec-
tive of any period in this field. This state of affairs has recently improved, with the
publication of books such as Charles Bazerman’s Shaping Written Knowledge:
The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, Katherine Adams’
A History of Professional Writing Instruction in American Colleges: Years of
Acceptance, Growth, and Doubt, David R. Russell’s Writing in the Academic
Disciplines, 1870-1990: A Curricular History, and Teresa Kynell’s Writing in the
Milieu of Utility: The Move to Technical Communication in American Engineer-
ing Programs, 18.50-1950, all of which have filled in gaps in our historical
understanding of some aspects of the development of technical and scientific
communication. Now we have another important book that helps us understand
our history, Elizabeth Tebeaux’s The Emergence of a Tradition: Technical Writ-
ing in the English Renaissance, 1475-1640.
Tebeaux takes as her project the rise and development of printed how-to books
during the period from Caxton’s establishment of the printing press to the English
Revolution. These books cover an astounding number of topics that interested
mostly middle-class readers of the period. Newly literate, this class, consisting of
merchants, tradesmen, and their wives, as well as other groups, enjoyed increasing
wealth and demanded practical education in areas of professional and personal
interest. At the same time, knowledge proliferated with the expansion of trade,
exploration, and commerce, and, with the growing complexity of knowledge, oral
communication became inadequate for preserving evolving bodies of information
...
111
iv I PREFACE
in various fields. With the risk of printing, books could be produced to meet the
needs of the new market of readers who wanted access to practical knowledge,
and, as Tebeaux shows, how-to books on myriad subjects began to appear in the
late fifteenth century. Authors wrote and printing presses disseminated volumes
on personal medical care, herbals, farming, animal husbandry, gardening,
household management, cooking, military science, navigation, and surveying, to
cite just the major topics. While some of these books met the needs of the expert
reader, others took as their audience the nonexpert who needed to know how to
perform some practical activity.
Tebeaux’s approach to her material makes the book necessary reading for all
people interested in technical communication, whether they be scholars, teachers,
or practitioners. She examines Renaissance how-to books through the lens of the
central issues of contemporary technical writing. She shows how these early
writers created effective books by using the same principles that contemporary
writers use, principles such as audience analysis and adaption, readability, the
plain style, formatting, and visual aids to clarify technical description.
Tebeaux’s analysis of the texts’ use of these strategies contributes in many ways
to our understanding of technical discourse. One of the most intriguing is her
discussion of the evolution of modem formatting conventions that helped make
texts readable. The earliest how-to books, she argues, present undifferentiated,
dense prose that is difficult to read quickly for needed information. Throughout
the Renaissance, authors and printers experimented with techniques to make
instructional books more readable, especially to a barely literate readership.
Authors and printers drew on the principles of Ramistic logic, with its emphasis on
definition and partition of discourse into logical oppositions, to improve the
organization of how-to texts. The Ramistic method enhanced the books’ overall
organization and encouraged the spatial presentation of information by means of
page design. Thereafter, books came to objectify information, making it more
accessible and easier to use through textual strategies such as indexing, tables of
content, white space, overviews, headings, and illustrations, all methods that
contemporary technical writers use and instructors teach. By including numerous
illustrations of pages from the texts discussed, Tebeaux shows us exactly how
these strategies evolved.
Another important contribution to our understanding of the history of technical
writing is Tebeaux’s analysis of Bacon’s contributions to the rise of the plain style.
The conventional position holds that Bacon first articulated the principles of the
plain style in the seventeenth century and that the members of the Royal Society
implemented these principles in scientific discourse. From there it influenced later
prose writers. Tebeaux, however, proves that how-to books had used the plain
style for a century before Bacon argued for its necessity. Bacon’s contribution,
therefore, is that he articulated a theory that explained what had long been
common practice among technical writers.
PREFACE I v
Another contribution of this book is that it asks us to reconceive Renais-
sance genre theory. When scholars discuss the rise of humanism, they usually
concentrate on the development of literature, theology, and philosophy. Tebeaux
reminds us that humanism also gave rise to technical discourse, with its assump-
tion that humans, if they read the right manual, could successfully accomplish any
practical act, whether that be birthing a baby, keeping a set of accounts, surveying
one’s property, or raising a flock of chickens. Tebeaux also proves that the four
traditional genres of Renaissance prose+omedy, satire, epigram, and epistle-
inadequately explain the nature of that period’s nonfiction discourse. We must add
the technical manual to the classification system for a full understanding.
This is an important book, a classic in the field. While its primary audience will
be specialists in technical communication, specialists in other areas ranging from
literacy theory, history of publishing, theory of textuality, to Renaissance prose
will find it instructive. Furthermore, The Emergence ofa Tradition both fills a
scholarly void and provides a model for this kind of historical scholarship. As
Tebeaux suggests in her conclusion, researchers can apply her methods to studies
of other historical periods, cultures, and types of technical communication.
Michael G. Moran
University of Georgia

Table of Contents
...
Preface by Michael Moran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
CHAPTER 1
In Search of Our Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER 2
The Rise of Technical Writing in the English Renaissance . . . . . . . 9
CHAPTER 3
Format and Page Design in English Renaissance Technical Books:
Early RecognitionofReaderContext andLiteracyLeve1 . . . . . . . . 35
CHAPTER 4
Renaissance Technical Books and Their Audiences:
Writers Respond to Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
CHAPTER 5
English Renaissance Technical Writing and the Emergence of
Plain Style: Toward a New Theory of the Development of
Modem English Prose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
CHAPTER 6
From Orality to Textuality: Technical Description and the
Emergence of Visual and Verbal Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
CHAPTER 7
The Legacy of English Renaissance Technical Writing:
New Perspectives on Basic Rhetorical Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
vii

http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/ETTC1
CHAPTER 1
In Search of Our Past
In 1985, Michael Moran wrote that “the history of technical writing has not been
written” [l, p. 251. Adhering to good technical writing practice-to state my
primary objective plainly-this book attempts to begin to fill that void. This study
will show that technical writing existed in the English Renaissance, that it ma-
tured significantly throughout the period primarily as a result of the expansion of
knowledge and the rise of print technology, and that the characteristics of the first
published English technical books foreshadow characteristics and issues intrinsic
to modem technical writing:
The importance of designing books with readers’ comprehension levels
in mind.
The importance of designing books and pages that would be easy to access
based on the context in which the reader would use the text.
The emergence of a structure and a style that would enhance readability and
usability of these technical books.
The development and incorporation of visual aids and the shift from oral to
verbal to verbalhisual presentation in the development of technical descrip-
tion as we know it today.
The triumph of textuality over orality. Throughout the Renaissance, technical
writing increasingly textualized oral knowledge. These texts became a means
by which knowledge could be generated with greater precision and breadth
than oral dissemination allowed.
The growth of knowledge. Changes in technical writing on a variety of
subjects-like medicine, agriculture, and cooking-allow us to see the
development of knowledge and the development of the discourse that
captured it.
1