Medieval Listening and Reading

Description

This study brings recent scholarly debates on oral cultures and literate societies to bear on the earliest recorded literature in German (800-1300). It considers the criteria for assessing what works were destined for listeners, what examples anticipated readers, and how for both modes of reception could apply to one work, exploring the possible interplay between them. The opening chapters review previous scholarship and the introduction of writing into preliterate Germany. The core of the book presents lexical and non-lexical evidence for the different modes of reception, taken from the whole spectrum of genres, from dance songs to liturgy, from drama and heroic literature to the court narrative and lyric poetry. The social contexts of reception and the physical process of reading books are also considered. Two concluding chapters explore the literary and historical implications of the slow interpenetration of orality and literacy. There is a comprehensive bibliographical index of primary sources.

First Sentence

When Guillaume Fichet, a member of the Sorbonne, looked back in 1471 on the history of what we today should term communications technology he divided it into three periods: classical antiquity (which employed the calamus or reed pen), followed by a period which for us is the Middle Ages (which used the penna or quill pen), and then a period which had only just begun (characterised by aereae litterae or movable type).

Excerpt

When Guillaume Fichet, a member of the Sorbonne, looked back in 1471 on the history of what we today should term communications technology he divided it into three periods: classical antiquity (which employed the calamus or reed pen), followed by a period which for us is the Middle Ages (which used the penna or quill pen), and then a period which had only just begun (characterised by aereae litterae or movable type).

Subjects

Other Editions

• Medieval listening and reading: the primary reception of German literature, 800-1300Cambridge University Press1994-01-01
• Medieval Listening and ReadingPaperbackCambridge University Press2005-10-06