The making of textual culture : 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100
This is the first major study of the cultural work performed by grammatica, the central discipline concerned with literacy, language, interpretation, and literature in medieval society. Grammatica was concerned with all aspects of the Latin literary text, its language, meaning, and value. Martin Irvine demonstrates that grammatica, though the first of the liberal arts, was not simply one discipline among many: it had an essentially constitutive function, defining language, meaning, and texts for the other medieval disciplines. Martin Irvine draws together several aspects of medieval culture - literary theory, the nature of literacy, education, biblical interpretation, the literary canon, and linguistic thought - in order to disclose the more far-reaching social effects of grammatica, chief of which was the making of textual culture in the medieval West
Print Book, English, 1994
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [England], 1994
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xix, 604 pages ; 24 cm.
9780521414470, 0521414474
28113434
Grammatica: A historical and methodological introduction
1. The formation of grammatica within classical discursive practices
2. The developing model of grammatica in the Roman and early medieval world
3. Linguistic foundations
4. Enarratio I: Commentaries on Vergil from Donatus to Fulgentius
5. Grammatica and the formation of medieval textual communities: Alexandria to Isidore of Seville
6. Enarratio II: interpretation and the grammar of allegory
7. Grammatica and textual culture in Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Europe
8. The genres of grammatical culture and manuscript textuality
9. The implications of grammatical culture in Anglo-Saxon England
10. Conclusion