Teaching Writing Learning To Write Proceedings Of The Xvith Colloquium Of The Comit International De Palographie Latine Held At The Institute Of English Studies University Of London 25 September 2008

The capacity to read and write are different abilities. While studies of medieval readers and reading have proliferated in recent years, there has so far been little study of how people learnt to write in the Middle Ages. T̀eaching Writing, Learning to Write', the theme chosen for the XVIth Colloquium of the Comite International de Paleographie Latine, explored this separate aspect of literacy. The range of papers published here by an international group of scholars discuss evidence adduced from the à sgraffio' writing of Ancient Rome through the attempts of scribes to model their handwriting after that of the master-scribe in a disciplined scriptorium to the repeated copying of set phrases in a Florentine merchant's day book. Essays show how a careful study of handwriting witnesses the reception of the twenty-three letter Latin alphabet in different countries of medieval Europe, and its necessary adaptation to represent vernacular sounds. Monastic customaries provide evidence of teaching and learning in early scriptoria, while a study of the grammarians is a reminder that for the medieval scholar learning to write did not mean simply mastering the skill of holding a quill and forming one's letters properly, but also mastering a correct understanding of grammar and punctuation. Other essays discuss the European reception of the so-called Arabic numbers, provide an edition of a fifteenth-century tract on how to use abbreviations correctly, and illustrate how images of writing on wax tablets and learning in school can throw light on medieval practice. The volume ends with a paper on the deployment of Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets by a sixteenth-century amateur theologian. --Book Jacket.