The Making of Textual Culture

This is the a major study of the cultural work performed by grammatica, the central discipline concerned with literacy, language, interpretation and literature in medieval society. Grammatica was, with all aspects of 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 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 effect of grammatica, chief of which was the making of textual culture in the medieval West.

• A major study of social and cultural influence of grammatica, and its implications for literary theory and textual culture in the medieval West • Original research of medieval manuscripts • Twenty-one black and white plates of manuscripts

List of illustrations; Prefece; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 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; Notes; Bibliography; Indexes.