Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D.H. Green, ed. Mark Chinca and Christopher Young (Turnhout, 2005: USML 12), x+259 pp. ISBN 2-503-51451-0.
“The most important part of the title of this book is the word ‘and’ “. These words form the memorable conclusion to D.H. Green’s study Medieval Listening and Reading; they encapsulate how, in the Middle Ages, orality and literacy are not to be considered as two separate and largely unrelated cultures or modes of textual transmission, but as elements in a mutual interplay and interpenetration. In this volume, scholars from Britain, Germany and North America follow Green’s insistence on viewing medieval orality and literacy in their conjunction, opening up new areas for investigation as well as reformulating old problems. The languages and literatures covered include English, Latin, French, Occitan and German, and the essays span the whole of the period from the early Middle Ages through to the fifteenth century.
Contents:
Mark Chinca and Christopher Young, “Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: A Conjunction and its Consequences”
Katherine O’Brien o’Feeffe, “Listening to the Scenes of Reading: King Alfred’s Talking Prefaces”
Wolfgang Haubrichs, “Rituale, Feste, Sprechhandlungen: Spuren oraler und laikaler Kultur in den Bibelepen des Heliand und Otfrids von Weißenburg”
Nigel F. Palmer, “Manuscripts for Reading: The Material Evidence for the Use of Manuscripts Containing Middle High German Narrative Verse”
Tony Hunt, “Some Aspects of Orality in the Anglo-Norman St Modwenna”
Simon Gaunt, “Fictions of Orality in Troubadour Poetry”
Jürgen Wolf, “Psalter und Gebetbuch am Hof: Bindeglieder zwischen klerikal-literater und laikal-mündlicher Welt”
Monika Schausten, “Orality, Literacy, and/or Ekphrasis? Narrative Techniques of Visualization and the Poetics of Late Medieval Romance: Johann von Würzburg’s Wilhelm von Österreich”
Sylvia Huot, “Polytextual Reading: The Meditative Reading of Real and Metaphorical Books”
Joyce Coleman, “Aural Illumination: Books and Aurality in the Frontispieces to Bishop Chevrot’s Cité de Dieu“
Index