The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

Today, many countries aim for 100 % literacy rates, and some achieve it, and in western
society the vast majority of the population possess extremely high literate abilities; anything
less is viewed somewhat negatively. In addition, of course, there is the fact that in the
modern west one has to be literate in order to appreciate literature. However, the ancient
world did not require its inhabitants to possess literate ability in order to engage with, for
example, Homer or Virgil, because so much of its literary culture was oral-based.
The understanding and study of early medieval literacy has been transformed in the
past half-century by various scholars working in anthropological and historical disciplines.
Much of this work stems from the „linguistic turn‟ and a wider re-interpretation of literacy
and its role in society, beginning in particular in the mid-twentieth century with scholars such
as Goody & Watt (1963), Goody (1968) and Ong (1981). Importantly, this led to an
understanding of the importance of the continuity of textual culture from the Classical into
the early medieval period, rather than it being lost in Late Antiquity and re-found in the
Carolingian renaissance. It is not the place here to present a full investigation of modern
historiography on the topic, which can anyway be found elsewhere (Baüml 1980; Hen 1995:
29-33; Briggs 2000; Melve 2003). It is sufficient instead to state that literacy and the use of
written texts is now better understood as a dynamic and complex scale of „literacies‟, rather
than a strict dichotomy between literate vs. illiterate. This includes acknowledging the
importance of both the written and spoken word. As such, to best understand literacy in the
early medieval world requires a sympathetic and open approach.
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