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  • Pragmatic Literacy and the Medieval Use of the Vernacular: The Swedish Example
  • Andrea Rizzi
Larsson, Inger , Pragmatic Literacy and the Medieval Use of the Vernacular: The Swedish Example (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 16), Turnhout, Brepols, 2009; hardback; pp. xiv, 250; 5 b/w & 23 colour illustrations, 2 b/w tables, 2 b/w line art; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503527475.

The title is a little misleading, given that preference is given in this study to pragmatic literature rather than literacy, the latter being discussed unproblematically (see pp. 4, 8, and passim) and succinctly. The book is divided in two parts: the first introduces the literate community responsible for drafting, witnessing, and sealing official documents (deeds, charters, announcements, etc.) between the twelfth and early fifteenth centuries; the second part surveys extant legal documents, their function, style, and content.

Accordingly, five chapters (Part II of the book, divided into Chapters 5-9) are dedicated to the review and categorization of legal documents, making this section of the work the most detailed and interesting. Here Inger Larsson maps the types of charters produced in medieval Sweden (Chapter 5), the traces of oral tradition in these documents and the rituals surrounding land property sales (Chapter 6), the progressive standardization of formulas, professional language, and content in the charters from the third decade of the thirteenth century (Chapter 7), and the development of a terminology to define and describe official documents in Swedish. This section of the book is, to my knowledge, the first comprehensive discussion of the development of secular writing and bureaucracy in medieval Sweden and offers a clear picture of the legal processes behind the issuing of deeds and the way in which the oral rituals are incorporated into the budding written culture.

Regrettably, the first part of the book (Chapters 1-4) all too briefly introduces the leaders (Knut Eriksson, Magnus Birgersson, and Magnus [End Page 235] Eriksson) and literate men and women (clerks, lawmen, scribes, witnesses) who helped shape the Swedish central legal system and who contributed to the written culture of their societies. The elephant in this work is the socio-cultural realm of literacy. Little consideration is given to the social context in which these deeds were produced, the way in which these documents would have been perceived, read, and used, and the cultural activities around the production of legal written texts.

In his seminal work on literacy, Brian Stock criticized historians who 'focused on proving the existence of literacy during the Middle Ages, on establishing its alleged connections with economic development, and on tabulating the best they could the numbers of readers and writers' (The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 5). Stock also pointed out the dangers of relying on statistics and written practices outside their context. It seems a pity his call for the investigation of the complex factors between literacy and other socio-cultural factors is not picked up in this book.

As Larsson makes clear throughout the book, though, her key and only source of inspiration for this study is the tremendously influential work by Michael T. Clanchy (From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1979, 2nd edition printed by Blackwell in 1993). Clanchy's book has the merit of addressing the complex relationship between orality and writing. However, more recent works have gone further by addressing broader issues of intellectual life, schooling, social rituals, and cultural exchanges (see Richard Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy. East and West, 1997 and Harvey J. Graff (ed.), Literacy and Historical Development, 2007). Bibliography on medieval literacy is infinite. It is therefore somewhat surprising that Larsson has not taken advantage of the first book to appear in the same Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy series under which her book has been published: New Approaches to Medieval Communication, edited by Marco Mostert (1999). This first volume of the series offers an extremely valuable survey of studies and issues of medieval communication and literacy, and discusses the hiatus between literacy and textuality.

In sum, Larsson's book is a useful survey of Swedish and late medieval pragmatic written legal documents which...

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