English 5361: Week 7 Post - Medieval Letter Writing
Letter writing was an art form in the medieval period. Bizzell and Herzberg note, "The art of letter writing was generally regarded as a rhetorical art, not, perhaps, because classical rhetorician such as Cicero influenced mature Italian versions of these treatises, but because the treatises dealt with verbal compositions—that were intended to move people to action, to persuade in a special sense." (p 494) As such an important form of rhetoric for the time, texts and education were devoted to the art of letter writing.
Imagine the shock of those who perceived letter writing to be an art upon discovering the fate of communication today. Letter writing has gradually fallen out of favor over time, since the dawn of the telephone. Even though we communicate more by written media today than we have in the recent past, the communication does not much resemble an art form. Text messages can be barely decipherable, written without thought as to form or persuasive technique. Bloggers communicate with a wide range of skills, and while some e-mails are carefully thought out and edited, others are random conglomerations of thoughts and words.
How would our medieval letter writers react to the thoughtlessness of much of today's communication? Would today's letters still pass as a rhetorical art?
Imagine the shock of those who perceived letter writing to be an art upon discovering the fate of communication today. Letter writing has gradually fallen out of favor over time, since the dawn of the telephone. Even though we communicate more by written media today than we have in the recent past, the communication does not much resemble an art form. Text messages can be barely decipherable, written without thought as to form or persuasive technique. Bloggers communicate with a wide range of skills, and while some e-mails are carefully thought out and edited, others are random conglomerations of thoughts and words.
How would our medieval letter writers react to the thoughtlessness of much of today's communication? Would today's letters still pass as a rhetorical art?
posted by Jessica Badger at
11:50 PM
3 Comments:
Jessica,
Indeed, the difference between letter writing then and letter writing now is remarkable. It’s fairly easy to look at technological advancement over time---like thinking about the black and white television up through high-def 3-d television, and it’s also fairly easy to observe social change, too, through history---like the development of the democratic government in the United States. What’s really fascinating, to me, though, are changes that involve the interplay of both, which is what I think we see in letter writing. From the social aspect, more individuals are literate today and the formal power relations structure has changed dramatically giving rise to less-formal situations, and, by extension, less formal communications. And, at the same time, as you note, we have technological advancements in play, too, that make things even easier---like e-mail and Twitter. And because they are so “easy”, it makes it less challenging for people to share more and more mundane things----thus, for me, I see the overall purpose of letter writing, too, as having changed from formal requests for assistance to embody comments as “my day is great, today, how is yours.”
Cris
Enjoyed reading your post. Good quote to sum up your idea about medieval letter writer. It's amazing to me that the genre became some powerful for 200+ years. It makes sense, of course, but it makes you wonder what genre or which genres will become a priori in the next 100 years. Short videos?
"How would our medieval letter writers react to the thoughtlessness of much of today's communication? Would today's letters still pass as a rhetorical art?"
What a really cool question! I imagine that if we pulled a random medieval citizen from the past and showed him/her any of the emails, tweets, blogs or SMS messages, they'd be in for a shock. Focusing on content, they'd probably wonder how people knew each other's name and rank and question the level of literacy that the writers possess. They'd probably think today's writing forms are ugly, but at the same time, they might be relieved to leave behind the verbosity of old. If anything, their wrists would feel much better and their hands less cramped.
But do today's letters pass as a rhetorical art? I tend to think so...The letters of today reflect a culture of communicating that is much different from any other time. Within that context, each word still carries a lot of weight. In much of our daily correspondences, we favor brevity and directness over anything. Being to the point is a courtesy to those who are likely to check SMS or emails on our cell phones, iphones and "crackberries." Today's letters seem less interested in personality and style than it does with function. Expressions of happiness or anger are good examples of this. An entire sentence can be condensed into two characters, :)
The question opens up a lot of discussion, and I think McLuhan is worth mentioning here. Our perceptions of what counts as a rhetorical art is partly driven by its medium. Before we can start analyzing the content, perhaps it's more important to consider the manner in which it is communicated.
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