1995.02.22, Irvine, Making of Textual Culture

In his Introduction Irvine states that his book “is an attempt to describe the larger function of ‘grammatica’ in early medieval literary culture,” and he intends “to disclose the broad social effects of the discipline and to recover the social and intellectual agenda that lies behind the often bewildering mass of sources” (p. 1). He actually does more than that: he traces the development of “grammatica” from its Greek origins (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics) through its adaptation by the Romans (e.g. Suetonius, Varro, Quintilian) to the Middle Ages, and demonstrates how grammatica was a relatively stable discipline, a long-lived and an all-pervasive one. This pervasiveness can be felt in the exegesis of a Clement of Alexandria or an Origen, in the Benedictine Rule or in the works of Gregory the Great, and in encyclopedic works such as Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. It is also felt in the establishment of a Christian canon formed by the works of authors such as Arator, Sedulius, Juvencus, and Prudentius. It takes root in Anglo-Saxon England (e.g. grammars by Bede or Boniface) and in Carolingian Francia (e.g. Alcuin). It creates its own type of manuscript, namely the compilatio, in which artes and/or auctores are grouped together. And it even influences the very lay-out of manuscripts in which grammatical texts appear with their interpretational frames in the form of glosses. And finally, it transcends linguistic boundaries, shaping much of Old English literature. As this precis indicates Irvine’s book is encyclopedic in its broad sweep from Greek antiquity to the eleventh century and in its examination of many more grammarians than have been mentioned above. He is doubtless correct in claiming that grammatica, by being the custodian not only of the ratio recte scribendi et loquendi but also of the scientia interpretandi, shaped, and was intimately linked with, the works of the canonical auctores. He is also correct in demonstrating that the close link between Vergil and the late imperial grammarians provided the model for the Christian grammatica, which in turn led to the retention of Vergil as the authority on correct Latin even in Christian authors. I shall not even try to do justice to all the arguments in Irvine’s 604 page book; suffice it to say that his overall contention of