Writing History Assignment

Assignment: Chapter Presentation on A Short History of Writing Instruction
Due Date: March 12, 2025
For this project, you'll prepare and deliver a 7-minute presentation on your assigned chapter from A Short History of Writing Instruction by James J. Murphy. Your goal is to give the class a clear and engaging understanding of how writing was taught in a specific historical period.
Presentation Requirements:
Key Highlights: Identify and explain the most important aspects of writing instruction in your assigned time period. Consider questions such as:
What were the main theories or methods of writing instruction?
Who were the key figures influencing writing education?
What types of writing were emphasized, and for whom?
Visual Component: Include at least two images (charts, historical documents, portraits, or relevant visuals) to help illustrate the writing instruction of the era.
Clarity & Engagement: Present your content in a structured, engaging way. Avoid reading directly from notes-aim for a natural delivery.
Time Limit: Keep your presentation within 7 minutes to ensure that all groups have time to share.
Submission Guidelines:
Must submit a link to the presentation to the canvas by March 12, 2025 at 9am.
Be prepared to answer one or two questions from your classmates or me, as we did with Techne.
Grading Criteria:
Your presentation will be evaluated based on:
Content (40%) - Depth of information and understanding of the chapter.
Visuals (20%) - Effective use of images and supporting materials.
Presentation Style (20%) - Clear, confident, and engaging delivery.
Timing & Organization (20%) - Well-structured and within the time limit.

• Chapter 4: Writing Instruction in Late Medieval Europe, Martin Camargo and Marjorie Curry Woods
• Between late 11th and early 13th centuries Europe, changes took place on how knowledge was organized and expressed.
• 12th Century Renaissance produced textbooks that summarized and rationalized teaching practices.
• Three genres of medieval textbook composition: arts of composing, arts of preaching, and arts of poetry.
• Arts of composing (artes dictandi) were rules for composing letters.
• Arts of preaching (artes praedicandi) were rules for sermons.
• Arts of poetry (artes poetriae) or arts of versifying (artes versificandi) covers poetry and prose.
• Someone studying letter or sermon writing could be assumed to already know basic principles of poetry and prose.
• Poetry and prose could be addressed to elementary students, so they contain more exercises.
• Descriptions of writing exercises are more effective than lists of definitions and rules for understanding medieval writing instruction.
• There was no cheap method for recording permanent compositions.
• We don't have papyrus like in Egypt. Paper was not available in Western Europe until the later Middle Ages.
• They did have wax tablets, but those are not permanent.
• Composition was carried out in one's head and orally.
• Medieval teachers viewed their task as training students' creative muscles to tackle any composition assignment.
• Examples of exercises: rewriting, moving from prose to verse, expanding, contracting
• These exercises taught prose, poetry, letters, and narratives.
• Texts had 3 formal parts: the beginning, the middle (or development), and the end.
• Three qualities teachers strove to instill: facilitas, proprietas, and auctoritas.
• facilitas - the ability to compose artful discourse easily
• Facilitas was acquired through practicing techniques the generate copia (abundance).
• Examples: exercises to say the same thing in a multitude of ways, exercises to impart skill in variation of expression, exercises in amplification and abbreviation, rewriting texts in other forms
• Mastering these exercises prevents writer's block.
• proprietas - suitability or decorum
• Students were trained to adjust their style and argumentative strategies based on the rank of persons and the nature of the subject matter treated.
• Examples: exercises in praising and blaming, physical and moral description, use of proper epithets, differentiated levels of style
• auctoritas - authority
• To establish authority, effective writers and speakers needed to command a broad spectrum of materials: traditional proverbs and anecdotes (exempla), scholarly treatises, classical poetry, Bible, Biblical commentary
• Composition teachers would have students create copia (abundance) by imitating, modifying, or adapting existing texts, texts with auctoritas (authority). This generated facilitas.
• Students learned to compose in Latin.
• Latin was an artificial language and provided a certain level of propriatas.
• Latin was completely foreign in England or Germany.
• Current students of English feel a similar struggle, grapping with what seems as a foreign language.
• Focus of this chapter is now the 13th through 15th centuries.
• Focus is 3 sources. Two writing textbooks compiled in England and one collection of writing materials compiled in England.
• POETRIA NOVA
• Poetria nova is the most popular rhetorical treatise, written by Geoffrey of Vinsauf (1200-1215), with over 200 surviving manuscripts. It was taught for several centuries.
• Consists of 5 parts of rhetoric: Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, and Delivery.
• It has 6 parts of discourse (Invention): Introduction, Narration, Division or Distribution, Proof, Rebuttal or Refutation, and Conclusion.
• The focus on invention demonstrates the generative aspect of medieval writing instruction.
• The texts shows the author performing what he taught.
• It includes long, virtuous set pieces, like apostrophes on the death of Richard Lionheart.
• It includes passages questioning authority and parodies of known stories.
• Geoffrey was widely admired.
• TRIA SUNT
• Tria Sunt was the chief composition textbook employed by the schools of Oxford.
• Unlike Poetria Nova, which performs what it teaches, Tria Sunt is a practical syllabus for a composition course.
• It has a combination of prose instruction with examples in verse and prose from classical and medieval authors.
• The contents are arranged in the natural order for teaching composition.
• It focuses step-by-step, from (1) beginning to (2) transition to body to (3) body of text to (4) conclusion.
• It makes composition straightforward and therefore teachable and learnable.
• Both Poetria Nova nad Tria Sunt encourage facilitas, proprietas, and auctoritas.
• HUNTERIAN MANUSCRIPT V.8.14
• The Hunterian is a 13th century English manuscript that is a famous collection of rhetorical poetry.
• It contains poetry and prose, including Matthew's Ars versificatoria, Geoffrey's Poetria nova, and Gervase's De arte versificatoria et modo dictandi.
• It also contains poems by students.
• It contains a letter in verse asking a parent for money. This letter was an exercise in changing from verse to prose.
• It contains two poems praising King Henry II, the second being an amplification of the first.
• It contains two fables, one in hermeneutic (concerning interpretation) discourse, the second being a conversion to dramatic discourse.
• It contains character delineations (portrayal of something precisely) for Paris, Io, Tiresias, Jupiter, Asterie, Arachne, Myrrha, and Niobe.
• It contains two epitaphs for Clarus (meaning famous). Epitaphs were popular exercises for abbreviations and amplification.
• It contains two descriptions, one of the Greek army setting out for Troy and one for a fertile valley, one being an amplification exercise.
• The story of Troy was well known (see Tria Sunt) even without a Latin translation of Homer's Iliad.
• The exercises of the Hunterian manuscript display students' growing knowledge of faciltas, proprietas, and auctoritas.
• Example of facilitas: Students learning to say the same thing in different ways with different degrees of elaboration and to translate one from into another.
• Example of proprietas: Students demonstrated how to evoke status, character, and accomplishment, with the aim to praise or blame.
• Examples of auctoritas: Students commanded a knowledge of canonical texts and used that knowledge effectively in new ways.
• Focus of the rest of the chapter is medieval exercises that can be reproduced in the modern classroom.
• EXERCISE 1: Variation: Words, Words, Words
• Conversion is the simplest form of variation, where the same word is retained but its form and function in the sentence is changed.
• Conversion is useful for any extended request (an application, a letter of recommendation, a request for money or a job).
• Grief example: I am grieving over this matter. From this fountain grief flows over me. Hence the root of grief rises within me. Theis affair is matter and cause for grief. It sows grief. O termenting grief, you rage against me with cruel wounds. My mind, as it were, lies prostrate, injured and ill with grief.
• Sentences might say literally the same thing but have different emphasis and connotation.
• You can also replace the word with a synonym, and with all the different forms, easily produces copia (abundance). Classic facilitas.
• EXERCISE 2: Transposition: Playing With What You've Got
• Transposition is full-text variation.
• When only transposing a sentence, it is similar to conversion. Example: 1. The boy's face is white. 2. Whiteness suffuses the boy's face.
• Larger-scale examples: Transposing a text as a letter in prose, or as a quantitative poem, or as a rhythmical poem.
• Requirement for "bachelor" at St. Albans: teacher gives you a proverb and you transpose it to verses, model letters, species of verses, and a debate (disputation).
• Example of transposition teaching facilitas and proprietas: a low style letter home asking for money, a middle style letter home asking for money, a high style request from a bishop to the King of France.
• EXERCISE 3: Expansion and Abbreviation: Picking a Path
• Expansion and abbeviation require a core text that is elaborated to compressed by specific techniques.
• Example from Tria Sunt: "I read" expanded to "This place encompasses a double opportunity for study, being, on the one hand, pleasing in its beauty and, on the other hand, far removed the noise of people" with a proverb added: "He whose spirit pants for the summit of supreme advancement longs with his whole being for the fruit and the abundance of readings."
• Example 2 from Tria Sunt: "I teach" expanded to "I know... Because for a considerable time I have diligently sought knowledge and done so among experts. .... Truly among experts, because I have studied at Paris, where knowledge of the trivium flourishes; at Toledo, where knowledge of the quadrivium flourishes; at Salerno, where knowledge of physicians flourishes; and At Bologna, where knowledge of teh laws and decretals flourishs." It finishes: "The one whose mind the streams of knowledge have flowed should not refuse a drink to those who thirst, but those streams should be dispersed abroad and he should distribute those waters at street corners."
• Example of abbreviation from Poetria Nova: "Her husband abroad improving his fortunes, an adulterous wife bears a child. On his return after a long delay, she pretends it begotten of snow. Deceit is mutual. Slyly he waits. He whisks off, sells, and--reporting to the mother a like ridiculous tale--pretends the child melted by sun." Abbreviated as: "A shorter composition in which five basic elements are touched on, namely man, woman, boy, snow, sun."
• EXERCISE 4: Initiation: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
• First few sentences needed to ground the argument in authority (auctoritas) and establish the hierarchical relationship between author and audience (proprietas).
• This opening is recognized in a sermon. It starts with a proverb, an exemplum, or a quotation from scripture.
• Example composition exercise: focus on the beginnings of stories drawn from classroom texts.
• Second example comp exercise: require students to use an "artificial order" to rewrite a text. This forces the student to reinterpret the text. It helps the student understand how a text could be generated.
• EXERCISE 5: Derivation: Filling in the Blanks
• In derivation, the student is given a structural framework to create their own text.
• Example framework: write a letter starting with a proverb. The proverb or proverb options could be selected by the teacher.
• Similar framework from Tria Sunt: write a letter starting with an assigned verb.
• EXERCISE 6: Impersonation: Ethopoeia
• When impersonating another's voice, the goal of proprietas (using appropriate language) is practiced.
• One of two classical examples of impersonation: (pathetic) a student writes a speech in the voice of a literary character in an emotional situation.
• Two of two classical examples of impersonation: (ethical) speech from a character type instead of a specific character
• Example from Poetria Nova -- speaking as a worn-out table cloth: "I was once the pride of the table, while my youth was in its first flower and my face knew no blemish. But since I am old, and visage is marred, I do not wish to appear. I withdraw from you, table; farewell!
• EXERCISE 7: Contestation: War with Words
• Most famous example of contestation: debate (disputatio).
• Anoter example: epistolary declamations.
• Example: A man tries to seduce a boy using classical references. The boy rebuffs the seduction using biblical references.
• Example: two sisters debate a woman's right to choose a husband by sex appeal...
• One sister: "the female kind ... craves a respectable and attractive man just as matter craves form." Other sister: "it is my special advice that, having wiped away all the inconstancies of lust whatsoever, you strive to obey in accordance with the deliberation and decision of your father and without stain of conscience take as your husband the one whom paternal kindness desires."
• Example: 7 methods for consoling a bereaved person followed by 7 methods for making a person feel worse.