Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning by Rita Copeland (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS rita COPELAND, Pedagogy, Intellectual andDissent in the LaterMiddleAges: Lollardy andIdeas ofLearning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. isbn: 0—52165238 -3. $65. In arguing that the dissenting movement ofLollardy was not only heterodox in its theology but in its pedagogy—arguing that Lollardy, in effect, had its own specific pedagogy separate from that found in the universities—Copeland makes significant contributions to the medieval field of Lollardy and WyclifFism; at the same time, she engages current debates in the fields ofchildhood studies and literacy acquisition. The book's primary intention is to show how classical discourses ofeducation were instrumentally re-deployed in later debates about heresy, laity, and popular reading. One such discourse revolved around the concept ofthe 'literal sense,' perhaps most familiar to British medievalists from the controversy over vernacular scriptural translation at the end ofthe fourteenth century, where the benefits and the dangers of having the 'naked text' in English were energetically debated. Copeland shows that this debate about literal sense had a long pedigree: in classical educational theory, the literal sense was associated with childhood and the acquisition of literacy (or latinitas), while 'deeper' or hermeneutical forms of reading were associated with advancement to adulthood. Writers like Quintilian and Plutarch saw the advantages ofcaptivating schoolboys' attention with the superficial pleasures of stories, while late classical neo-platonists associated the literal sense with the narrow (and so barely legitimate) inquiry of the grammarian, preferring instead their own philosophical, spiritual understanding of a text's depths. The revival of neo-platonism associated with twelfth-century cathedral schools again confirmed this division, reducing the literal sense to the puerile understanding ofelementary classrooms. In the late Middle Ages, the literal sense thus became a symbolic boundary: those who read in this manner were marked by the dependency and insufficiency ofchildhood while those who read for a deeper understanding were associated with adulthood. This symbolic division extended beyond the classroom, since the division also marked off 'those who cannot advance beyond intellectual infancy—women, rustici, vulgar't from 'those endowed with reason and hermeneutical perspicacity—men, clergy, litteratt (84). Copeland argues that this privileging of the deeper (or more 'philosophical') reading from the late classical period onwards led not only to hermeneutical enfranchisement but also to political enfranchisement. The adult reader was seen to have political agency in a way that the literal reader did not. When the Lollards began teaching adults to read, the literal sense became the primary pedagogical tool ofthese new reading communities. The Lollard classroom resisted the traditional association ofliteral reading with childhood (just as it resisted the rigidly hierarchical schema ofuniversity training), instead arguing for an open or horizontal model of teaching that lacked 'the ritualized violence of academic correction and coercion' (124). Instead ofseeing themselves as pedagogical objects, lay 'pupils' were encouraged to see themselves as political subjects whose dissenting identities were formed through participation in scriptural interpretation and in the production and distribution ofvernacular texts. 112ARTHURIANA This study extends our understanding ofthe relation ofLollardy to other cultural institutions by relating the Wycliffite doctrine ofliteral scriptural reading to earlier orthodox champions of the literal sense like Hugh of St. Victor and Conrad of Hirsau. Copeland shows that literalism, while disdained for rhetorical reasons by late classical writers, only became politically controversial when it was associated with Lollard pedagogy. Anti-Lollard polemic stigmatized lay literalism as an altogether different practice than that espoused by earlier scholastic writers, who used literal reading as a tool ofscriptural exegesis. By emphasizing this difference, church authorities effectively returned lay adult readers to a state of intellectual disenfranchisement associated with childhood which, in turn, provided a rationale for denying them access to the bible. The puerility oflay literal reading thus became a hallmark ofanti-heretical polemic. While the debate over scriptural translation generated multiple (and often contradictory) readings ofwhat the literal sense meant on both sides, it also bred a new model of extra-university intellectual activity, a model that was embraced by imprisoned Lollards like Richard Wyche and William Thorpe. For Copeland, the dissenting intellectual emerges in a moment ofAlthusserian interpellation, hailed into (oppositional) existence by the interrogational setting ofthe heresy trial. The values of the heretical classroom allowed these writers...