The Rhetoric of Advancement: Ars dictaminis, Cursus, and Clerical Careerism in Late Medieval England

Abstract

This article examines the medieval ars dictaminis, or art of letter-writing, focusing on socio-cultural aspects, especially as taught at Oxford c. 1370–1432. Ars dictaminis participated in and contributed to a structural transformation in the production of written communications and administrative records in later medieval Europe. Two aspects of this transformation were the recruitment and educational formation of a class of domestic literate servants, and a diversification in the field of educational alternatives. Teachers of ars dictaminis recognized and responded to these aspects of their pragmatic situation: in addition to providing technical instruction, the ars dictaminis provided its students and practitioners with normative representations of their location within a stratified social world. In several textbooks of English provenance, instruction in cursus, or prose rhythm, became an occasion for working out this discipline’s contested status within the symbolic economies of education and patronage.