THE TRANSITION TO A LITERATE SOCIETY THE CASE OF IRELAND Maurice Coakley Thesis for PhD Department of Educational Studies University of Sheffield April 2008 ''1Jie goafrom wfiose fiand wn'ting fias emergea a{ways possesses a particufar andpn'vilegea pface in tfie fiierarcfiy ofdivine powers.' [Cassirer] Contents Acknowledgements iv Thesis Abstract v 1 Writing and Historical Change: The 'Great Divide' in Literacy Studies 2 Methodology 25 3 Literacy and Social Organisation in Late Gaelic Ireland 40 4 Literacy and Social Organisation in the Anglo-French Colony 60 5 Literacy and the Reformation that went wrong 81 6 The Diffusion of Literacy in a Comparative Perspective: Wales, Scotland and England 103 7 Literacy and the Genesis of Capitalism in Ireland and Scotland 136 8 The Paradox of Anglicisation 175 9 Writing and Historical Change: Implications of the Irish Case 209 Conclusion 232 Glossary 234 Historical Time Line 236 Bibliographic References 237 Acknowledgements I am very grateful to the Education Department of the University of Sheffield for their support in preparing this study. At all times they have shown an openness of mind and a generosity of spirit that I could only marvel at. In particular, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Peter Hannon, for his constant encouragement and constructive criticism of the thesis. Michael Barry, Paddy O'Brien and Guy Robinson read earlier drafts and supplied encouragement and helpful advice. My especial gratitude is to Petra SchiirenhOfer, without whom this thesis would most likely never have been completed. Petra's close reading, and critical engagement with the thesis have immeasurably improved earlier drafts and her emotional support throughout has been invaluable. iv Thesis Abstract Has writing changed history or has it merely recorded historical change? Within the field of Literacy Studies, opinions on the role of writing in bringing about historical change have tended to polarise into two camps. The 'autonomous' school sees literacy as a dynamic force for change and accords it a central role in the development of civilisation. The 'ecological' school sees literacy as embedded in specific social contexts and disputes that it plays any autonomous role in historical change. This thesis will discuss both theoretical approaches and evaluate these contrasting positions in a specific historical context. The focus of this study is on the role that literacy played in Ireland from the medieval to the modem period. Ireland is a useful case study because it contains virtually all the elements that arise in the wider debate: restricted literacy and pragmatic literacy, the relationship of language change to literacy, the presence of disparate literate practices, and the role of literacy in advancing development and spawning uneven development. As well as examining the role of literacy in Ireland from the late Middle Ages to the early modem period, this study compares the development of literate practices in Ireland to those in England, Scotland and Wales and assesses their role in responding to the Reformation and political centralisation. This thesis also compares the origins and the early development of capitalism in Ireland and Scotland, and attempts to assess the role of literacy in explaining the divergent paths taken by these societies. Finally it examines the relationship between the emergence of mass literacy and the rise of national identities. From the study of Ireland and its neighbours, the thesis attempts to draw some general conclusions about the relationship between literacy and historical change. v 1 Writing and Historical Change: The 'Great Divide' in Literacy Studies Introduction How has writing changed the world? Has it done so at all, or has it merely recorded changes? Within the field of Literacy Studies, opinions on the role of writing in bringing about historical change have tended to diverge into opposing currents. A pioneering generation of scholars stressed the transformative role of literacy and writing, while a later generation challenged this emphasis for failing to acknowledge the extent to which writing and literacy are always embedded in specific social contexts. This thesis will examine whether the historical role of literacy in Ireland fits either of these models or whether an alternative approach, perhaps involving a synthesis of elements of both, might prove more fruitful for the development of Literacy Studies. This particular chapter will introduce some of the most important writings on the question of the relationship between literacy and historical development and attempt to evaluate them. The Pioneering Works of Literacy Studies Until fairly recently the question 'how has writing changed the worldT would have been understood to mean how particular texts or writers or schools of thought have changed the way people think. Attention was focused on the content of writing or its literary technique rather than on writing itself as a form of communication. In the decades following the Second World War a series of pioneering works appeared that have opened up the study of writing as a mode of communication. In this context people's capacity to read the written word acquired a new significance, and literacy itself became a focal point of research. In France, Lucien Febvre and Jean-Marie Martin published the original version of L 'Apparalion du Livre in 1958 while in Germany Jtirgen Habermas published The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. Eric Havelock's Preface 10 Plato and a seminal essay by Jack Goody and lan Watt, The Consequences of Literacy, were both published in 1963 and came to have an influence that transcended disciplinary boundaries. In the same decade a number of other innovative works appeared, including Carlo Cipolla's Literacy and Development in the West and WaIter Ong's The Presence of the Word, that together helped to open up a new field of study and a new perspective on history. The timing here is worth noting. These were decades that saw the flowering of new forms of communication. Radio and cinema had of course preceded the war, but it was the combination of the audio and visual elements into a widely accessible new medium, television, that most likely encouraged social thinkers to investigate the older medium of writing, which some now perceived as redundant. This emphasis on writing as a mode of communication also carried with it a new emphasis on literacy, or more to the point, saw the question of literacy brought to a more central position in the human sciences, no longer a sole concern of educationalists but of crucial importance to the study of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology. In 1958, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin published L 'Apparation du Livre, later translated as The Coming of the Book, a study of the origins of the modem book and of the impact of printing from the Renaissance era to 1800. The Coming of the Book covered an enormous range of issues from the technical and economic factors involved in book production, to a study of the social world of printing. It explored the geographical distribution of the book and assessed the cultural impact of this new commodity. One of the notable conclusions of Febvre and Martin's work was the extent of cultural entropy evidenced by book production. Up until the seventeenth century most book titles being published were still in Latin and most books being published were of a religious character, many of them devotional. The most important of all was Luther's German translation of the Bible which remained the best selling book in Germany for centuries. Another notable conclusion was the singular failure of successive attempts at censoring books by most of the anciens regimes of Europe. With its 2 emphasis on the crucial importance of prmtmg in bringing about the Refonnation, the Coming of the Book helped to change people's understanding not only of communications, but also of the emergence of modem Europe. Four years later, Jiirgen Habermas published Strukturwandel der (~ffenllichkeil, translated into English in 1989 as The Structural Transformation (~f the Puhlic Sphere. According to Habermas, from about 1700 onwards a new social sphere emerged which sought to mediate between people's private lives and the larger social and political world. Previously the only arena where opinion mattered was at the courts of kings and princes. Now with the spread of journals and newspapers and the proliferation of coffee-houses, pubs, clubs, and salons, people could get much more information about the world and debate the issues of the day. This new public sphere did not so much give a voice to public opinion, as create a public opinion in the first place. Habermas did not discuss the question of literacy at length, though he was obviously aware that a certain level of literacy was necessary for such a sphere to arise in the first place. He was aware that literacy in England, one of the societies he studied, may well have fallen in the eighteenth century, in the very era when the public sphere was supposed to be coming into being, though he did not explore this issue closely. He has been criticised for focusing almost exclusively on the bourgeois public sphere and failing to acknowledge the presence of a vibrant plebeian culture, an alternative public sphere. The main point, however, that Habennas wanted to make was to contrast the openness of public debate in the eighteenth century compared to its closure in the twentieth century, where media ownership had become monopolised by a small number of corporations and any project of facilitating rational debate had been discarded in favour of manipulating mass opinion. Lucien Febvre was editor of Annales, one of the most influential journals of History and the Human Sciences in France. Habermas worked with Adorno, and was seen as a representative of the younger generation of the Frankfurt School.