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08984_Field_TCGG T749.txt
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1996-04-10
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Print permitted the direct visual confrontation of the
ancient styles in all their fixity. The humanists were shocked to
discover how far they were in their oral Latin modes from all
classical precedent. They decided at once to teach Latin by the
printed page rather than by discourse, as a means of stopping
the further spread of their own barbarous medieval Latin
speech and idiom. Lewis concludes (p. 21): “They succeeded in
killing the medieval Latin: but not in keeping alive the
schoolroom severities of their restored Augustanism.”
Typography extended its character to the regulation and
fixation of languages.
* Later (pp. 83­4), Lewis contrasts the Renaissance
schoolroom “classicality” with the oral and auditory freedom
and variety of the medieval Latinity of Gavin Douglas, Bishop of