Page 91 - Literacy in the New Media Age

80 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

Figure 5.7 The concept of ‘sentence’: a seventeenth-century religious tract

did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out
unto us those laborous webs of learning which are extant in their books. For
the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the
contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and
is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web,
then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable
for the fineness of thread and work; but of no substance or profit.
Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, I.iv.5
By the time of Milton’s writing, printing presses had become ubiquitous in cities
like London – one of the reasons why the government of the day attempted to
control their use, and the reason for Milton’s pamphlet. And so this now no
longer so new and certainly no longer so elite medium could become available to
the lower classes, as a means for their expression, representation and
communication. Here is a brief example, a religious rather than a political tract
this time, roughly contemporaneous with Milton’s text. However this is written
by someone not trained in Greek and Latin, and not versed in the elite forms of
public oratory.
Like Milton, Trapnell draws on the resources which were available to her: they
are all forms which she knows as speech (though she would also have read the