Title Background

Response [to Wendy Scase “Writing and the Plowman: Language and Literacy”], “Writing and the Plowman: Language and Literacy”]

Response [to Wendy Scase “Writing and the Plowman: Language and Literacy”], “Writing and the Plowman: Language and Literacy”]

What Scase describes as the “suspicion of literacy” must be understood only with reference to learning not informed or ordered by moral virtue. The superiority of moral virtue to learning is asserted, in quite orthodox fashion, at the end of the A text (11.306-13). Learning can impede spiritual progress, as in the case of the Doctor of Divinity (B.13), but the larger context makes clear a contrast of true and false learning.