Literacy and its Cultural Significance in Early Modern Europe
Literacy and its Cultural Significance in Early Modern Europe

Summary/Abstract: Using recently published studies of the geographical distribution of reading and writing this article seeks to assess the significance of literacy in the more «peripheral» regions of Europe from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. It adopts a quantitative approach which nevertheless illustrates the qualitative variety of experience in a period of fundamental change from restricted to mass literacy. Analyzing issues such as the language of literacy and learning it also highlights how the meanings of reading and writing have to be understood in their cultural and ideological context.

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