French Didactics in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: Thinking Historically about Method

Recent commentators on the history of French education in medieval and early modern England argue that translation played a major part in the instruction of the language across both periods. In contrast, this essay demonstrates that the prevalence of the technique in medieval French teaching is difficult to prove and that monolingual methods of instruction are equally likely to have been pursued, perhaps especially by those French teachers about whom we know the most, the Oxford dictatores. The argument highlights the sensitivity of both medieval and early modern teachers to the shifting material, linguistic, social, and geopolitical conditions that shaped the requirements of their students and defined the possibilities for instruction. As such, it illustrates the usefulness of a history of language learning and teaching that considers method as the product of a series of localized responses to particular teaching situations as well as of a teleological process of refinement and reform