Verbal Regulation in Early Modern French School and Plainchant Books

Under the French ancien régime, Latin reading was commonly taught in parochial or charitable schools, the so-called petites écoles. The goal was to enable pupils to pronounce prayers and psalms in accordance with the learned ecclesiastical culture. The instruction and modeling provided by schoolmasters were essential in children's training, but so too were the books they used. Books of hours, ABCs, and psalters integrated particular typographical layouts, punctuation, and other symbols to help pupils read aloud. A similar system of visual cues was established in plainchant books in the course of the seventeenth century. This essay explores for the first time the graphic convergence between school books (reading primers) and plainchant books. It examines how they helped to develop the Latin literacy of often semiliterate people through oral performance of both reading and singing.