The influence of dictaminal treatises in England was weak throughout the Middle Ages and largely restricted to a limited number of royal clerks and a few academics. Most practitioners were royal chancery clerks who dealt with foreign and ecclesiastical powers. This article focuses chiefly on the use of dictaminal letters by middle class English citizens in the fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries. These letters show little significant influence of continental or English dictaminal theory but are chiefly either sprawling news bulletins like the Paston letters or, more commonly, imitations of the royal missives from the Signet or Privy Seal offices. As the fifteenth century ended even these vestigial dictaminal forms were replaced among the middles classes by business formats, such as the letter of credit, although they retained some use among the upper classes into the sixteenth century and in some royal missives into the eighteenth century. The article concludes with suggestions on ways contemporary genre theory might be usefully applied to analyze the rise and decline of the ars dictaminis.

Technical writing theory and research about communication in large organizations mostly ignore from-the-top control of rhetoric. The usual emphasis on an individual writer negotiating with a known audience and generally free to decide on matters of style, organization, and so on can hide the ways that power relations often silently control internal rhetoric. Conclusions are based on two case studies: In the later Middle Ages, professional letters had to conform to a rhetorical format that necessarily foregrounded unequal power relations. In a contemporary nuclear power station, similar power relations purposely obscure writer and audience while procedures dictate format and content.

Research Article| November 01 1984 The Dictamen and its Influence on Fifteenth-Century English Prose Malcolm Richardson Malcolm Richardson Department of English, University of Alabama, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1984) 2 (3): 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1984.2.3.207 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Malcolm Richardson; The Dictamen and its Influence on Fifteenth-Century English Prose. Rhetorica 1 November 1984; 2 (3): 207–226. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1984.2.3.207 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1984, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1984 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.