ABSTRACT
Instructions and procedures represent a dominant form of modern technical writing, as suggested in Chapter 1; but instructions are not a recent develop - ment, a point emphasized in Chapter 4. As shown in the Short-Title Catalogue, numerous examples of instructions appear in published works of the English Renaissance (1475-1600), but how this important type of utilitarian discourse evolved before the 18th century has yet to be written. In this chapter, I sketch the history of technical instructions with two goals for this initial study: (1) to describe the development of practical instructions, as they shifted from oral to textual transmission, and (2) to exemplify this shift in early how-to manuscripts and books on agriculture and estate management. These were topics of sustained importance in England until well into the 18th century. As much of my research has shown, practical instructions existed throughout the medieval period, the Renaissance, and the 17th century in England in a range of fields, such as medicine, military science, navigation, and early Royal Society documents, in addition to agriculture and estate management. These documents anticipate characteristics of modern technical instructions. What we today call “good style” in technical instructions emerged as practical discourse shifted from academic oration style to plain, or “low” style, exemplified in Chapter 2, and shed much of its oratorical residue by the close of the 17th century. As I will show, the first instruction writers seemed aware that practical texts required a style much different from the style of humanistic works. My larger goal in this historical sketch is to encourage others to add, revise, and challenge my theories. How instructions developed varies among disciplines,
as I discussed in both Chapter 1 and next in Chapter 6. That is, military science instructions developed in a different way from agriculture, as did accounting instructions and medical and midwifery instructions. Each offers a unique research opportunity. Of one point I am sure: The study of instructions, whatever the focus, allows historians to explore the world in which practical writing existed and to unearth the history of our field. The history of instructions, taken as a broad genre, must be inferred from extant scholarship and historical work, particularly that which tracks the shift from orality to textuality. This shift, which marks the foundation of text, enables us to apply theory to the first writing, which was practical writing. Studies of the evolution of text, such as those by Goody [1, 2], as well as Goody and Watt [3], for example, describe the evolution of orality to textuality in early societies. Studies by Ong [4, 5] examine elements and implications of oral residue in text in general. Studies by Stock [6, 7] and Glen [8] illuminate the oral/textual shift in humanistic works. A host of other fine studies could be cited, but all these authors provide useful information and perspective in suggesting how English practical instructional texts may have developed before the 18th century. Practical writing developed alongside humanistic and literary writing and in larger quantities than both, a fact we must never forget [9, pp. 60-61; 10, p. 162].
