ABSTRACT
A great deal can be learned about the teaching of Latin prose composition at Oxford during the first half of the fifteenth century through careful study of the manuscripts containing one widely used textbook, an ars dictandi entitled Formula moderni et usitati dictaminis. Alain de Lille’s prose style is also highly ornamented in places, notably in the complaint itself, but modulates to a lower register in the dialogue between Nature and the Dreamer. The 1309 statutes of the grammar school at St. Albans required students who wished to attain the dignity of bachelor to pass a final examination in which they produced compositions on a set theme in metrical verse, rhythmical verse, and epistolary prose. Thomas Merke's contemporary at Oxford, the dictator Thomas Sampson, wrote textbooks that are little more than glossed letter collections.
