Critical literacy lessons for the intellectual properties of learning from Bede and Alcuin of York

Abstract

The concept of intellectual property has much to contribute to cultural literacy. Intellectual property rights are crucial to issues of access to and economics of research and scholarship, and how such rights are associated with learning and the work of the learned is relevant to critical literacy. To begin to establish how intellectual property has long played a role in the critical shaping of learning, this article considers the 8th-century examples provided by Bede and Alcuin of York in the medieval monastic development of learning in the West. These examples illustrate how a cultural history of the proto-concept of intellectual property can illuminate the special and distinct status of learning in the production and circulation of knowledge. Bede and Alcuin of York are considered as medieval historical precedents for an opening up of literacy and learning that is relevant to digital-era issues over long-established tensions between a cloistered literacy (and learning) that is placed at a remove from the world and an opening up of literacy, learning and access to knowledge.