Uck. Yeah. This one had issues and I forgot it even launched.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallLuckily, there's only 41 wicks, so wick checking this shouldn't take too long if we need to do that.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallErk. I think there's a valid core here, but I see a bunch of aversions mixed in without comment. And that's before we get started on whether Medieval European Fantasy examples should even count.
Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on Aug 30th 2024 at 10:49:00 AM
oh, thats much worse than i expected. I honestly thought this trope was pretty straightforward (examples of medieval-type societies where reading is taken for granted, like it is in our world. This is totally a thing, particularly in works that are more of the Theme Park Version of historical societies), but it seems to be having far more issues than that
I have no idea why its listed as Omnipresent, its very much not. That makes it much harder to fix, since currently its just listing "examples of fictional/historical settings where literacy is not universal", which is barely even a trope
Salvageable concept, needs a lot of work
regarding fantasy versions, I could see either way, depending on how closely the setting is based on real history. I personally think it could also be expanded to cover other usually-illiterate societies, which was most of them
Edited by Tremmor19 on Sep 3rd 2024 at 1:40:32 PM

Looking at the TLP archive
for Medieval Universal Literacy, I'm kind of confused about...well, everything to some extent, but I think the biggest issue is how examples stack(ed) up against each other:
I guess my main takeway from all of this is—don't the ways in which this trope isn't omnipresent outnumber the ways in which it is? Aside from knowledge passed down from generation to generation for only one particular person/set of people, there's also Rule of Funny at play making it inconsistent (i.e. lots of Monty Python joints), colonization not bothering to push for it, characters who take more pride in being streetwise, etc. From what I can tell, the intended definition refers to the trend of medieval literacy rates being higher than they would be in reality, but what really qualifies as "universal" anyway? Just more than a 50% LR? An LR closer to 100%? The examples have drifted from implying the latter to either stating the debatability of it, or implying the former only in the sense of "From a random sample, some are literate and some aren't."
The trope also isn't listed on No Straight Examples, Please!...which is a comparatively minor issue, but makes the trope feel kind of detached? (FWIW it's not on Omnipresent Tropes either, but those seem free to add.)
Edited by Coachpill on Aug 30th 2024 at 1:22:19 PM
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