Trivium

The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.^[1]

This article is about the educational syllabus. For other uses, see Trivium (disambiguation).

The trivium is implicit in De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury") by Martianus Capella, but the term was not used until the Carolingian Renaissance, when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium.^[2] Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essential to a classical education, as explained in Plato's dialogues. The three subjects together were denoted by the word trivium during the Middle Ages, but the tradition of first learning those three subjects was established in ancient Greece, by rhetoricians such as Isocrates.^[3]^: 12–23 Contemporary iterations have taken various forms, including those found in certain British and American universities (some being part of the Classical education movement) and at the independent Oundle School in the United Kingdom.^[4]

Etymology[edit]

Etymologically, the Latin word trivium means "the place where three roads meet" (tri + via); hence, the subjects of the trivium are the foundation for the quadrivium, the upper division of the medieval education in the liberal arts, which consists of arithmetic (numbers as abstract concepts), geometry (numbers in space), music (numbers in time), and astronomy (numbers in space and time). Educationally, the trivium and the quadrivium imparted to the student the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity.^[1]

Classical education movement

Quadrivium

The three Rs

Vyākaraṇa

(2006). The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time. (McLuhan's 1942 doctoral dissertation.) Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-067-3.

McLuhan, Marshall

Michell, John, Rachel Holley, Earl Fontainelle, Adina Arvatu, Andrew Aberdein, Octavia Wynne, and Gregory Beabout. "Trivium: The Classical Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic, & Rhetoric. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. Print. Wooden Books".

Robinson, Martin (2013). Trivium 21c: Preparing Young People for the Future with Lessons from the Past. London: Independent Thinking Press. 978-178135054-6.

ISBN

(1947). "The Lost Tools of Learning". Essay presented at Oxford University.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

Winterer, Caroline (2002). The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.