Definition:
The lower division of the seven liberal arts in medieval schools, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The grouping of the three arts of the trivium began with the Greek Stoics in the third century BC, although the term trivium was not applied until more than 1,000 years later.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "crossroads"Observations:
- "The liberal arts denote the seven branches of knowledge that initiate the young into a life of learning. The concept is classical, but the term liberal arts and the division of the arts into the trivium and the quadrivium date from the Middle Ages.
"The trivium includes those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to mind, and the quadrivium, those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to matter. Logic, grammar, and rhetoric constitute the trivium; and arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy constitute the quadrivium. Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance."
(Sister Miriam Joseph, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, edited by Marguerite McGlinn, Paul Dry Books, 2002) - "[T]he trivium originated in a notion of a three-way crossroads of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. In Roman education, . . . rhetoric was at the center of language study. . . .
"In the Middle Ages, the trivium . . . retained rhetoric as a component, but many of rhetoric's functions were actually performed either by grammar (which commonly treats style in conjunction with language, composition, and textual commentary), or by dialectic (which used rhetorical teachings to clarify problems of argumentation."
(Rota Copeland, "Trivium," Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, edited by Thomas O. Sloane, Oxford University Press, 2001)
Pronunciation: TRIV-ee-um
Also Known As: artes sermocinales
