Serielle Notation

Abstract Three distinct sources are investigated in relation to the conventional practice of ‘serial notation’. We define serial notation as a special instance of a conventional form of writing that is dependent on compliance. Serial notation is not limited to the function of bureaucratic clarity, but also fulfils the purpose of producing social meaning. The sources we investigate have attracted the attention of researchers from the perspectives of social and economic history: the financial accounts of the city of Duisburg and the early modern prose novel ‘Fortunatus’ as well as the notations of knight titles in Cologne are all sources of the cultural reality of late medieval and early modern economic circumstances. However, a praxeological approach focusing on the social meaning established by the practice of repetition itself has not yet been applied. Here, we will combine the three case studies to carve out the underlying praxeological structure of the production of meaning through scriptural uniformity – a structure that deliberately undercuts the complexity of its denotations.