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One of the major associations was the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages as they were taught at any university – the trivium being the cluster of disciplines that were linked with grammar , logic and rhetoric ; and the quadrivium , music , geometry , arithmetic and astronomy . Then Milo finds himself in the clutches of boredom at later points in the story , such as when he is in the Dictionopolis prison or when he is waylaid by the Terrible Trivium . Another Proctorial trivium is that from 6 December 2005 until today , the leader of the Opposition has been a member of the Junior Proctor 's college ; and the Prime Minister has been a member of the Senior Proctor 's college : surely an unprecedented coincidence . Optimists will note that the makers of the World Wide Web ( W3 ) Consortium are addressing all the questions of the ancient trivium and quadrivium such that all the potentials of the traditional seven liberal arts will soon be available in electronic form ( Figure 1 ) . All students started by studying the three arts of the trivium grammar , logic , and rhetoric and then proceeded to the four numerical arts of the quadrivium mathematics , geometry , astronomy , and music . By late Mediaeval times , these studies had been codified as the seven liberal arts , divided into a group of three known as the trivium ( grammar , rhetoric , logic ) and a group of four known as the quadrivium ( geometry , arithmetic , music , astronomy ) . The legacy of the ancient pedagogues , the fragmentation and division of study into the disciplines of the trivium and quadrivium , was complemented by the moderns ' further division of each field into the compact lessons and exercises of the teacher 's most important tool - - the textbook . The course of study consisted of two parts , the grammar school in which the trivium ( the " three - part curriculum , " from which our word " trivial " is derived ) , consisting of grammar , rhetoric , and logic . They meet the Everpresent Wordsnatcher , a dirty little bird who twists their sentences into his own meanings , the Terrible Trivium , a man with no features on his face who stalls the travelers with meaningless busywork , and the Demon of Insincerity , who tries to trick them into leaving the path to the castle . In terms of the classical trivium of grammar ( the structure of language ) , dialectic ( the logic of language ) and rhetoric ( the effects of language ) , the emphasis of Tim Berners-Lee on the logic of language reflects the concerns of the dialectic in Antiquity .