This book investigates the troubled relationship between medieval studies and medievalism. Acknowledging that the medieval and medievalism are mutually constitutive, and that their texts can be read using similar strategies, it argues that medieval writers offer powerful models for the ways in which contemporary desire determines the constitution of the past. This desire can not only connect us with the past but can reconnect readers in the present with the lost history of what may be called the ‘medievalism of the medievals’. In other words, to come to terms with the history of the medieval is to understand that it already offers us a model of how to relate to the past.
Price: £25.00
Pages: 168
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture
Publication Date:
30 April 2020
ISBN: 9781526147998
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval, Ancient, classical and medieval texts, HISTORY / Europe / Medieval, Literary studies: ancient, classical & medieval, Sociology: family and relationships, European history: medieval period, middle ages
'In their project to legitimize affect in medieval studies, Prendergast and Trigg examine the dialectic between the medieval past and subsequent representations of that past. Their considerations weave a densely learned tapestry.'
Studies in the Age of Chaucer
'In this deceptively concise book, Thomas Prendergast and Stephanie Trigg offer thoughtful commentary on complex issues involving academic and extra-academic engagement with the medieval past.'
Speculum
Introduction: Medieval and medievalist practice
1 The space of time and the medievalist imaginary
2 Wonderful things
3 Fear, error and death: The abjection of the Middle Ages
4 Loving the past
5 Discontent in the age of mechanical reproduction
Bibliography
Index
