Thinking of the Medieval
Thinking of the Medieval
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The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.
- Provides new insight for medievalists, modernists, and intellectual historians, illuminating the role of the Middle Ages in mid-twentieth-century thought
- Covers a transnational range of intellectuals and modes of thought, thus expanding disciplinary horizons beyond those thinkers primarily known as medievalists
- Engages in debates that remain highly relevant today, explaining how mid-twentieth-century thinkers dealt with the misappropriation of the Middle Ages by white nationalists and developed modes of resisting racist and colonialist discourses
Reviews & endorsements
'This fascinating volume promises to make a valuable intervention in medieval studies and a rich and challenging contribution to our understanding of the life of the Middle Ages in modernity.' Josh Davies, King's College London
Product details
October 2022Hardback
9781108478960
290 pages
234 × 160 × 25 mm
0.7kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Directions of Thought – The Middle Ages at the Mid-century R. D. Perry and Benjamin A. Saltzman
- Part I. Politics:
- 1. Outside History: Fanon's Negative Manicheism D. Vance Smith
- 2. 'The noblest blood God ever made': W. E. B. Du Bois's Medievalism in the Contexts of the World Wars Cord J. Whitaker
- 3. Ernst Kantorowicz, Carl Schmitt, and the University of California Regents Nancy van Deusen
- 4. Hannah Arendt's Middle Ages for the Left R. D. Perry
- Part II. Arts:
- 5. Curtius and Jung: Commonplaces, Archetypes, and Literature's Collective Unconscious Emily V. Thornbury
- 6. Old English at the Midcentury: Poetry, Scholarship, and Fiction in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s Clare A. Lees
- 7. Erwin Panofsky's Neo-Kantian Humanism and the Purported Relation between Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism C. Oliver O'Donnell
- 8. 'Are women human?': Authority, Gender, and Dante in Dorothy L. Sayers's Scholarship Helen Brookman
- Part III. Epochs:
- 9. Periodization Trouble: Auerbach, Huizinga, and the Question of Medieval Realism Jane O. Newman
- 10. Medieval Mysticism and the Making of Simone Weil Anna Kelner
- 11. Hermeneutics and the Medieval Horizon: Zumthor, Jauss, Barthes, and Gadamer Benjamin A. Saltzman
- Afterword Martin Jay
- Bibliography
- Index.
