Affective medievalism: Love, abjection and discontent

Description

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. Front matter Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Medieval and medievalist practice The space of time and the medievalist imaginary Wonderful things Fear, error and death: The abjection of the Middle Ages Loving the past Discontent in the age of mechanical reproduction Bibliography Primary sources Secondary works Index