Neohelicon
Volume/Issue:
Volume 33: Issue 1
Writing the new Middle Ages
Author:
Stephan Nicols Johns Hopkins University Romance Languages & Literatures Department 3400 North Charles Street 21218-2687 Baltimore Maryland USA

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Pages:
141–169
Online Publication Date:
15 Dec 2007
Publication Date:
15 Mar 2006
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02766255
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Abstract  

The epistemological shift represented by postmodernism and its aftermath has liberated Medieval Studies infusing the field with energetic and controversial studies that have made the field one of the more vigorous (and interesting) in the humanities. Play, humor, relativism, indeterminacy, differential repetition (multiple copies as opposed to an original), performative mimesis, postcolonialism, gender, sexuality, and other concepts associated with postmodern sensibility configure contemporary medieval studies in radically different ways from those of earlier paradigms. These studies undertake to define “a new Middle Ages.” This is not the neomedievalism of late modernism that Umberto Eco described a few years ago. It is rather the period itself, stretching from roughly the 3rd century to the beginning of the 16th century C.E. The contemporary fascination with a period so different from our own, so radically “other,” points to a sense that, despite its alterity — or perhaps because of it — the Middle Ages have something important to tell us about ourselves and our age. It would be difficult to deny the role that popular culture — the many films, books, television shows and other mediatic phenomena — has played both in popularizing and in liberating medieval studies. Besides a flexible approach, these studies also share with popular culture a fascination with the historical context, but in ways only found in the best fiction and film go further to discover means of demonstrating what the historical artifact has to communicate to us: how, for example, it can interrogate or confirm the insights opened by new intellectual paradigms. They show that the challenge lies in finding a way to connect the mind and the world not only for the historical material, but also for the contemporary scene. This article will explore some recent examples of writing the new Middle Ages.

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Cover Neohelicon
Neohelicon
Print ISSN:
0324-4652
Online ISSN:
1588-2810

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Neohelicon
Language English
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 1973
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 2
Founder Akadémiai Kiadó
Founder's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland Gewerbestrasse 11.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 0324-4652 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2810 (Online)

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