Affective medievalism

Download or read book Affective medievalism written by Thomas A. Prendergast and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.