Writing the new Middle Ages

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.