Authorship and Publicity before Print: Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning, by Daniel Hobbins – in American Historical Review 115 (2010): 1438-1440 (original) (raw)
Related papers
2000
As an area of enquiry, the academic study of medievalism has seemed constitutionally, and indeed institutionally, marginal. Neither fish nor fowl, its interdisciplinarity has long consigned it in the eyes of many medievalists to the shadowy realm of para-disciplinarity, seemingly doomed to the task of merely commenting on the work of others. In recent years, however, Anglophone medieval studies has witnessed the growing momentum of what might be called a "medievalist turn". The emergence of numerous studies of the historical and political forces buttressing the emergence of the discipline, along with the biographical studies of Helen Damico and Norman Cantor, have encouraged us not only to situate reflexivity at the heart of our critical and methodological practices but also to locate ourselves within an ever-changing tradition of historical interpretation. Nevertheless, as the editors of Medievalism in the Modern World remind us, the study of the "post-medieval reinvention of medieval culture" (4) is no 1990s debutante, but has been making steady if embattled headway since the mid-1970s, growing up in the cracks between disciplines, largely due to the energy and commitment of Leslie Workman, founder and former editor of Studies in Medievalism. It is fitting, then, that this, the inaugural volume of Brepols' Making the Middle Ages series, should honour Workman's indisputable role in the establishment of medievalist studies. The range and the quality of the essays collected here bear eloquent testimony to the impact of this scholar's work across the humanities in the English-speaking world and beyond. The volume features work by medieval scholars venturing beyond their customary analysis of medieval literature, early modern scholars, Victorianists, Germanic scholars, Icelandicists, codicologists, and even a dramatist and composer. It also contains essays by a number of regular contributors to Studies in Medievalism and other medievalist forums, including Kathleeen Verduin,
Review of Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty in Medieval Review
In Periodization and Sovereignty, Kathleen Davis, a skilled scholar of Anglo-Saxon and medieval English literature, and a courageously committed dialogist of medieval and postcolonial studies, has crafted a critical analysis of the political-theology of periodization. Her study is as dynamically precise as the structure of a protein. Composed in two parts, it intentionally folds in on itself in order to mark performatively the double bind of periodization--a mimesis of temporality and a Western juridical concept of sovereignty. Her aim is to explicate how the time of periodization is the time of sovereignty, or, put another way, sovereignty is a mode of temporality. Davis is at her most insightful when she shows the violent imbrications of periodization, sovereignty, and colonial enslavement. Does periodization ever let go? This review will mesh most closely with this larger question. Meanwhile, the compelling structure of sovereign temporalization, unfolded by Davis, requires brief summary.
Pre-Conquest History and its Medieval Reception: Writing England's Past
2025
The Norman Conquest brought about great change in England: new customs, a new language, and new political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. It also saw the emergence of an Anglo-Norman intellectual culture, with an innate curiosity in the past. For the pre-eminent twelfth-century English historians - such as Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon - the pre-Conquest past was of abiding interest. While they recognised the disruptions of the Conquest, this was accompanied by an awareness that it was but one part of a longer story, stretching back to sub-Roman Britain. This concept of a continuum of English history that traversed the events of 1066 would prove enduring, being transmitted into and by the works of successive generations of medieval English historians. This collection sheds new light on the perceptions and uses of the pre-Conquest past in post-Conquest historiography, drawing on a variety of approaches, from historical and literary studies, to codicology, historiography, memory theory and life writing. Its essays are arranged around two main interlinked themes: post-Conquest historiographical practice and how identities - institutional, regional and personal - could be constructed in reference to this past. Alongside their analyses of the works of Eadmer, William and Henry, contributors offer engaging studies of the works of such authors as Aelred of Rievaulx, Orderic Vitalis, Gervase of Canterbury, John of Worcester, Richard of Devizes, and Walter Map, as well as numerous anonymous hagiographies and histories.