Description
Book SynopsisWorld Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture explores the ways in which a range of modern textual cultures have continued to engage creatively with the medieval past in order to come to terms with the global present. Building its argument through four case studies--from the Middle East, France, Southeast Asia, and Indigenous Australia--it shows that to understand medievalism as a cultural idiom with global reach, we need to develop a more nuanced grasp of the different ways ''the Middle Ages'' have come to signify beyond Europe as well as within a Europe that has been transformed by multiculturalism and the global economy. The book''s case studies are explored within a conceptual framework in which medievalism itself is formulated as ''world-disclosing'' a transhistorical encounter that enables the modern subject to apprehend the past ''world'' opened up in medieval and medievalist texts and objects. The book analyses the cultural and material conditions under which its
Trade Review...World Medievalism demonstrates the capacity for medievalist imaginaries to cross geographical and ideological boundaries. Across four chapters, this accessible and generous book significantly adds to materials already published by Louise D'Arcens in article form and develops several of her long-term interests in medievalism and emotions (especially humor and laughter), the resourcing of the Middle Ages by agents across the political spectrum, and white Australian Anglo-Saxonism. * Fran Allfrey, University of York, Modern Philology *
World Medievalism reveals that scholars of contemporary literatures from the Middle East to the most Southeast of Southeast Asia have long been investigating many of these primary sources with their own expertise, and invites scholars trained in European medievalism to apply their skills and knowledge to examine these copious materials. It is an urgent addition to medievalism studies, consolidating the ever-increasing temporal and spatial borders of what counts as medievalism, opening up exciting, challenging research possibilities. * Fran Allfrey, University of York, Modern Philology *
