Medieval History
Thomas Lawrence Long recently reviewed Kelen, Sarah A. (ed), Renaissance Retrospections: Tudor Views of the Middle Ages. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013, for Medievally Speaking.
Perhaps because I have traversed three-score years in this vale of tears, with more of my own moyen age receding over my shoulder than lying ahead, I pause to recall how in my school days we configured periods of European history. In high school?s world history, it was the Greco-Roman Classical Age, a later rebirth of that in the Renaissance, and in between the Medieval. This latter was often elided with something called the ?Dark Ages,? the ghost of William Camden (who is not mentioned in this otherwise fine book under review) whose early seventeenth-century Remains Concerning Britain offered ?a taste of some middle age, which was so overcast with dark clouds, or rather thick fogs of ignorance, that every little spark of liberal Learning seemed wonderful? (p. 337). In college this schema, which had been canonized by Jules Michelet and Jacob Burkhardt in the nineteenth century and embedded in the curriculum in the twentieth century, was complicated by scholars who identified other prior renascences. As Erwin Panofsky wrote in 1944, ?innumerable tendencies, ideas, inventions and discoveries credited to the Modern Era had announced themselves in the Middle Ages; . . . the Renaissance was connected with the Middle Ages by a thousand ties; and . . . the heritage of classical Antiquity had never been lost beyond recuperation? (pp. 201-202). Triumphalism surrendered to a new periodization: Early Modern (which sometimes included Late Medieval). In recent years we have not seen the demarcation between medieval and modern as clear or sharp. The launching of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies is one example of the ways in which new periodization has been institutionalized.
Editor Sarah A. Kelen has assembled eight thoughtful and well researched chapters, which she introduces in a chapter (?The Body and the Book?) that does more than summarize the scope and theme of the book, highlighting the collection?s preoccupation with images of both books and bodies... READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
- Mysteries And Masterpieces: The Latest Stage In The ?american Conquest Of The Middle Ages?
In 2011, Harvard University Press celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Loeb Classical Library, the renowned series that presents accessible editions of ancient texts with English translations on the facing page. The covers of the Loebs?red for...
- Swerving Into The Fray
Mandeville writing, British LibraryThis will be a brief swerve as end of the semester mayhem calls, but in honor of the charivari of saint Nicholas Day (when the lowly young clerks ran the show for a day in the Boy Bishop festivities), and in honor of...
- Andrew Bozio Reviews Niayesh, A Knight's Legacy
Andrew Bozio's recently reviewed Ladan Niayesh, ed. A Knight?s Legacy: Mandeville and Mandevillian Lore in Early Modern England (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), at Medievally Speaking. The review was...
- Cfp: Re-periodization: Questioning Disciplinary Divisions Of Time In The English Middle Ages
CFP: Re-periodization: Questioning Disciplinary Divisions of Time in the English Middle Ages International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 13-16, 2010 *Apologies for Cross-posting!* We invite the submission...
- Puscula: Short Texts Of The Middle Ages And Renaissance
Call for Submissions to Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance About the Journal Opuscula is a new high-quality peer-reviewed, on-line journal/text series published by Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University...
Medieval History
Thomas Lawrence Long Reviews Kelen (ed.) Renaissance Retrospections
Perhaps because I have traversed three-score years in this vale of tears, with more of my own moyen age receding over my shoulder than lying ahead, I pause to recall how in my school days we configured periods of European history. In high school?s world history, it was the Greco-Roman Classical Age, a later rebirth of that in the Renaissance, and in between the Medieval. This latter was often elided with something called the ?Dark Ages,? the ghost of William Camden (who is not mentioned in this otherwise fine book under review) whose early seventeenth-century Remains Concerning Britain offered ?a taste of some middle age, which was so overcast with dark clouds, or rather thick fogs of ignorance, that every little spark of liberal Learning seemed wonderful? (p. 337). In college this schema, which had been canonized by Jules Michelet and Jacob Burkhardt in the nineteenth century and embedded in the curriculum in the twentieth century, was complicated by scholars who identified other prior renascences. As Erwin Panofsky wrote in 1944, ?innumerable tendencies, ideas, inventions and discoveries credited to the Modern Era had announced themselves in the Middle Ages; . . . the Renaissance was connected with the Middle Ages by a thousand ties; and . . . the heritage of classical Antiquity had never been lost beyond recuperation? (pp. 201-202). Triumphalism surrendered to a new periodization: Early Modern (which sometimes included Late Medieval). In recent years we have not seen the demarcation between medieval and modern as clear or sharp. The launching of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies is one example of the ways in which new periodization has been institutionalized.
Editor Sarah A. Kelen has assembled eight thoughtful and well researched chapters, which she introduces in a chapter (?The Body and the Book?) that does more than summarize the scope and theme of the book, highlighting the collection?s preoccupation with images of both books and bodies... READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE
- Mysteries And Masterpieces: The Latest Stage In The ?american Conquest Of The Middle Ages?
In 2011, Harvard University Press celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Loeb Classical Library, the renowned series that presents accessible editions of ancient texts with English translations on the facing page. The covers of the Loebs?red for...
- Swerving Into The Fray
Mandeville writing, British LibraryThis will be a brief swerve as end of the semester mayhem calls, but in honor of the charivari of saint Nicholas Day (when the lowly young clerks ran the show for a day in the Boy Bishop festivities), and in honor of...
- Andrew Bozio Reviews Niayesh, A Knight's Legacy
Andrew Bozio's recently reviewed Ladan Niayesh, ed. A Knight?s Legacy: Mandeville and Mandevillian Lore in Early Modern England (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), at Medievally Speaking. The review was...
- Cfp: Re-periodization: Questioning Disciplinary Divisions Of Time In The English Middle Ages
CFP: Re-periodization: Questioning Disciplinary Divisions of Time in the English Middle Ages International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 13-16, 2010 *Apologies for Cross-posting!* We invite the submission...
- Puscula: Short Texts Of The Middle Ages And Renaissance
Call for Submissions to Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance About the Journal Opuscula is a new high-quality peer-reviewed, on-line journal/text series published by Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University...