Elizabeth Emery and Richard
Utz, eds. Medievalism: Key Critical Terms. Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2017.
Reviewed by Micheal Crafton
(mcrafton@westga.edu)
Medievalism as a scholarly
pursuit is, amazingly, still somewhat controversial, however much less than,
say, two decades ago and decreasingly so every year. Yet the topic can still precipitate in some
boisterous arguments with “real medievalists,” concerning the
belief that it is faddish, or
amateurish, or under-theorized or even over-theorized. I say this in spite of the wonderful work and
legacy of Leslie Workman and Kathleen Verduin and in spite of the amazing
industry of Richard Utz, especially in his editorial production and network
development. Some people may never be
convinced, but this slim (and now less expensive in paperback) volume with its
thirty-two separate essays, providing a wide variety of approaches to the
subject, should go a long way to bridging the gap between the ongoing debate
over what counts as true medieval studies or what methods are acceptable.
This book has three very
useful pieces of apparatus, as we used to say in the textbook trade. There is a very full index that captures
terms not listed elsewhere. Also, at the
end of every one of the thirty-two essays on a key critical term is a list of
other key critical terms that the author considers useful and relevant, and
finally there is an extraordinarily useful introductory essay that groups key critical
terms together for diving deeper into cross themes, such as the divide between
what is considered professional and what is considered amateur. This opening essay is worth pausing over
because Professors Emery and Utz have taken pains to briefly retell the history
of medievalism from the pioneering work of Workman and Verduin to the
development of Studies in Medievalism
and This Year’s Work in Medievalism. (In fact, the volume is dedicated to Kathleen
Verduin.) The rest of the introduction
is occupied with threading the various key critical terms into a variety of
critical theory or methodology debates.
As the authors demonstrate,
however, the negotiations of history and epistemology that occur bringing
together the extreme ends of the debates affords some of the best nuanced
theorizing in the totality of studies on medieval subjects. The very issue of who is authorized to speak
is taken up in a series of terms: “Authenticity,” “Co-Disciplinarity,” and “Reenactment.” But it is also taken up in such terms as “Continuity,”
“Lingua,” “Simulacrum,” and even, strangely, “Purity.” What many readers will appreciate is how the
authors detail the manner in which medieval studies re-authorizes itself by
casting off portions of its former self.
One example that is quite illustrative is quoted by David Matthews’s “Chaucer’s
American Accent,” wherein Matthews holds up D.W. Robertson, Jr.’s A Preface to Chaucer as what was once a
major pillar of medieval studies but that is now pointed out as an example of
where medieval studies “went wrong” (7).
To say this method is an example of where it “went wrong” is to say that
the degree of deference shown to this overly narrow reading of all medieval
literature and art as a species of patristic exegesis paradigm could not be
sustained and wasn’t, but the change was Copernican revolution. There was just
about no greater authority than Robertson and the Princeton school, but now
rarely anyone would employ this method.
So this notion of a pure form of medieval studies that could look down
upon medievalism was always already a myth.
There are many gems in this
slim introductory essay, but its main function is to launch readers into the
essays that provide an interesting opening to medievalism by exploration of one
term. The essays, each one about eight
pages long, present varying approaches to the subjects in terms of theory and
method, and they are all useful and provocative. In fact, the diversity of approach and
coverage is itself instructive of the work of medievalism. Additionally, reading the volume as a set of
essays rather than as a glossary, I could see a few central themes
emerging. I would say that nearly all of
them touch on one or more of these three themes: legitimacy, temporality, and methodology. Sometimes an essay will focus a great deal on
one, and sometimes the themes are marbled.
Pam Clements takes the
subject of medievalism’s legitimacy on clearly, directly and forcefully in her
essay “Authenticity.” After reiterating
some of the delegitimizing strategies of medieval studies, which in her
economical phrasing define medievalism as “the study of necessarily inauthentic
‘medieval’ matter” (20), she begins with a systematic disclosure of the
increasingly problematic nature of periodicity.
The romance of the original or the authentic has been and will remain a
powerful motivator for both professional studies (with its reverence for scientific
proofs of authorship or age or provenance) and amateur studies (folklore groups,
for example, obsessed with the original words and forms of songs and
tales). But ultimately it must be
accepted that the authentic Middle Ages is a fiction. Once this fact is recognized, she points out,
the appeal to authenticity is made along different lines, ones that must take
into account not only the impossibility of some absolute authenticity but also
must explore “registers” or areas of authenticity or integrity. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King is clearly not an “authentic” medieval work in
the sense of being created in the period and therefore not the subject of “authentic”
medieval studies. However, due to the evolving
deconstruction of exactly what constitutes the so-called authentic Middle Ages
and due to developments in cultural and critical theory, it is no longer
remarkable to read medieval subjects representing 19th-century
British anxiety about a collapsing empire, as in Idylls, as an authentic
approach to the study of a medieval subject. Tennyson’s reflection on the medieval subject can
inform our reflection upon that same subject, thereby opening up more of what
may have been the medieval world’s own reflection upon the cultural subject.
The arguments in Professor
Clements essay are buttressed by many others in the volume. Certainly Gwendolyn Morgan’s essay on “Authority”
and Jonathan Hsy’s on “Co-Disciplinarity,” provide wonderful and self-reflexive
approaches to legitimacy and methodology, as does “Reenactment” by Michael
Cramer. Cramer addresses the reflexivity
in a dramatic and perhaps personal way by ventriloquizing the criticism of
reenactors, calling them “weird” and “nerds” and “dorks” (207). Lauryn S. Mayer’s essay on “Simulacrum” is
also very effective in making the legitimacy case especially in something of a
post-modern sense after the manner of Baudrillard. One of my personal favorites entries is “Genealogy”
by Zrinka Stahuljak. The topic of
genealogy is a rich one from the outset, to be sure, and this essay starts off
by revisiting Foucault’s famous essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” and its
myriad disruptions of what had been the scholarly assumptions of the meaning of
this term. In a brief and impressive
display of Foucauldian epistemological disruption, the essay narrows in on
George Duby’s 1953 classic La société aux
XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise. Stahuljak reads Duby’s work with respect and
care in order to demonstrate that he was Foucauldian ahead of his time in demonstrating
a decoupling of genealogy with biology.
This essay does what many in this vein do: they help the reader
understand the term in question and then demonstrate that the approach in
medievalism not only troubles a naïve understanding of historicity but also shows
the utility of medievalism as a methodological tool. Medieval studies is really not complete
without medievalism and vice versa.
On the other two themes
that I mentioned at the outset, temporality and methodology, there are many
excellent essays as well. I would highly
recommend the essay on “Presentism” by Louise D’Arcens. Not only does she present the struggle with
legitimacy concerns viz-a-viz medieval alterity, but also she reads three
different texts that would seem to demonstrate three different approaches to the
strange dual-consciousness of this work.
The first one is exemplified in A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and its many iterations,
representing a nearly total superiority of the modern over the old; the second
is illustrated by Jean-Marie Poiré’s Les
Visiteurs, using the medieval world as a satire of modernity; and finally,
the third approach is demonstrated by Bill
and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), an exploration of time travel so
outrageous that it “queries all models of temporality” (186).
One of the most enjoyable
and perhaps eminently teachable essays is Karl Fugelso’s on the key term “Continuity.” After his disarmingly clear opening definition—“To
qualify as a legitimate focus for the study of medievalism a subject must refer
to the Middle Ages, yet stand apart from the period” (53)—he proceeds to
analyze three illustrations of Dante’s Inferno
Canto 13: one, a fourteenth-century Italian manuscript, Holkham Miscellanae
48; two, William Blake’s 1824 version, unfinished; and three, Seymour Chast’s
2010 graphic novel Dante’s Divine
Comedy. By analyzing what in each
illustration seems to represent as medieval or not medieval in terms of style,
he proposes what might be considered a methodology for quantifying the presence
of the medieval. But what it ultimately allows
him to demonstrate is the difficulty of proving continuity or even
discontinuity, and how we too are imbricated in the hermeneutic enterprise.
I will close this review
with one final observation. Among the
essays for the terms, one finds a variety in scope or focus of analysis. While the majority of the essays address
issues across the realms of time, some do not.
Zrinka Stahuljak’s essay on “Genealogy,” for example, focuses almost
exclusively on medieval subjects; whereas Elizabeth Fay’s essay on “Troubadour”
treats nearly nothing but post-medieval subjects. One will find very little about the
troubadour poets in the latter but rather a great deal about Renaissance,
Romantic, and Victorian appropriations of troubadour ideas or conceits. While this variety to me is interesting and
enjoyable, it is something that readers or rather users of this book as a
glossary should be aware of. I firmly believe
this book will prove quite useful to students, professors, and the general
reader. The variety of ideas, approaches,
and subjects touched upon is stunning and will reward careful reading.
Micheal Crafton
University of West Georgia
