Neomedievalism, Identification, and the Haze of Medievalisms

Summary

The opening of Tom Shippey’s article “Medievalisms and Why They Matter” highlights the persistent confusion of meanings that surrounds the definition of this field of study. Because of that haze, the last two years have been a significant moment for medievalism as an area of academic investigation. In the decades following Leslie Workman’s inception of the journal, we have come to see just how profoundly varied different forms of medievalism are, necessitating some reevaluation of how we approach our subject. With two issues of Studies in Medievalism dedicated to “defining medievalism(s)” (volumes 17 and 18) and another issue exploring the various definitions of neomedievalism (volume 19), the subject has been given space for some much-needed theorizing. Workman’s monumental accomplishment notwithstanding, medievalism – or medievalistics, as Nickolas Haydock has termed the study of such texts – has been a field with only a vaguely defined sense of itself. Thus, and as E. L. Risden highlights, the Kalamazoo Congress on the Middle Ages has begun to feature sessions devoted to subjects perhaps with the barest links to the medieval. So the efforts of this journal, its editor, and advisory board have enabled a pause to assess and reassess both what we understand medievalism to be and how we approach it as scholars.

The result of these efforts is a collective definition that has the potential to help structure the continued investigation of the subject. Haydock provides a general definition describing the basic pattern of medievalism in terms flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of manifestations. He suggests we understand medievalism as “characterize[d] […] as a discourse of contingent representations derived from the historical Middle Ages, composed of marked alterities to and continuities with the present.” His definition highlights the often intricate composition of medievalia, the warps and weft of past images interwoven with present concerns. Elizabeth Emery further clarifies the texture of medievalism’s weave by noting the dependence of medievalia on the medievalist discourses that came before, making medievalism “a constantly evolving and self-referential process of defining an always fictional Middle Ages.” Emery’s sense of medievalism as dependent on not just the historical Middle Ages and present concerns, but also on preceding manifestations of medievalism, deepens understanding of the contingencies Haydock emphasizes.