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Cover image of Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World
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Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World

The Idea of "the Middle Ages" Outside Europe

edited by Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul

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This fascinating study explores the intersection of postcolonial theory and medievalism. While the latter has traditionally been defined primarily in terms of European nationalism, the essays in this volume discuss medievalism in regions as wide-ranging as the United States, India, Latin America, and Africa. This innovative approach demonstrates the ways alternative conceptions of medieval and modern history can provide new insights into the idea of the Middle Ages and the origins and legacy of colonialism.

Through diverse and thought-provoking essays, the contributors demonstrate that writing...

This fascinating study explores the intersection of postcolonial theory and medievalism. While the latter has traditionally been defined primarily in terms of European nationalism, the essays in this volume discuss medievalism in regions as wide-ranging as the United States, India, Latin America, and Africa. This innovative approach demonstrates the ways alternative conceptions of medieval and modern history can provide new insights into the idea of the Middle Ages and the origins and legacy of colonialism.

Through diverse and thought-provoking essays, the contributors demonstrate that writing the Middle Ages has been key in colonial and postcolonial struggles over racial, ethnic, and territorial identity. They also argue that colonial medievalisms are crucial to understanding the history of entrenched temporal and political partitions, such as medieval/modern and East/West.

The essays are divided into four sections that address a set of related questions raised by the literary and political intersections of medievalism and colonialism. Each section is followed by a response—two are by postcolonial theorists and two by medievalists—that carefully considers the essay's arguments and comments on its implications for the respondent’s field of study.

This volume is the first to bring medievalists and postcolonial scholars into conversation about the shared histories of their fields and the potential for mutual endeavor. Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World will both redirect scholarship in medievalism and inform approaches to temporality in postcolonial studies.

Reviews

Reviews

A stimulating read.

I highly recommend this book to both scholars of medievalism and colonialism, as well as scholars in other fields, such as history and anthropology. The volume is smart, persuasive, engaging, and provocative, and the contributors engage in a wide range of theoretical debates.

Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World breaks new ground in being both interesting and erudite: its topic, the interdependence between medievalism and post-colonialism, is new and interesting, and it is here investigated to the highest standards.

A worthy volume that will be of interest to scholars of the premodern world as well as postcolonialists. It marks a welcome move away from a Eurocentric focus, ranging into new territorial areas that will raise new and exciting questions for scholars, teachers, and graduate students.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
456
ISBN
9780801893209
Illustration Description
4 b&w illus.
Table of Contents

Introduction: The Idea of "the Middle Ages" Outside Europe
Part I: Locations of History and Theory
Chapter 1. Decolonizing Medieval Mexico
Chapter 2. An Enchanted Mirror for the Capitalist Self: The Germ

Introduction: The Idea of "the Middle Ages" Outside Europe
Part I: Locations of History and Theory
Chapter 1. Decolonizing Medieval Mexico
Chapter 2. An Enchanted Mirror for the Capitalist Self: The Germania in British India
Chapter 3. "Most Gentle Indeed, But Most Virile": The Medievalist Pacifism of George Arnold Wood
Response. Historicism and Its Supplements: A Note on a Predicament Shared by Medieval and Postcolonial Studies
Part II: Repositioning Orientalism
Chapter 4. "Reconquista" and the "Three Religion Spain" in Latin American Thought
Chapter 5. Medievalism—Colonialism—Orientalism: Japan's Modern Identity in Natsume Soseki's Maboroshi no Tate and Kairo-ko
Chapter 6. Crossing History, Dis-Orienting the Orient: Amin Maalouf's Uses of the "Medieval"
Response. Working Through Medievalisms
Part III: Nation and Foundations
Chapter 7. Andrés Bello and the Poem of the Cid: Latin America, Occidentalism, and the Foundations of Spain's "National Philology"
Chapter 8. Postcolonial Gothic: The Medievalism of America's "National" Cathedrals
Chapter 9. An American in Paris: Charles Homer Haskins at the Paris Peace Conference
Response. Medievalism and the Making of Nations
Part IV: Geography and Temporality
Chapter 10. African Medievalisms: Caste as a Subtext in Ahmadou Kourouma's Suns of Independence and Monnew
Chapter 11. A Clash of Medieval Cultures: Amerindians and Conquistadors in the Thought of Wilson Harris
Chapter 12. Medieval Studies and the Voice of Conscience in Twentieth-Century South Africa
Response. Africa and the Signs Medievalism
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Kathleen Davis, Ph.D.

Kathleen Davis teaches medieval literature at the University of Rhode Island and is the author of Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time and Deconstruction and Translation.
Nadia Altschul
Featured Contributor

Nadia Altschul, Ph.D.

Nadia Altschul teaches medieval and Latin American studies at the Johns Hopkins University and is author of La literatura, el autor y la crítica textual.