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.
Book Details
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