Introduction: Medieval and medievalist practice
Introduction: Medieval and medievalist practice
Scholars of the medieval past are often drawn to a kernel of historical truth that might guarantee the truth of their inquiries, but medievalist scholarly and cultural practice reveals the impossibility of this secure knowledge. Affective responses to the past continue to structure our understanding of historicity and temporality; just as the strange familiarity of the Middle Ages in the present is a form of “uncanny” knowledge and feeling. Medievalism is a social and cultural practice, not a secure epistemological category. Indeed, as a practice, medievalism constantly troubles the apparently simple alterity of the Middle Ages, leading to intellectual and affective discontent from both medieval scholars and medievalist practitioners.
Keywords: uncanny, historicity, temporality, time, Umberto Eco, medievalism, neomedievalism, practice, periodisation
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