The Post-Historical Middle Ages

E. Scala, E. Scala, Kenneth A. Loparo, Sylvia Federico

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781349374625, 9780230607873
• eBook ISBN: 9780230621558
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Literature

This collection of original essays repositions medieval literary studies after an era of historicism. Analyzing the legacy of Marxist and materialist theory on medieval literary criticism, the collection offers new ways of reading texts historically. Drawing upon aesthetic, ethical, and cultural vantage points and methods, these essays demonstrate that a variety of approaches and theories are "historical" and can change what it means to historicize medieval literature. By defining our post-historical moment in medieval English literary studies in terms of new possibilities, this collection will have broad appeal to those interested in the English Middle Ages, history, culture, and reading itself.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Getting Post-Historical
• 1 Amorous Dispossessions: Knowledge, Desire, and the Poet’s Dead Body
• 2 Time Out of Memory
• 3 Historicism after Historicism
• 4 (Dis)Continuity: A History of Dreaming
• 5 The Negative Erotics of Medievalism
• 6 Naked Chaucer
• 7 Biography after Historicism: The Harley Lyrics, the Hereford Map, and the Life of Roger De Breynton
• 8 The Gender of Historicism
• 9 From Clio to JHMuse©: Literacy and the Muse of Digitalia
• Notes on Contributors
• Index