
The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory
Andrew Cole
In The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages, modernists and medievalists, as well as scholars specializing in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century comparative literature, offer a new history of theory and philosophy through essays on secularization and periodization, Marx’s (medieval) theory of commodity fetishism, Heidegger’s scholasticism, and Adorno’s nominalist aesthetics. One essay illustrates the workings of medieval mysticism in the writing of Freud’s most famous patient, Daniel Paul Schreber, author of Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903). Another looks at Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire, a theoretical synthesis whose conscientious medievalism was the subject of much polemic in the post-9/11 era, a time in which premodernity itself was perceived as a threat to western values. The collection concludes with an afterword by Fredric Jameson, a theorist of postmodernism who has engaged with the medieval throughout his career.
Contributors: Charles D. Blanton, Andrew Cole, Kathleen Davis, Michael Hardt, Bruce Holsinger, Fredric Jameson, Ethan Knapp, Erin Labbie, Jed Rasula, D. Vance Smith, Michael Uebel
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Reviews for The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory
Paul Strohm
Postmedieval
“Amidst the trash talk of theory in the past tense and the drive of the corporate university to dismantle the conditions of possibility for critique . . . the essays collected in The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages will hearten scholars and also invite them to reflect on their own complicity with current academic events. The volume marks yet another powerful contribution to ongoing investigation into the intersections of the medievalisms of modernity and the modernities of Medieval Studies.”
Kathleen Biddick
Medieval Review
“Those already engaged in ongoing debates about the complex relation between medieval and modern will find this book to be an essential addition to an important area of inquiry. Those who have never given much thought to the subject will discover a stimulating, and perhaps even transformative, introduction to a crucial set of terms and concepts.”
George Edmondson
Speculum