Week 12 - conclusion

Question 1

periodisation and the bad Middle Ages

Answer 1

Middle Ages became replaced with medieval in usage
Creates a category that separates everything that is not modern from the now - can separate out some of the ‘bad’ things out such as slavery, superstition
When bad things happen in the now we think they are outliers
A way colonial societies could distinguish themselves from countries they saw as backwards or medieval - white man’s burden
Periodisation has been placed in Australia - Terra nullius or not worthy of being considered as modern civilisation

Question 2

what is medievalism?

Answer 2

The reception, interpretation or recreation of the European Middle Ages in post-medieval cultures
Highly malleable concept/point of reference as befits a period defined by absences/gaps
Can be a source of continuity or alterity
Can be critical or nostalgic
Can be nationalist or colonial
Can be historical or fantastical
Nazi medievalism - painting of Hitler as a Teutonic Knight

Question 3

the ‘good’ Middle Ages

Answer 3

Holder of qualities that are deemed desirable but undermined by the effects of modernity
Eg. Honour, faith are often attributed to the past

Question 4

colonial medievalist fantasies

Answer 4

Negative elements of medievalism fruitful in justifications of colonial project: need to civilise
Positive, nationalist and imperial elements fruitful in producing imagined continuities between colonial outposts and the metropole: plantain Europe in the New World
Melbourne uni meant to look like Oxford and Cambridge
Cathedrals
Attempts to connect Melbourne to medieval Europe that erases Indigenous history

Question 5

modern misremembering and appropriation

Answer 5

Crusade themes
Neo-Nazi
Used as propaganda
Historic unity of Russians and Ukraine

Question 6

our story, in contrast

Answer 6

Connection and debate between religions, societies, economies
Networks of influence in philosophical, religious and medical ideas, art and architecture, politics and diplomacy
Changing points of encounter/interfaces between polities, economies, religions
Sustained threats of diplomatic, military and economic interaction
Shifting patterns of dominance, linked to chance and circumstance, rather than national destiny of inherent superiority
Was pre-modern really pre?

Question 7

exchange and encounter

Answer 7

More global perspective
Explanatory frameworks for change
Focal points that let us witness interactions, new things and influences
Our present commitment to the past can increase Indigenous and non-European voice, give a more complex human story and give a better awareness of the mis(uses) of history

Question 8

randles

Answer 8

• Medievalism in architecture
• LARPing
• Colonial art in European style
• When is style choice about power? When is it about familiarity?

Question 9

Kathleen Davis

Answer 9

• The idea of ‘the middle ages’ as what Davis calls “a constructed category” makes more sense to me than seemingly arbitrary distinctions in time/events. Living people didn’t suddenly start calling it ‘the Renaissance’ and collectively agree that the ‘medieval’ was over.
  o These terms are analytical tools to frame/relate ideas and events by common features.
  o It also supports the 19th century idea of ‘modernity’ as not only inevitable, but desirable, and history as a linear progression towards the western European idea of modernity.