Historical Present: Medievalism and Modernity

257 Pages·2011·1.371 MB·English

by  Walter Kudrycz

THE HISTORICAL PRESENT
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Th e Historical Present
Medievalism and Modernity
Walter Kudrycz
Published by the Continuum International Publishing Group
Continuum UK, Th e Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX
Continuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Walter Kudrycz, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
from the publishers.

First published 2011

British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978- 1441- 11057- 2

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand
Printed and bound by in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 Progress, Decline and Fall: Historiography and the Middle
Ages in the Age of Reason 11
2 A New Order of Th ings: Kant, Pre- Romanticism and the
Emergence of the Modern Medievalism 35
3 Golden Ages and Perfect Presents: Romanticism,
Idealism and the Middle Ages 55
4 Professors and Professionals: Medieval History and the
Nineteenth- Century Academic Environment 81
5 As it Really Was: Academic Medieval History into the
Twentieth Century 113
6 Th e Waning of Progress: Radical Historiography into the
Twentieth Century 141
7 From Process to Structure: Th e Annales School and
Twentieth- Century Academic Medieval History 167
8 Th e New Romantics: Literature, Literacy and Late
Twentieth- Century Understandings of the Middle Ages 191
9 Th e Shock of the Old: Medieval History and the Formation
of the Current Academic Environment 217
Epilogue 237
Bibliography 239
Index 247
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Preface
Medievalism is an established part of cultural studies, and an area of central
concern for those studying and teaching medieval history. Medievalism can
nevertheless be distinguished from traditional medieval history because it is not
directly concerned with the study of the Middle Ages themselves. Rather, in line
with a wider move from facts to representation, it is a genre of academic discourse
that looks at how the Middle Ages have been portrayed in subsequent eras.
Medievalism thus conceived began in the 1970s. At that stage it mainly dealt with
depictions of the Middle Ages in the art and literature of the Romantic move-
ment. More recently, popular culture including movies such as Robert Zemeckis’
Beowulf has become a particular focus. Th is book will, however, go in the oppo-
site direction and interpret modern academic attitudes towards the Middle Ages
as forms of medievalism. Examining the varieties of academic understandings
of the Middle Ages presents us with potentialities that are diff erent from those
associated with analyses of medievalism as expressed through art, literature, or
popular culture. Th e main argument of this work is that focusing on historians’
and intellectuals’ attitudes towards the Middle Ages is not only interesting per
se, but also a means of coming to grips with modernity itself. In other words,
academic understandings of the Middle Ages are particularly useful indicators
of wider modern intellectual and cultural developments. Th is sense that ideas
about the past in general and the Middle Ages in particular might have a special
signifi cance within modernity is based on the proposition that the relationship
between historiography and philosophy in our epoch is closer than has been the
case at any other time in Western history.
Th is main argument carries with it a number of broad proposals, all of which
are developed throughout the work. Perhaps the most fundamental of these
proposals is that modernity’s sense of the past is the product of the historical
consciousness of the nineteenth century and is therefore inseparable from
the philosophical culture of that time. Along these lines, it will be suggested
that medieval history as we know it today developed within a tension between
Romanticism and Idealism, the dominant intellectual movements of the nine-
teenth century, and that nineteenth- century thinking has continued to inform
recent and current attitudes towards history, historiography and the Middle Ages.
A loose definition of modernity might be useful at this early stage. The
viii PREFACE
arguments and proposals of this book fall in with the idea that we may speak of
a modern intellectual epoch – namely modernity – that began around 1800. Th e
beginning of modernity is a much discussed question. If there is a traditional
view, it would be that a new and more dynamic outlook emerged in association
with, or perhaps as a result of, the French Revolution. Th is interpretation can be
seen, for example, in John Grumley’s History and Totality (1989). An alternative
viewpoint encapsulated in John McGowan’s Postmodernism and its Critics (1991)
has, however, had more infl uence on this book. McGowan drew attention to the
signifi cance of the philosophical works of Immanuel Kant, which were written
in the 1780s and 1790s. McGowan suggested that elements in Kant’s system
played a part in the formation of certain important ideas in both the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, and that the core ideas of Postmodernism can be traced
back through Romanticism to specific Kantian concepts. Despite its name,
Postmodernism therefore lies within modernity, not aft er it. McGowan’s think-
ing has been supported in various ways by more recent scholarship on Kant. Ian
Hunter’s Rival Enlightenments (2001), for example, points to a tension between
a metaphysical tradition that stretched back from Kant to Leibnitz and beyond
on the one hand, and a school of civic or political philosophies on the other. Th e
ultimate ascendency of the former within the German Enlightenment – a process
Hunter describes – adds weight to the idea that Kant- inspired metaphysics played
an important role in the formation and persistence of what we call modernity.
Kant’s infl uence on modern thought has also been discussed in detail by Karl
Ameriks in works such as Kant and the Historical Turn (2006). Th ese recent
approaches to Kant dovetail with the aim of this book, which is to further our
understanding of modernity, and of how we moderns see ourselves. As part
of this aim, it will be suggested that Kant’s sense of the potential historicity of
reason was the foundation of the defi ning relationship between historiography
and philosophy as conceived within modernity.
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge those who have infl u-
enced the development of my ideas. Here I must begin with John O Ward. I was
lucky enough to have John as my main undergraduate teacher of medieval history
at Sydney University, and as my honours- year and doctoral supervisor. When I
was at Sydney University John Prior introduced me to Annales history and the
crusades, Martin Stone allowed me to glimpse the rigours and the delights of
ancient history and Stephen Gaukroger and Udo Th iel brought early- modern
philosophy to life. I would also like to thank Alan Stephens of the University of
New South Wales at ADFA for indulging my attempts to see airpower doctrines
as cultural artefacts, and for his continued assistance. In connection with this
project I owe thanks to Christina Spittel, John O Ward, Stephen Gaukroger and
Guy Hansen, as well as Michael Greenwood and Rhodri Mogford at Continuum.
Introduction
Ancient Greek historians and philosophers, seeking to distinguish histories from
fable, rumour and gossip, were the fi rst to defi ne the genre of historiography as
being writing about real, verifi able events that took place in the past. Despite
this empirical move, the Greeks also acknowledged the literary and rhetorical
nature of historiography, and saw historical events as possessing metaphysi-
cal signifi cance. While concern with real past events has continued to defi ne
historiography as a genre, questions about the status of historiography and the
meaning of history have been debated down the ages. When various forms of
Postmodernism began to exert an infl uence on the humanities in the last quarter
of the twentieth century, these history debates reached a crescendo. In academic
circles during that time an unprecedented emphasis came to be placed on the
formal and literary characteristics of historiography. Interpreting historiography
in this way proved highly controversial, not least because some felt that the
connection between the historian and historical reality was being ignored or even
denied. Th is in turn threatened to undermine the historian’s ability to make moral
judgements about the past. It is probably fair to say that these fears have now
subsided to some degree, and that the end- of- the- century history debates and
culture wars resulted in a general increase in historiographical self- awareness.
This raising of consciousness among writers and readers of history has
included an acceptance of the idea that understandings of the past are themselves
historically determined. Attitudes towards the past can now be seen not only
as susceptible to many diff erent forms of analysis, but also as suitable subjects
in their own right for historiography. Th e writing of these (meta- ) histories of
historical attitudes has also opened up new opportunities, the most important
of which is the possibility of increasing awareness of ourselves and of our
own environment. Th is book is based on the idea that by looking at changing
perceptions of the past, we moderns might better understand the ways in which
we think of ourselves in relation to both the past and the present. Th e main focus
will be on changing attitudes towards the Middle Ages, and it will be suggested
that various understandings of those times are especially sensitive indicators
of modern intellectual and cultural developments. Th is project will therefore
be relevant to anyone studying or teaching either medieval history itself or the
phenomenon of medievalism, and to those interested in history in general and