The Past and Future of Medieval Studies
Will be published approx. on 28. February 1994
Book
Paperback/Softback
444 pages
978-0-268-03801-4 (ISBN)
Description
Confronted with severe challenges for funding, for justifying a focus on Western Europe in an increasingly pluralistic society, and for maintaining that their domain can be known and taught in some substantive manner beyond the strickly interpretive and subjective, scholars of the humanities have become increasingly self-conscious and articulate about their methods and purposes. This so-called "battle over the university" will inevitabley affect the shape of teaching and research over the next decade.
In repsonse to the need to reflect collectively on their enterprise, an impressive array of contemporary North American medievalists met at the Medieval Institutd of the University of Notre Dame. Each of the essays collected in this volume is offered from the perspective of a specialty within the diverse and interdisciplinary field of Medieval Studies. These essays consider the development, present status, and future prospects both of the specialty and of the broader context of Medieval Studies in the American university.
In repsonse to the need to reflect collectively on their enterprise, an impressive array of contemporary North American medievalists met at the Medieval Institutd of the University of Notre Dame. Each of the essays collected in this volume is offered from the perspective of a specialty within the diverse and interdisciplinary field of Medieval Studies. These essays consider the development, present status, and future prospects both of the specialty and of the broader context of Medieval Studies in the American university.
Reviews / Votes
"The medievalist act(s) as a cultural construct go-between...and is well placed to address many current cultural issues." - Catholic Historical Review"Perhaps it was not only in appreciation of a number of recently deceased colleagues, but in awareness of this silence about women's history and particularly the history of religious women that John Van Engen has adopted the theme of Abelard and Heloise as a metaphor for medieval studies. To have presented so clearly the vexed problem of this 'romance' and these letters in so short a space is an achievement of multi-disciplinary medieval scholarship which the entire volume celebrates." - Journal of Ecclesiastical History
"Van Engen treats Medieval Studies as sharply distinct from its neighboring disciplines." - Romance Philology
"The results at Notre Dame provide an interesting window on the internal turbulence of medieval studies that agitates the surrounding waters. The present volume should definitely be on the reading list for everyone who missed Norman Cantor's Inventing the Middle Ages." - The Historian
" While the authors of The Future of the Middle Ages may differ in their critical stances about the reality of canonical texts, without making a point of it they show remarkable agreement about the names of the authors they find worth studying. That suggests, in turn, that destructively anti-elitist as the present culture wars may be, they have not, as yet, led to a total defeat of the notion that aesthetic greatness differentiates some authors from many others-and hence makes their works more worth studying, no matter how kaleidoscopic those works may now appear." - Speculum
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Notre Dame IN
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
3 illustrations - 3 images - 3 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 227 mm
Width: 148 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
599 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-268-03801-4 (9780268038014)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
John Van Engen is Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is co-editor of Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, European Transformations, and Transforming Relations (University of Notre Dame Press), and author of Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings.