The Contemporary Medieval in Practice
Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing
Contemporary arts, both practice and methods, offer medieval scholars innovative ways to examine, explore, and reframe the past. Medievalists offer contemporary studies insights into cultural works of the past that have been made or reworked in the present. Creative-critical writing invites the adaptation of scholarly style using forms such as the dialogue, short essay, and the poem; these are, the authors argue, appropriate ways to explore innovative pathways from the contemporary to the medieval, and vice versa. Speculative and non-traditional, The Contemporary Medieval in Practice adapts the conventional scholarly essay to reflect its cross-disciplinary, creative subject.
This book ‘does’ Medieval Studies differently by bringing it into relation with the field of contemporary arts and by making ‘practice’, in the sense used by contemporary arts and by creative-critical writing, central to it. Intersecting with a number of urgent critical discourses and cultural practices, such as the study of the environment and the ethics of understanding bodies, identities, and histories, this short, accessible book offers medievalists a distinctive voice in multi-disciplinary, trans-chronological, collaborative conversations about the Humanities. Its subject is early medieval British culture, often termed Anglo-Saxon Studies (c. 500–1100), and its relation with, use of, and re-working in contemporary visual, poetic, and material culture (after 1950).
Praise for The Contemporary Medieval In Practice
‘The Contemporary Medieval in Practice is both wise and unafraid to take risks. Fully
embedded in scholarship yet reaching into unmapped territory, the authors move
across disciplines and forge surprising links. Thought-provoking and evocative,
this is a book that will have an impact that far belies its modest length.’
Linda Anderson, Newcastle University
'Intersecting with a number of urgent critical discourses and cultural practices, such as the study of the environment and the ethics of understanding bodies, identities, and histories, this short, accessible book offers medievalists a distinctive voice in multi-disciplinary, trans-chronological, collaborative conversations about the Humanities.'
Medievalists.net
'This wonderful book offers some powerful new creative pathways for medievalists, as scholars and as teachers, and also for artists wondering about the medieval past, and what it might mean for their own practice.'
Speculum
Clare A. Lees is Professor of Medieval Literature and Director of the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Gillian R. Overing is Professor of English at Wake Forest University.
Chapter One Doing it Differently: Medieval and Contemporary
Chapter Two Slow Scholarship: The Art of Collaboration
Chapter Three Audience: A Prompt and Three Responses on Falling
Chapter Four Water: Seven Propositions for the Contemporary Medieval
Chapter Five Environment: Self and the World
Chapter Six In Translation
Speculum
'Intersecting with a number of urgent critical discourses and cultural practices, such as the study of the environment and the ethics of understanding bodies, identities, and histories, this short, accessible book offers medievalists a distinctive voice in multi-disciplinary, trans-chronological, collaborative conversations about the Humanities.'
‘The Contemporary Medieval in Practice is both wise and unafraid to take risks. Fully embedded in scholarship yet reaching into unmapped territory, the authors move across disciplines and forge surprising links. Thought-provoking and evocative, this is a book that will have an impact that far belies its modest length.’
Linda Anderson, Newcastle University
Linda Anderson
Format: Paperback
Size: 234 × 156 mm
120 Pages
colour illustrations
Copyright: © 2019
ISBN: 9781787354661
Publication: October 07, 2019
Series: Spotlights
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