The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past

The premodern past was desired and deployed in a myriad of different ways in sixteenth-century England. The period of the English Reformations produced a generative, complex, and paradoxical range of feelings for the premodern. Many sixteenth-century texts were multiply medievalist, making use of li...

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Main Author: Jones, Mike Rodman
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis 2018
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Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51770/
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author Jones, Mike Rodman
author_facet Jones, Mike Rodman
author_sort Jones, Mike Rodman
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description The premodern past was desired and deployed in a myriad of different ways in sixteenth-century England. The period of the English Reformations produced a generative, complex, and paradoxical range of feelings for the premodern. Many sixteenth-century texts were multiply medievalist, making use of literary figures, generic forms, and cultural phenomena in unexpected ways. Various senses of temporality—understandings of the shapes and nature of cultural time—were often foregrounded. Reformation historiography was often sectarian and combative, but also sought tangible contact with the textual remains of the past. These feelings for the premodern were then unavoidably present in the 1590s, but were subject to use in nascent literary forms that were self-consciously avant-garde in different ways. Antiquity and archaism were brought together with a heightened sense of contemporaneity. In prose fiction, the premodern could be used in different forms of scandalously risqué, comic, and autobiographical narratives. In historical poetry produced in the same decade, a new literary mode made poetic capital out of a heightened emotional discourse associated with premodern history and culture.
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spelling nottingham-517702020-05-04T19:41:28Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51770/ The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past Jones, Mike Rodman The premodern past was desired and deployed in a myriad of different ways in sixteenth-century England. The period of the English Reformations produced a generative, complex, and paradoxical range of feelings for the premodern. Many sixteenth-century texts were multiply medievalist, making use of literary figures, generic forms, and cultural phenomena in unexpected ways. Various senses of temporality—understandings of the shapes and nature of cultural time—were often foregrounded. Reformation historiography was often sectarian and combative, but also sought tangible contact with the textual remains of the past. These feelings for the premodern were then unavoidably present in the 1590s, but were subject to use in nascent literary forms that were self-consciously avant-garde in different ways. Antiquity and archaism were brought together with a heightened sense of contemporaneity. In prose fiction, the premodern could be used in different forms of scandalously risqué, comic, and autobiographical narratives. In historical poetry produced in the same decade, a new literary mode made poetic capital out of a heightened emotional discourse associated with premodern history and culture. Taylor & Francis 2018-06-18 Article PeerReviewed Jones, Mike Rodman (2018) The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past. Exemplaria, 30 (3). pp. 191-206. ISSN 1041-2573 Medievalism temporality Reformation historiography prose fiction historical poetry emotion https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10412573.2018.1464811 doi:10.1080/10412573.2018.1464811 doi:10.1080/10412573.2018.1464811
spellingShingle Medievalism
temporality
Reformation
historiography
prose fiction
historical poetry
emotion
Jones, Mike Rodman
The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
title The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
title_full The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
title_fullStr The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
title_full_unstemmed The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
title_short The uses of medievalism in early modern England: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
title_sort uses of medievalism in early modern england: recovery, temporality, and the “passionating” of the past
topic Medievalism
temporality
Reformation
historiography
prose fiction
historical poetry
emotion
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51770/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51770/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51770/