{"product_id":"bad-medievalism-and-the-modernity-kathy-lavezzo-9781531512415","title":"Bad Medievalism and the Modernity Problem","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eChallenges the assumptions made over the medieval\/modern divide by examining the medieval roots of modern racism\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHumanists have long insisted on a chasm separating modernity and the Middle Ages. In \u003ci\u003eBad Medievalism\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eand the Modernity Problem\u003c\/i\u003e, Kathy Lavezzo demonstrates how the temporal divide scholars typically accept is a fiction that has shaped racial discourse over a \u003ci\u003elongue dur?e\u003c\/i\u003e. The hard line drawn between \"then\" and \"now\" is of a piece with the line separating whiteness from humans deemed irrevocably other. Thus, Lavezzo advocates a \"bad\"--that is, depressing and disturbing, even nauseating--historicism attuned to the interpenetration of race, whiteness and periodicity in the \"west.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTeasing out the dialectical invocation of both periods by figures as diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, Carolyn Bynum, Stuart Hall, Johan Huizinga, Paule Marshall, Karl Marx, Gloria Naylor, J. R. R. Tolkien and Sylvia Wynter, Lavezzo demonstrates how the tension between and across categories of the \"medieval\" and the \"modern\" has mobilized intense emotional and political responses. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eInspired by Lavezzo's discovery that Hall, the beloved founder of cultural studies, planned as a student at Oxford to become a medievalist, but was dissuaded from that path by his teacher Tolkien, \u003ci\u003eBad Medievalism\u003c\/i\u003e unpacks the implications of that charged encounter. Central chapters contrast Tolkien's white heritage medievalism with a speculative inquiry into the \u003ci\u003ePiers Plowman\u003c\/i\u003e dissertation that Hall never wrote. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOther chapters assess the white \"feel\" of periodization by scholars including Jacob Burckhardt, Huizinga, Fredric Jameson, and Bynum, and draw on theorists including Du Bois and Wynter to chart the medieval roots of a racialized discourse of progress and primitivism. \u003ci\u003eBad Medievalism\u003c\/i\u003e culminates in new readings of Gloria Naylor's \u003ci\u003eBailey's Cafe\u003c\/i\u003e and Paule Marshall's \u003ci\u003eThe Fisher King, \u003c\/i\u003edemonstrating their importance as productively pessimistic engagements with the racial legacies of both the medieval and the modern.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Kathy Lavezzo\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1531512410\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781531512415\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Fordham University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/07\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 352\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"Kathy Lavezzo","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46881083195647,"sku":"9781531512415","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_84f5f6b9-0b16-4c04-9586-9a247e3b2fb2.jpg?v=1747970620","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/bad-medievalism-and-the-modernity-kathy-lavezzo-9781531512415","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}