HC 421H, Honors College colloquium Inventing the Middle Ages

Study questions for reading due February 19 (week 7)

Chapter Six of Inventing the Middle Ages

Cantor wants to explain the successes of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien in terms of their fiction works' abilities to provide an authentic medieval sensibility. Note, on page 231, the assertion that The Lord of the Rings "captures three salient aspects of medieval civilization": the experience of endemic war, long travel for non-elites, and the heroism of the humble (231-2). Lewis, on the other hand, "preached a pessimistic, dualist view of the world as the scene of struggle between good and evil" (219) at the same time that he "gave academic authority to inquiry into the romantic patterns within medieval literature" (217). But note too that Cantor points to the "genteel Nordic neoracism in the form of neomedievalism" that also contributes to the success of The Lord of the Rings. Have the film versions of these books further supported Cantor's contentions? Note too that Cantor believes that Lewis and Tolkien "wanted to bring out of the Middle Ages in one way or another the ingredients for the reformation of the modern world" (242). How would you characterize the world they were looking to create?

Cantor credits Maurice Powicke with understanding how Christian ideals affected the behavior of England's medieval nobility and with a "Proustian" sensibility in his writings. This latter seems a stretch to me, but Cantor's points about the persistence of an aristocratic mindset seem right on the mark.

Dinshaw, Chapter Three

To learn more about Margery Kempe, you can check out this website at Holy Cross college, arranged by one of the leading Kempe scholars, Sarah Stanbury.

Dinshaw uses Margery's wearing of white clothes to show the conflict not only between her body and herself but within Christian doctrine, which idealizes both virginity and marriage. Moreover, as Dinshaw explains on page 151, medieval Christianity (and not just in Margery's case) treasures its materiality. The presence of Jesus is for Margery something palpable as she fastens on his breast (and yes, Margery's act imitates breastfeeding, showing another way that medieval Christianity accepts gender fluidity -- Jesus as Mother is the title of a book by medievalist Carolyn Walker Bynum, available in our library as BV4490.B96 1982 -- despite the Lollards' imputations of sodomy).

Dinshaw's reading of Margery's inquisition at Leicester suggests that sodomy as sin shadows this narrative as it does the Lollards' Twelve Conclusions. To accuse Margery of luring away wives is to question in court her reasons for so doing. Feminist critics can point to many, many texts (and movies, too) that express a fear of female alliance (Shakespeare's plays, for instance, very seldom include mothers or show female friendship outside of family ties).

Dinshaw's explanation of imitatio in the rhetoric of sainthood is apt: saints' stories often repeat the narrative events of other saints. This imitatio, like inventio, is not seen as troublesome to a medieval audience. On the contrary, stories are better when they are imitative. Dinshaw's greater point is the tension Margery's "belief in the redemptive power of a spiritual relation with Christ which is expressed in corporeal terms" (163) brings to her spiritual practices like the wearing of white clothes or her roaring.

Dinshaw notes Robert Gluck's gay appropriation of Margery, and then writes about the mid-90s efforts to eliminate the NEA and the NEH. Think through the strands of connection Dinshaw is delineating: how central is the Middle Ages to the civic life of the United States? What does it matter whether we look at The Lord of the Rings as "neoracist" or not?

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