Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics, Fraud (review)

Reviews 237 Parergon 20.2 (2003) Shippey, Tom and Martin Arnold, eds, Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship , Politics, Fraud (Studies in Medievalism XI), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2001; cloth; pp. viii, 264; RRP US$60.00, £35.00; ISBN 085991626X. The nine essays by different authors in this volume are entertaining and wellresearched . What they are doing gathered together in one place, and what their intended relationship to one another is, I cannot say. The editors, Shippey and Arnold, have used a number of terms in the title, as if to cover a range of contingencies. As well as ‘Middle Ages’ and ‘scholarship,’ there is the more trendy ‘politics’ and ‘fraud,’ capped by the money-word ‘appropriating.’ Appropriation is a term with connections to postmodernism and postcolonial theory. My view is that it refers to a process more particular than the mere reuse of ideas, forms or materials in another context. Politics and fraud are also, I think, reasonably technical terms. I would like to know what the editors mean by them, and how they relate to the Middle Ages. That information is not to be found in this volume. The only introduction is an editorial note of less than twoand -a half pages, which gives no definitions and does not reveal the origin of the collection – whether it is based on papers delivered together at a conference, whether the papers were solicited individually, or whether they came together by chance. There is instead a brief summary of the position of each paper, and references to the relevancy argument and the relativity principle. The relativity principle states that every time phenomena such as the Middle Ages are looked at, they are re-seen and reinterpreted in the light of the people who are looking at them. We do the same, and so every observation on the Middle Ages is relative. The solution for Shippey is to expand the field of the Middle Ages to include, as well as the hypothetical original phenomena, every subsequent interpretation, so as to make medievalism ‘inclusive of any and all previous attempts at rewriting and/or rethinking [or re-imagining] the medieval past.’ That makes Medievalism a gigantic field. Whether it is better to proceed across the field by an orderly path, or to pluck flowers at random, is the question. If the editors of this volume started out with the intention of showing the variety of ways in which the Middle Ages have been subsequently reinterpreted, they could hardly have chosen a more eclectic mix. Scholarship is a characteristic of all of the contributions, which are written to a high standard. It is also the subject of some, such as Sophie van Romburgh’s chapter on Junius, in which she describes how the Dutch philologist devoted himself to a study of Old English for nationalist ends. Fraud, on the other hand, 238 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) is largely absent, with the notable exception of John Friedman’s discussion of the so-called Spanish forger, who working at the beginning of the twentieth century produced over 300 forgeries of Medieval works, cleverly using authentic leaves. Friedman does give a brief typology of copyists and forgers, and repeats the character-blackening report that John Ruskin’s idea of a pleasant evening was one spent before the fireplace, cutting up medieval manuscripts. Werner Wunderlich, in his chapter ‘Medieval Mozart,’ discusses a clear case of the substitution of a classical theme with a medieval one. In the early nineteenth century C. M. Heigel made an adaptation of Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito which rewrote the libretto so as to draw positive parallels between the then King of Bavaria, Max Joseph, and the Merovingian King Garibald. Wunderlich writes that ‘the Baroque and classicist use of Roman times in La clemenza di Tito are transformed by Heigel into a romantic and patriotic appropriation of Germanic times.’ That word ‘appropriation’ sticks out, for me, like the kettledrums in Il seraglio. It is not clear why it is used here. Wunderlich does not explain why Heigel ‘appropriates’ the medieval, whereas Mozart and his librettist merely ‘use’ the classical. If anything has been appropriated, surely it is not Germanic history but Mozart...