The Medieval New: Ambivalence in the Age of Innovation by Patricia Clare Ingham (review)

This book discusses attitudes toward the medieval new, refuting the traditional contention that newness was not a value cherished in the Middle Ages. According to Ingham, this failure to understand the medieval appreciation of novelty stems from the difference between medieval and modern significations of “old” and “new.” Whereas modern innovation most often, but not always, implicates a break from, and even a destruction of, tradition, repetition and innovation were closely related in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, Ingham shows that the medieval new was the source for various ethical discussions—the distinction between useful and whimsical cleverness, a sense of wonder tending toward understanding versus excessive or ‘blind’ curiosity, or innovation as opposed to error or fraud. The flexibility and ethical dynamics of the category of the new is thus crucial for how knowledge systems function, both in the Middle Ages and today.

Ingham discusses three key categories of newness. First, she studies views about divine creation ex nihilo vis-à-vis human creation in the work of various scholastics, and the link between art and nature, natural philosophy, and magic in the work of Roger Bacon. Second, she analyses the concept of ingenium (nature, character, or intelligence)—linguistic, textual, and mechanical—and traces its various uses in the French and Middle English versions of the medieval romance Floire and Blancheflor, as well as in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale and Guillaume de Machaut’s Tale of the Alerion, one of Chaucer’s sources. The third concept that Ingham discusses is curiositas. She reads Christopher Columbus’ letters about the discovery of the New World as part of a centuries-long tradition of apocalyptic writings, tracking their reception and transformation as texts in print. The new is once again shown to be based on repetition; it signifies not only the created but also the interpreted.

The main argument of the book—that the medieval new differs from the modern new in its relationship with repetition and variation rather than a total break from tradition—is strengthened by the study of a great variety of textual sources in theology, philosophy, alchemy, and romance and travel literature. The book is thus a valuable contribution to the history of ideas. Ingham also emphasizes the connection between ideational discussions of the new and the very nature of medieval textual culture, such as translations and prints. This link would have been even stronger if Ingham had noted developments in the field of philology during the past twenty-five years. The so-called “new” or “material” philologists explicitly foreground variance, based on repetition, as the prime characteristic of medieval manuscript culture, stressing medieval materiality and textuality as interrelated aspects of medieval culture. Such interdisciplinary cross-fertilization would have bolstered the main argument of the book and highlighted its relevance for a wider range of disciplines.