Medievalism Key Critical Terms eds. by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz (review)

The volume Medievalism Key Critical Terms edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz appeared in 2014 in the collection "Medievalism" (D. S. Brewer Editions) that compiles works treating the influence and appearance of 'the medieval' in the society and culture of later ages.

The directors begin their introduction with a tribute to Leslie J. Workman and Kathleen Verduin, the initiators of "medievalism" throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The project of such a dictionary was initially Leslie Workman's but remained incomplete at 2001, the year of his death. With the present volume, directors do not hope to be as comprehensive as an encyclopedia, but they wish to follow the intuition of Workman and deepen the "terms used when speaking of medievalism" (1).

But this dictionary does not only explore essential terms used when speaking of the reception of medieval culture in postmedieval times. It appears to draw a dynamic map of the "medieval imaginary" (149), like a changing cartography of medievalism. The form of such a dictionary invites the readers to confront themselves with an "open structure" that is not only the mark of a heuristic approach but also a real epistemological method. Indeed, not only is the concept of a uniform period known as the "Middle Ages" a construction in itself, an "open schema", but many stereotypes associated with the Middle Ages also "do not always have specific historical referents" (2).

Interestingly enough, the framework of this dictionary is based on a series of traditional oppositions that have been at the centre of debates in the history of this relatively young discipline. In their introduction, Leslie J. Workman and Kathleen Verduin outline these oppositions by scanning every headword. On the one hand, they lay the emphasis on dichotomies like alterity/modernity, subjectivity/objectivity, medieval/neomedieval, on the other hand, they show the current implications of an old polemic, between medievalism and traditional medieval studies.

Rather than seeing medievalism studies at the margin of medieval studies or as bringing up its rear, we see medievalism, the term and paradigm, as methodologically broad and flexible enough to comprise not only 'dated' medieval studies scholarship, but also modern scholarship self-aware enough to recognize its role in the ongoing recreation—academic, artistic, popular, technological—of what is considered medieval culture

(7).

In the years to come, this list of key terms will certainly lay the foundations for the renewal of medievalist disciplines, by broadening their outlook and improving their hermeneutical tools.

To conclude, we wish to stress the importance of such an approach, not only in Reception Studies, but also in Translation Studies that are becoming, more and more, the foundations for any reception research.

As an annexe to this review, these are the covered critical terms: "Archive" by Matthew Fisher; "Authority" by Gwendolyn Morgan; "Christianity" by William Calin; "Co-disciplinarity" by Jonathan Hsy; "Continuity" by Karl Fugelso, "Feast" by Martha Carlin, "Genealogy" by Zrinka Stahuljak, "Gesture" by Carol l. Robinson, "Gothic" by Kevin Murphy And Lisa Reilly, "Heresy" by Nadia Margolis, "Humor" by Clare a. Simmons, "Lingua" by M.J. Toswell, "Love" by Juanita Feros Ruys, "Memory" by Vincent Ferré, "Middle" by David Matthews, "Modernity" by Tom Shippey, "Monument" by E. L. Risden, "Myth" by Martin Arnold, "Play" by Brent Moberly And Kevin Moberly, "Presentism" by Louise D'arcens, "Primitive" by Laura Morowitz, "Purity" by Amy s. Kaufman, "Reenactment" by Michael a. Cramer, "Resonance" by Nils Holger Petersen, "Simulacrum" by Lauren s. Mayer, "Spectacle" by Angela Weisl, "Transfer" by Nadia Altschul, "Trauma" by Kathleen Biddick, "Troubadour" by Elizabeth Fay.