Visions and Ruins

Joshua Davies is Lecturer in Medieval Literature at King’s College London

• Introduction1 Ruins and wonders: the politics of cultural memory in and of early medieval England2 Queen Eleanor and her crosses: trauma and memory, medieval and modern3 Medievalist double consciousness and the production of difference: medieval bards, cultural memory and nationalist fantasy 4 The language of gesture: untimely bodies and contemporary performanceAfterword: migrationsIndex

'…a timely contribution to current debates about the relevance of the Middle Ages to contemporary political discourse. It is a thoughtful and meditative rumination on the various ways that the idea of medievalism functions within modernity, ranging from the dark underbelly of right-wing nationalism, which co-opts the medieval as a singular site of originary ethnicity, to the hopeful, almost utopian work of contemporary artists, who deploy an atemporal medievalism to bridge the difference between multiple pasts, presents, and futures.'Speculum'this is an engaging book written by a scholar who is immersed in the languages of his texts, the history of his monuments, the scholarship on them, and has managed to produce a book that offers something new to Medieval Studies while also being accessible to a range of audiences, if they are up to the task.'The Medieval Review