Ernst Robert Curtius: A Medievalist’s Contempt for the Middle Ages
By C. Stephen Jaeger
Paper given at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2015)
Introduction: I began work on this talk ready to vent against Curtius. I have resisted his hold on my thinking and on that of medievalists generally, but only after benefitting hugely from his great book. Once I sat down to write, I realized that it was in part Oedipal rage against the father figure driving me on, and I’d now have to change “contempt” to something milder. I’m going to talk about Curtius’s relationship to the Middle Ages. Like most things, it’s more complex when looked at closely. The personal and historical context adds wrinkles, folds, corners, (some dark, some light), back doors and side doors, to what appeared a monolithic structure. But even seeing it at its most positive and with insight into the psychology of the author, there’s a lot left over that looks like contempt for that period.
Curtius’s mature view of the Middle Ages registers clearly in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, or ELLMA (1948). Curtius regularly uses the term “dark ages” to apply to the period prior to and to that following the 12th century, and he sets the period in a framework formed in the 19th century by scholars of the Renaissance and informed in part by notions of historical decadence: a classical period (productive, creative), followed by a period of decline (receptive, passive, preserving), out of which arises eventually a rediscovery of the lost classic. The 12th century had introduced briefly a “wonderful climate of spring” in Europe, but a lapse into barbarism followed, represented by scholastic philosophy and the neglect of the classics.
He assigned the Latin and vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages to a position inferior to ancient poetry, though he credited the French troubadours and their successors with the “emotional discovery” of passionate love. His chapter on Dante had put aside the troubadours and Italian love poets, by stressing the poetic community of Dante with the four classical poets who invite him into their club in the sphere of the noble pagans in inferno, and of course, Virgil, with no mention of Italian poets and only one classical poet placed in Purgatory.
Click here to read this article from Academia.edu
Ernst Robert Curtius: A Medievalist’s Contempt for the Middle Ages
By C. Stephen Jaeger
Paper given at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2015)
Introduction: I began work on this talk ready to vent against Curtius. I have resisted his hold on my thinking and on that of medievalists generally, but only after benefitting hugely from his great book. Once I sat down to write, I realized that it was in part Oedipal rage against the father figure driving me on, and I’d now have to change “contempt” to something milder. I’m going to talk about Curtius’s relationship to the Middle Ages. Like most things, it’s more complex when looked at closely. The personal and historical context adds wrinkles, folds, corners, (some dark, some light), back doors and side doors, to what appeared a monolithic structure. But even seeing it at its most positive and with insight into the psychology of the author, there’s a lot left over that looks like contempt for that period.
Curtius’s mature view of the Middle Ages registers clearly in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, or ELLMA (1948). Curtius regularly uses the term “dark ages” to apply to the period prior to and to that following the 12th century, and he sets the period in a framework formed in the 19th century by scholars of the Renaissance and informed in part by notions of historical decadence: a classical period (productive, creative), followed by a period of decline (receptive, passive, preserving), out of which arises eventually a rediscovery of the lost classic. The 12th century had introduced briefly a “wonderful climate of spring” in Europe, but a lapse into barbarism followed, represented by scholastic philosophy and the neglect of the classics.
Click here to read this article from Academia.edu
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