Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century

This book is much broader in scope than the title would imply. Part historiography, part biographical sketches, and part personal memoir, it explores the lives of the 20 scholars (19 men and one woman) whom Cantor perceives as "the great medievalists" of the period 1895-1965. His thesis is that Wilsonian idealism, World War II, the Nazi Holocaust, and the Cold War shaped the world views and the interpretations of the European and American scholars studying the Middle Ages. The book is based on Cantor's frequently brilliant, sometimes fanciful (he knew seven personally) analysis of the scholars' works; their obituary notices; and his memory of conversations that took place 40 or more years ago. Strong on the historians (predictably, since Cantor is a historian), respectable on the literary scholars, weak on the art historians, the book contains a mine of information, much of it anecdotal, about those discussed. Bristling with prejudices, judgments (in many cases wrongheaded), and predictions, clever and witty in style, it will command a wide audience in both academia and the informed reading public. For research and general collections. History Book Club selection. -- Bennett D. Hill, George town Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

To 19th-century romantics, the Middle Ages were a justification for aesthetic passion and communal feeling. In contrast, the 20th century's picture of the Middle Ages stresses its synthesis of faith and reason, charismatic leadership of saints and heroes, formalist attitude to art and literature, and ideas of divine and human love. These constructs, argues New York University medievalist Cantor, are the product of such influential medievalists as Frederic Maitland, Erwin Panofsky, C. S. Lewis and Richard Southern. His sometimes provocative study combines intimate profiles of 20 medievalists with an assessment of the impact of their ideas on our image of the Middle Ages. Cantor unravels the "common man's ethos" in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and discusses Eileen Power's searing indictment of the Middle Ages' marginalization of women. He invents his own Middle Ages: one that tells us to reject the "regulatory and welfare state" and reassert the values of civil society and "tough love."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.