The Black Middle Ages: Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages (The New Middle Ages)

__The Black Middle Ages__ examines the influence of medieval studies on African-American thought. Matthew X. Vernon focuses on nineteenth century uses of medieval texts to structure racial identity, but also considers the flexibility of medieval narratives more broadly in the medieval period, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book engages disparate discourses to reassess African-American positionalities in time and space. Utilizing a transhistorical framework, Vernon reflects on medieval studies as a discipline built upon a contended set of ideologies and acts of imaginative appropriation visible within source texts and their later mobilizations. Dedication 6 Preface 7 About the Nature and Structure of This Study 7 Acknowledgements 10 Contents 12 Chapter 1: Introduction: Reading Out of Time—Genealogy, African-American Literature, and the Middle Ages 13 Anglo-Saxon Freedoms 13 Owning Time 27 A Desire for (Medieval) Origins 34 A Story to Pass On: Reading Against the Discourse of Time 40 The (W)hole of History 48 Works Cited 51 Primary Sources 51 Secondary Sources 52 Chapter 2: Medieval Self-Fashioning: The Middle Ages in African-American Scholarship and Curricula 56 The Construction of a Medieval Past: Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-African 62 The AME Church Review: Before the Renaissance 71 From Vernaculus to Vernacular: The Medieval in African-­American Education 88 Appendix: Dante 106 Works Cited 107 Primary Sources 107 Secondary Sources 110 Chapter 3: Failed Knights and Broken Narratives: Mark Twain and Charles Chesnutt’s Black Romance 113 The Two Middle Ages: Reassessing Twain’s Failure 130 Mythopoesis and Master Narratives: Charles Chesnutt’s Deviant Romance 142 Works Cited 162 Primary Sources 162 Secondary Sources 163 Chapter 4: History, Genealogy, and Gerald of Wales: Medieval Theories of Ethnicity and Their Afterlives 168 Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Conquest of Descent 187 Gerald’s Ambivalence 193 Works Cited 207 Primary Sources 207 Secondary Sources 208 Chapter 5: Other Families: Dryden’s Theory of Congeniality in Dante, Chaucer, and Naylor 211 The System of Naylor’s Inferno 224 From Chaucer to Naylor: Finding a Voice 233 Works Cited 250 Primary Sources 250 Secondary Sources 251 Chapter 6: Coda: True and Imaginary History in Django Unchained 254 Works Cited 268 Primary Sources 268 Secondary Sources 268 Index 270 Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: Reading Out of Time—Genealogy, African-American Literature, and the Middle Ages (Matthew X. Vernon)....Pages 1-43 Medieval Self-Fashioning: The Middle Ages in African-American Scholarship and Curricula (Matthew X. Vernon)....Pages 45-101 Failed Knights and Broken Narratives: Mark Twain and Charles Chesnutt’s Black Romance (Matthew X. Vernon)....Pages 103-157 History, Genealogy, and Gerald of Wales: Medieval Theories of Ethnicity and Their Afterlives (Matthew X. Vernon)....Pages 159-201 Other Families: Dryden’s Theory of Congeniality in Dante, Chaucer, and Naylor (Matthew X. Vernon)....Pages 203-245 Coda: True and Imaginary History in Django Unchained (Matthew X. Vernon)....Pages 247-262 Back Matter ....Pages 263-266