medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Surely the questions of motives and intent, whether historical or
contemporary, are more complex than the "either / or" setting
presentation this discussion seems to have fallen into? Neither
suspicion nor naivete are the poles around which this kind of analysis
circulates, is it?
A "both / and" characterization suits my understanding a bit better:
Although medieval persons may have straightforwardly and clearly
articulated their motivations on any host of issues, those declarations
come to us mediated through different kinds of representations
(primarily written texts) which may (or may not) be interpreted or
otherwise utilized for purposes not anticipated by the original
promulgator's intent or motive. I would also ask rhetorically if it is
possible to know fully anyone's intent or motive, whether a
contemporary or historical personage?
It seems to me that our investigations should include both an
understanding of what a text meant to those who created it, to the
degree that current scholarship is able to understand it, and an
evaluation of the cultural work that the same texts do apart from their
original articulation and outside the purview of their creators.
It's not *my* intent in this posting, for example, to initiate (or
revive) a debate over what might loosely be staged as positivist
historical study over and against "poststructuralism" (another one of
those pesky dualisms that confuses more than it conveys), but I can
also understand how and why some might see my comments in that light.
Dan Kline
U of Alaska Anchorage
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