Rushworth, J; Southerden, F; (2021) Editors’ Introduction: The Case for a Medieval Barthes. Exemplaria , 33 (3) pp. 209-219. 10.1080/10412573.2021.1977514.

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Abstract

This special issue reflects in two different ways on the notion of a “Medieval Barthes.”1 On the one hand, it considers Barthes’s own engagement with medieval culture, in his reading of medieval authors and in his engagement with medieval styles of thought. On the other, it explores the uses of Barthes within medieval studies: what medievalists have learnt from Barthes; how Barthesian concepts can be adapted for different medieval contexts; how medievalists inflect and change the way we read Barthes’s texts. Barthes is not known for his interest in the Middle Ages. His literary tastes tend rather to lean towards French prose-writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in particular Stendhal, Jules Michelet, and Marcel Proust.2 Yet these writers, and nineteenth-century French culture more generally, are at the same time potential conduits of the medieval for Barthes.3 Moreover, it is our particular contention — as the following articles illustrate — both that Barthes ought to be better known for his intermittent reflections on medieval concepts and that, more broadly, Barthes’s writings can be useful for medievalists in ways that have yet to be realized.

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