NOSTALGIA AND (PRE‐)MODERNITY
Hannah Skoda
ABSTRACT This article argues that, in the fourteenth century, there was a wave of nostalgia that provoked by extreme structural change: this moment demographic catastrophe (with famine and plague), endemic warfare, economic fluctuation, intensified urbanization, intellectual spiritual novelties. Yet scholars from range disciplines have assumed modernity are intimately connected. Given these framings as modern phenomenon, seeks to explore implications premodern nostalgia. It begins setting out arguments for intertwining modernity. Some argued brings sense rupture produces Others, relatedly, seems speed up our experience time slower‐paced more predictable past. I juxtapose with evidence fourteenth‐century outpourings across contexts England, Italy, France. analyze examples political (both radical reactionary), apparently lost orders, set chivalric values, disrupted social orders. then suggest manifestations were actually produced precisely features period usually deemed be exclusive modernity: it rapid, rupturing change nostalgic regret. Nostalgia, then, would seem indicate century might modern. However, rather than simply trying therefore push back birth modernity, argue is indicative problems periodization. The presence epochs—these echoes webs time—suggest lines periodization, birthing moments, need treated caution. And appropriate such reminder should come phenomenon nostalgia, which is, after all, about resonances time—resonances amplified, distorted, whispered even, but all challenge complicate any straightforward either linear or cyclical time.
History and Theory