'How I miss the good times we have lost': Fourteenth-century longing for the past Dr Hannah Skoda, St John's College, Oxford
Event details
York Medieval Lecture
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The fourteenth century was a period of profound structural changes, eerily resonant with some of the challenges faced in our own times: pandemic, climate change, warfare, rampant inflation, political instability. In the fourteenth century, this produced an overwhelming sense that even time was speeding up – and this in turn generated a nostalgia for slower-paced, more predictable and apparently more prosperous times.
This lecture will explore this nostalgia and its expressions across Italy, France and England, across a range of media – from political petitions, to chronicles, lyric poetry, sermons and manuscript illuminations. Nostalgia was never singular: it could be reactionary and a mode of response to change which privileged established interests. But for the exploited and oppressed, nostalgia could mobilise powerful, emotive and hopeful visions of the future.
About the speaker
Dr Hannah Skoda studies history because it sheds critical doubt on the present. It has the potential to help us see beyond assumptions, to dismantle what might seem inevitable, and to treat one another with greater respect. She researches the social and cultural history of the later Middle Ages, and is particularly interested in the ways in which people respond to challenges and suffering – oppression, violence, extreme change.
Her research interests are wide: she has written on violence, slavery, ideas of sufficiency in the Middle Ages, Dante, medieval students, law, Joan of Arc and medieval saints.