On Not Wasting Time

Abstract

This essay considers the value of thinking about the strangeness of the medieval past. It explores how varied human subjectivity can be across time and thinks about how accessing radically alien subjectivities from the medieval past can have a value for us in our present. It takes three examples of attitudes to particular concepts––genius, technology, and love––that demonstrate both the difference of the medieval past and how our social norms and values have their roots in that historical period. Reading medieval literature requires us, at times, to make imaginative leaps––where do they take us?