IDENTITÀ, RADICI E REVIVAL MEDIEVALI: CONSIDERAZIONI SULL’USO DELLA STORIA

Abstract

The study examines the inescapable role played by the past in every historical
reconstruction which, being made of a montage of sources and
interpretations, conditions the present and provides material for new
imaginings. On the basis of this, the contradictions that characterise the
relationship between the 19th, the 20th and our own century and the medieval
period: a period that is simultaneously viewed as capable of inspiring ideals
while also seen as a dark and worthless epoch. This relationship needs to be
understood in terms of different articulations of the medieval: the legal, the
spiritual, the folkloric and so on considered on a case by case basis in order
for the historian to reach conclusions which can be reintegrated into more
nuanced and accurate frameworks.