Thomas Percy's racialization of the European Middle Ages

Abstract

Thomas Percy (1729–1811) was influential in popularising medieval vernacular English literature, especially ballads and Old Norse poetry, in the mid‐to‐late 18th century. Scholarship has explored nationalist political leanings in Percy's three major medievalist anthologies, first published in 1763–1770, but to date, there has been no in‐depth exploration of the significance of race in his thought and writing. This article argues that Percy's medievalist works were shaped profoundly by his conception of race as an immutable and inherited category of identity encompassing physiology, society, and culture. It draws on critical race theory to argue that Percy racialized the European Middle Ages in ways that continue to shape contemporary medievalism.

Philology and racist appropriations of the medieval

“…Much contemporary scholarship on medieval languages and literature relies on the foundations established by philologists of the nineteenth century, so we are often complicit in depicting the Middle Ages through later nationalist frameworks (Vernon, 2018, p. 27). Ethnonationalist appropriations of the medieval did not begin with modern academic philology in the nineteenth century (Painter, 2010; Young, 2019, 2020). However, as the “bibliomaniacs” and “antiquarians” of the eighteenth century gradually gave way to the “scholars” and “philologists” of the nineteenth century, the academy granted these views an air of authority (Utz, 2016, p. 120).…”