Patois of the Parishes: A Jim Crow Genealogy of the Middle Ages.
This essay examines the birth of French medieval studies in America as a product of the racial anxiety and cultural-linguistic precarity experienced by Creoles. It argues that the idea of the French Middle Ages in North America, the conceptual matrix through which it became thinkable and desirable a...
| Published in: | American Historical Review Vol. 130; no. 1; pp. 52 - 80 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press / USA
Mar2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=184405338&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 184405338 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00028762 AHS jtl: American Historical Review issn: 00028762 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2025 vid: 130 iid: 1 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 184405338 10.1093/ahr/rhae488 ppf: 52 ppct: 28 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 720KB tig: atl: Patois of the Parishes: A Jim Crow Genealogy of the Middle Ages. aug: au: Ritchey, Sara su: Medieval studies French studies Race relations in the United States Creoles Jim Crow laws Mercier, Alfred Louisiana sug: subj: Louisiana Medieval studies French studies Race relations in the United States Creoles Jim Crow laws Mercier, Alfred keyword: historiography intellectual literature/poetry local/regional medieval race ab: This essay examines the birth of French medieval studies in America as a product of the racial anxiety and cultural-linguistic precarity experienced by Creoles. It argues that the idea of the French Middle Ages in North America, the conceptual matrix through which it became thinkable and desirable as a coherent subject of study, was made possible through engagements with minoritized Francophones who were assumed to embody the deep past. Part 1 examines how scholars in France's Second Empire became invested in patois as a marker of "primitive" French cultural expression thought to have been transmitted over hundreds of years by oral recitation. Part 2 turns to a specific instantiation of French scholars' pursuit of dialect: collectors of creole stories and grammars in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and south Louisiana who analogized creole utterances to the first French vernaculars as they emerged from Latin. Part 3 focuses on the pursuit of creolité as evidence of medievality in south Louisiana, and considers the racial anxiety evident in local deployments of the term creole. It concludes by discussing historical methods informed by creolization and mixed temporalities, and by imagining how these methods might transform medieval studies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: © 2019 The American Historical Association. item: American Historical Review holder: Oxford University Press / USA dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|