Средневековье — в «реальности» или только в нашем сознании?

Vox Medii Aevi. 2019. Т. 2 (5). С. 169–178.

Boytsov M.

Searching for an answer to the question “What are the Middle Ages?” is traditionally perceived as an attempt to define some onthologic substance of the “medieval era”, to figure out certain specific features inherent for this millenary historical period. Nevertheless, despite all the efforts of the academics of the late centuries, no convincing explanation of the “essence of the Middle Ages” was given. Perhaps, it does not exist at all as the Middle Ages are not an “objective” phenomenon but an instrument of the Modern European intellectuals’ reflections. The alternate images of the Middle Ages, from the First Middle Ages of the Renaissance humanists to the Fifth Middle Ages after the World War II, were preeminently a way of thinking about the contemporaneity. The conference offers a discussion of specific features of the Sixth Middle Ages which is actual today and maybe even tomorrow, contemporary problems defining our vision of the Middle Ages, and effects of the transformations of the present-day society on the Middle Ages.

Keywords: Средневековье, historical imagination, историческое воображение, Middle Ages, медиевализм, Medievalism