Q: The Medieval period is perceived by some as ‘the Dark Ages’, a period of economic, intellectual and cultural decline. Based on your research, would you say this is a misconception?

A: Yes, I would say that is a rather old-fashioned view, but I think it survives despite the evidence. The term ‘Dark Ages’ has a resonance of romanticism about it, as a period which was difficult to document due to the collapse of the communication networks established by the Roman Empire. We know now that trade routes and communication across cultures continued to flourish across the period. The influence of the Islamic world pervades the art and architecture of the late medieval period. We can see this influence in ceramics, textiles, architecture, medieval book illumination and especially in the ‘carpet’ stained glass windows of the great cathedrals.

 

Q: What is it about this period in history that has captivated you so much as to want to study and teach it?

A: It was the sound of the language of Middle English which captivated me as an MA student at New York University in the early 1980s.

“While I found Chaucer’s language very accessible via its close connection with the English that we speak today, it was the dialect of the Gawain poet from the North-West Midlands, that I found most beautiful and appealing.”

 

Q: You are a lecturer on the History of the Book MA at the University of London – could you give us an insight into what one might expect from your course? And which book do you most enjoy referencing in your lectures? (if you can choose one, that is)

A: The MA/MRes in the History of the Book in the Institute of English Studies is the oldest programme of its kind in the world. It studies the making, manufacturing, distribution and reading of books, and thus offers a unique way of understanding different literary, cultural, social, intellectual, and technological processes in history. The subject extends to include newspapers, magazines, chapbooks, ephemera, digital text, and all kinds of printed or written media. It also includes the manuscript book in all its forms from the pre-classical, classical, and medieval periods.

“It is VERY difficult to choose a favourite book as a teaching object but I would say that has to be the medieval psalter. These types of books show us so much about their owners, and often give us information about individual lives: marriages, births and deaths.”

 

Q: Many of our members and followers will be avid book collectors and enthusiasts. With the advancements in technology made over the last thirty years or so, should we be worried or excited about the future of books and the way we consume information?

A: That is a huge question, but I am very optimistic about the survival of the codex. In 2011, I chaired a conference entitled ‘The Future Perfect of the Book’ with my colleague Wim Van Mierlo. Many of the conference attendees were concerned that the rise of the digital book would spell the end of the book in physical form, and that book shops would become things of the past. That culture has proved robust.

“It doesn’t seem that we are ready to part company with the physical book anytime soon. Research on the cognitive differences between reading text online and reading print from a physical book seems to suggest that these are two distinct cognitive experiences that can happily co-exist.”

 

Thank you to Cynthia for taking the time to answer our questions.

Cynthia Johnston will be giving her talk – Getting Medieval with Stranger Things – at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation on the 7^th March 2024.

Q: Modernism was a hugely significant art movement that produced ground-breaking, experimental works. How would you define it and what does it stand for?

A: Modernism is typically defined as an artistic, cultural, and philosophical movement that emerged around the turn of the twentieth century. It’s associated primarily with European and American creatives and thinkers who used experimental forms to represent, and respond to, a modern world shaped by empire, industrialisation and urbanisation.

This included new technologies and transport, wars, shifts in scientific and political thinking, the rise of the New Woman and women’s rights. One of the mantras of the movement is Ezra Pound’s slogan ‘Make It New’, which captures the idea that modernism breaks with tradition, revising and reworking older forms to create new and innovative art, music, literature and architecture.

 

Q: How did you come to be particularly interested in South African modernism?

A: I spent a lot of time in South Africa when I was growing up, so I developed an interest in its literatures, histories and cultures. I then studied postcolonial literature and theory at university and wrote my PhD thesis and first book on the first South African novelist, Olive Schreiner (1855-1920).

“My particular interest in the role played by South African writers in the development of literary modernism came about through my work on Schreiner’s fiction because she uses techniques and ideas that are now considered hallmarks of modernism. What’s so fascinating about this is that she’s doing so as early as the 1870s, and from the colonial peripheries. So, she’s writing from outside of the times and places that we traditionally associate with the modernist movement.”

Building on this earlier work, I’m now leading an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project that investigates the forms and politics of South African literary modernism from the nineteenth century to the present day. There are various South African writers that our team consider as both theorists and practitioners of modernism – Solomon Plaatje, William Plomer, Lewis Nkosi, Bessie Head, JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and Damon Galgut, to name but a few. These writers are connected both personally and textually to other global modernists and modernisms from all over the world, and part of our work involves tracing some of those connections.

 

Q: To this day, South Africa remains tormented by deep-seated, long-standing socio-political problems. What role, if any, did Modernism play in healing or hindering these problems?

A: Modernist forms are so malleable and varied that they have been mobilised in support of a wide spectrum of political ideas and ideologies, and in many cases, refused any political or social function or allegiance whatsoever.

I think the reason that South African literature emerged in a modernist idiom has to do with South Africa’s uniquely prolonged colonial condition, that arguably stretched all the way from the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch East India Company in 1652, to the end of apartheid in the 1990s.

“Modernism, with its interest in cross-cultural representations, fragmentation, and combinations of tradition and innovation, became the mode through which to represent the unevenness of this experience, in which European economic, political, and cultural structures so detached from their African worldviews and ways of life were imposed and enforced over centuries. I’d argue that there is a connection between modernist expression and anti-colonial and anti-apartheid resistance that can be traced across the works of many of the writers that I mentioned earlier.”

 

Q: If we want to begin to appreciate and understand South African Modernism, through its literature and poetry, where should we start?

A: I’ve already mentioned a few, but would also add the English-language writers H.I.E. Dhlomo, Athol Fugard, Can Themba, Njabulo Ndebele and Ivan Vladislavić; plus Xhosa-language writer S.E.K. Mqhayi; and Afrikaans writers André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, Adam Small, Karel Schoeman and Marlene van Niekerk. I’m currently working on a co-edited collection with Professor Andrew van der Vlies (University of Adelaide) on South African modernisms and we have solicited chapters about many of these and other writers.

We’ve got some exciting contributions on South African modernist art and photography too, including by Irma Stern, Dumile Feni, Nichols Hlobo, William Kentridge, David Goldblatt and Albert Adams.  The University of Salford Art Collections holds one of the largest archives of Adams’s work – including paintings, prints and studio ephemera – and there is a permanent display of his paintings in the Albert Adams room at The Old Fire Station (where the Percival lecture is taking place).

 

Q: What research project/s are you working on in 2024? Is there one project that you’re particularly looking forward to? If so, why?

A: I have lots of things that I’m really excited about this year! I was in Johannesburg with filmmaker Simon Stanton-Sharma in January making a documentary film about female e-hailing (using a smartphone app to request a ride) drivers that we’re currently editing to send to film festivals.

I’m also working with an international research team, Further Education colleges in the Northwest, and exam boards AQA and WJEC Eduqas, on a project to decolonise the English Literature A-Level. We’ll be travelling to Sweden, South Africa and Australia over the next 18 months, working with 16–18-year-old learners and their teachers to create a range of resources to support this – everything from recorded lectures and teacher toolkits to video essays, podcasts and TikToks!

And I’m really looking forward to my co-authored book with Matthew Whittle, Global Literature and the Environment, coming out with Routledge in August. So, all in all, a lovely combination of celebrations, collaborations and activities to be getting on with!

 

Thank you to Jade for taking the time to answer our questions.

Jade Munslow Ong will be giving this year’s Percival Lecture – South Africa’s Modernism, Modernism’s South Africa – at the University of Salford on the 18^th April 2024.