GHIL Lecture

Hannah Skoda

‘How I long for the good old days’:

Nostalgia and Social Change in the Long Fourteenth Century

30 March 2021

(0:55 h)

GHIL Lecture

Hannah Skoda

‘How I long for the good old days’:
Nostalgia and Social Change in the Long Fourteenth Century

The fourteenth century is characterized by a series of profound structural changes. This lecture forms part of a larger monograph project arguing that one of the ways in which people in England, France, and Italy responded to these changes was in a nostalgic mode. It was by articulating a longing for ‘the good old days’ that contemporaries tried to come to terms with plague, extreme demographic shifts, rapid commercialization, growing social mobility, rapid political change, pervasive warfare, and so on. After exploring the wider context of nostalgia in this period, the lecture will focus on medieval critiques of social mobility and flux, expressed through a nostalgic lens.

Hannah Skoda is Fellow and Tutor in medieval history at St John’s College, Oxford. She has published on medieval violence, law, and Dante in particular, and is currently writing a monograph on nostalgia in the long fourteenth century.