2007/01/01 by J. L. Nelson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical and Archaeological Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/hwj/dbm006
openalex publication_date 2007/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In her University of Vienna doctoral thesis, ‘Das Schlagwort vom “finsteren Mittelalter” ’ (‘The term “the Dark Middle Ages” ’), in 1931, Lucie Varga observed with characteristic sharpness that ‘terms are war-cries in cultural history’ (Schlagwörter sind kulturgeschichtliche Kampfparole).1Schlagwort is hard to translate. My 1909 Cassells German-English Dictionary gives ‘favourite expression, commonplace high-sounding phrase’; modern dictionaries give ‘slogan’. You could almost say that ‘The Dark Ages’ began as the former and turned into the latter. Conventional term, catch-word, stock-phrase, buzz-word, cliché: this particular Schlagwort, whatever else it is, is a simplification with attitude, and staying-power. In producing and reproducing this and other Schlagwörter for the self-evidently useful purpose of periodization, historians assume ownership of the past, but have a lot to answer for.2 Period labels are neither inert nor innocent. They attract value-loadings. ‘Classic(al)’ is good, in modern parlance, in American as in English English, and ‘modern’ is very good, while ‘medieval’ is bad. Can ‘the ‘Dark Middle Ages’, or just the ‘Dark Ages’, be other than very bad?