Matthew X. Vernon

An interesting exploration of the links between medieval studies and African-American thought and literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I found the first two chapters—looking at the works of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and some lesser known African-American intellectuals and writers who were their rough contemporaries—to be the most engaging. The more that The Black Middle Ages progresses, however, the more it goes in that literary studies direction of "let me slap two dubiously related things side-by-side and analyze them together using fairly tortured prose that often takes two paragraphs to belabour what seems a fairly straightforward point." To be fair, those with more of a lit studies background than me or who are more familiar with the texts Vernon discusses may get more out of these latter chapters.… (meer)