Medieval Twitter

Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Their research interests include medieval hagiography, gender, film, and digital culture. Her first book, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens, was published in 2018.

Medieval Twitter offers a corrective to the idea that the cacophony of the internet is a contemporary invention. Medieval writers experimented with voice and reputation in ways similar to modern tweeters. More broadly, as Spencer-Hall points out, media forms such as Twitter share with medieval manuscript culture “the skilful recycling and reinterpretation of an existing narrative or trope”, where originality is less important than creative reiteration.Spencer-Hall’s engaging book shows, above all, how the medieval past and the digital present are unhappily fraught with each other.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction. Context CollapseChapter 1. A Social ManuscriptChapter 2. #Medieval TwitterChapter 3. Will the Real Margery Kempe Please Stand Up?Chapter 4. Dear Nobody: Private Publics and Public PrivatesConclusion. Larry’s DeadGlossaryBibliographyIndex