On Tradition: Essays on the Use and Valuation of the Past (Ams Studies in the Middle Ages)

The first essay in Professor Davidson's book of reflective analysis takes up the question, "What has the individual scholar to do with tradition?: Arguing that the Western tradition is the basis upon which our late 20th century culture ultimately rests, Davidson in this and subsequent essays examines the attitudes toward and the uses of tradition from the Middle Ages to the present. As a scholar with a major interest in drama and iconography, he shows how traditional forms appear and are distorted in the drama, literature and art of the last 700 years. Finally, he suggests that while tradition connects us to our past, "such connections...may serve to heal the wound of post-modernity and to make its skepticism seem irrelevant". The essays range in time from Late Medieval English theater, through Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral - but Davidson's net is wider than that; his catch, the very heritage of the West.