Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Salman Rushdie ready to ‘get medieval’ with the Times Literary Supplement

Novelist hits back at TLS blogger’s criticism of his language in response to Charlie Hebdo attacks

 Salman Rushdie
TLS tangle … Salman Rushdie. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
Salman Rushdie has threatened to “get medieval” on the “ass” of the Times Literary Supplement if it continues to pick apart his comments.

The esteemed literary magazine has published an article taking issue with Rushdie’s use of the word medieval in a pejorative sense in his widely disseminated statement about the attacks in Paris earlier this month. “Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms,” said the novelist at the time, declaring his solidarity with Charlie Hebdo.

But it is wrong to use the word in this sense, argues the TLS. “Anything after the Romans and before the Renaissance is the bad old Middle, right? You could call it ‘medieval’;; everything smelled bad, minds and bodies were in a permanent state of plague, and the only known form of entertainment was killing, in all its most disgusting forms,” writes Michael Caines in a TLS blog . “If you believe all this, and don’t believe in the existence of cathedrals and Chaucer, congratulations – to borrow the words of Joseph Brodsky, ‘you’re in The Empire, friend’ – the empire of intellectual complacency. Or you’ve just mistaken Monty Python and the Holy Grail for real life.”

He goes on to cite academics’ site The Conversation: “First deployed in the Renaissance, the term ‘medieval’ was invented by scholars who wanted to celebrate the progress of their own age in contrast to the preceding centuries”, adding that “by using this particular adjective, Rushdie is repeating one of the hoariest of rhetorical tricks”.

Caines admits that “picking up on a seemingly minor verbal slip might seem irredeemably trivial”. Rushdie appears in full agreement, alluding to the popular quote from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. “Hey, @TheTLS, you keep this pedantic shit up and I’m a get medieval on yo’ ass,” the novelist tweeted.
He then points to a dictionary definition of the word: “informal, derogatory: very old-fashioned or primitive”.

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