Patois of the Parishes: A Jim Crow Genealogy of the Middle Ages.

This essay explores the origins of French medieval studies in the United States as deeply intertwined with the racial anxieties and cultural-linguistic precarities experienced by Creole communities, particularly in Louisiana. It argues that nineteenth-century scholars like Alcée Fortier and Alfred Mercier constructed the study of the French Middle Ages through the racialized and linguistic framing of Creole and Acadian dialects, which they regarded as vestiges of medieval French preserved among marginalized Francophone populations. These efforts were shaped by broader colonial and postcolonial dynamics, including the policing of language purity, the assertion of whiteness by white Creoles, and resistance to Anglophone dominance during Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. The essay concludes by suggesting that recognizing this creole medievalism challenges traditional, Eurocentric conceptions of the medieval and invites a more hybrid, creolized understanding of medieval studies that acknowledges the complex intersections of race, language, and history.