| Summary: | This paper focuses on the migration and translation (translation) of the notion of alterity, in order to cast a light on the ambivalent relation between us and the Middle Ages – sometimes seen as a model, sometimes as a countermodel. Alterity does not have the same extension, nor the same definition, in the United States and in Europe. The genealogy of the notion is examined, starting from Paul Zumthor’s Essai de poétique médiévale (1972) and Hans Robert Jauss’s article on “The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature” (1977): the paper demonstrates how the idea of the singularity and ‘isolation’ of the Middle Ages has become a commonplace, and a self-evident notion, whereas the notion has been altered in the transfer, losing a part of its theoretical efficiency and fecundity. More specifically, the article stresses the importance of the dialectics between alterity and familarity (or modernity), by showing its interest for epistemology in literary studies and for establishing a dialogue between literary studies and history, as Pierre Nora and Jacques Le Goff’s analyses sufficiently show.
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