Salman Rushdie, no stranger to controversy, now finds himself under scrutiny from a different sort of institution: the Times Literary Supplement. Michael Caines, writing for TLS, takes issue with Rushdie’s recent use of the word “medieval” in a statement made about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Caines unpacks the word’s historical usage in distancing Renaissance thinkers from a past they sought to discount, and questions the ongoing connotations he believes Rushdie is invoking; Rushdie, in response, threatens to “get medieval on yo’ ass.”
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