ABSTRACT
We’ve been here before! That’s easy to say, and increasingly tempting as age and cynicism take over, with a recognition of the many cycles to which human life seems prone. So while it’s a truism that the condition of postmodernity is something new (as, by definition, coming chronologically after what’s been known as modernity), it’s still arguable that that condition (as well as responses to that condition) have their parallels in earlier historical transitions. Having considered some of postmodernism’s antecedents (or having categorised certain intellectual movements so that they can be defined as such) in Chapter 3, I want to claim now that pomophobia, too (as a fearful response to alternative ideas), does have its parallels, during the transition from what we might call ‘medievalism’ to the ‘modernity’ that is now in turn, and in our own time is being superseded.
