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The First Page: Medieval Twitter

THE FIRST PAGE

Medieval Twitter

by Alicia Spencer-Hall

21 January 2025

The First Page presents the first page of books that are launched as part of the IAS Book Launch Programme. On 29 January 2025, Alicia Spencer-Hall launches her monograph Medieval Twitter, a provocative exploration of the similarities that Twitter (now X) and medieval literary forms, texts and narrative techniques share. Analysing tweets with medieval texts, and vice versa, Spencer-Hall introduces readers to an innovative methodology of interdisciplinary literary criticism, posing vital questions about the politics of medievalism today.

Introduction

And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds1

In October 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter. Less than a year later, he killed the platform dead.

It all started with a joke. A bad joke, at that. Worse still, a legally enforceable joke. The Delaware Court of Chancery certainly didn’t find it very funny. A significant portion of the Twitter userbase wasn’t laughing either. Come to think of it, I wasn’t particularly tickled, elbow-deep as I was in writing a book—this book—about the social-media platform. In fact, the way it went down was less of a joke and more of a farce. In April 2022, tech billionaire Musk made an inexplicably generous offer to buy Twitter, chasing a cheap laugh. He offered a share price of $54.20—a 38% premium on the stock—to make a reference to illicit drugs: “420” is popular slang for cannabis. Musk’s offer was a gold-plated deal that Twitter shareholders simply couldn’t refuse; they were laughing all the way to the bank. The sale was on.

Many tweeters were considerably more circumspect about the prospect of a Musk takeover, however, as they grew concerned about how the change in leadership could radically alter the platform’s culture, and not for the better. They were not wrong. Musk had gotten cold feet, too. In July, he desperately tried to pull out of the purchase agreement, claiming that […]

ALICIA SPENCER-HALL is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Their research interests include medieval hagiography, gender, film, and digital culture. Her first book, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens, was published in 2018.

The book launch will take place on 29 January 2025 at the Institute of Advanced Studies. More information. Why not get into the mood with a Medieval Twitter playlist on Spotify? Click here to listen.

Lead Image: collage by Marthe Lisson

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1↑ Elon Musk (@elonmusk), Twitter (now X), July 23, 2023, 5:04 p.m. After Musk’s takeover and the rebrand of the platform to X, all links to the Twitter domain (twitter.com) automatically resolve to the X domain (x.com). This means that tweets are, technically speaking, displayed as X posts. Such technical overlay serves to obscure the fundamental differences between Twitter and X. In other words, a tweet is not an X post, no matter how the URLs make it seem. Nevertheless, it is for this reason—and the fact that the X brand awareness is so weak—that media outlets, and style guides, tend to insert a parenthetical explanation to references. “Twitter (now X)” is the Chicago Manual of Style’s suggested form, for instance, for posts dated after the 2023 rebranding (18th ed., 14.106). I follow this convention when the relevant content was posted on the platform after Musk’s takeover, October 28, 2022. Posts from after the official brand change to X on July 24, 2023 are cited as from X, even where the link may still indicate twitter.com. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1682964919325724673.