This paper examines the ways in which Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge recovers a medieval discourse to comment on Portugal’s twentieth-century history in her debut novel O dia dos prodígios (1980). It focuses not on the Middle Ages as a distinct period of European history but on the representations of the Middle Ages in post-medieval worlds, positing medievalism as an instance of Saidian orientalism. Although Jorge’s medievalizing (and orientalizing) gesture towards Portuguese modernity expresses a critical stance towards both the Salazar/Caetano regime and post-dictatorial revolutionary propaganda, this paper argues that Jorge makes a complex and multilayered use of medievalism/orientalism which contains both hegemonic and non-hegemonic, conservative and emancipatory aspects.