Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies. Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies via six essays that directly address how the Middle Ages have been put in play with regard to Alice Munro's 1977 short story "The Beggar Maid"; David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; medievalist archaisms in Japanese video games; runic play in Norse-themed digital games; medievalist managerialism in the 2020 video game Crusader Kings III; and neomedieval architectural praxis in the 2014 video game Stronghold: Crusader II. The approaches and conclusions of those essays are then tested in the second section's six essays as they examine "muscular medievalism" in George R. R. Martin's 1996 novel A Game of Thrones; the queering of the Arthurian romance pattern in the 2018-20 television show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power; the interspecies embodiment of dis/ability in the 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon; late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century nationalism in Irish reimaginings of the Fenian Cycle; post-bellum medievalism in poetry of the Confederacy; and the medievalist presentation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020-21 Covid inoculation.

An engagement with the huge growth in neomedievalism forms the core of this volume, with other essays testing its conclusions. The focus on neomedievalism at the 2007 International Conference on Medievalism, in ever more sessions at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, and by many recent or forthcoming publications has left little doubtof the importance of this new, provocative area of study. In response to a seminal essay defining medievalism in relationship to neomedievalism [published in volume 18 of this journal], this book begins with seven essays definingneomedievalism in relationship to medievalism. Their positions are then tested by five articles, whose subjects range from modern American manifestations of Byzantine art, to the Vietnam War as refracted through non-heterosexual implications in the 1976 movie Robin and Marian, and versions of abjection in recent Beowulf films. Theory and practice are thus juxtaposed in a volume that is certain to fuel a central debate in not one but two of the fastest growing areas of academia. Contributors: Amy S. Kaufman, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, Lesley Coote, Cory Lowell Grewell, M.J. Toswell, E.L. Risden, Lauryn S. Mayer, Glenn Peers, Tison Pugh, David W. Marshall,Richard H. Osberg, Richard Utz

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the middle ages. This volume not only defines medievalism's margins, as well as its role in marginalizing other fields, ideas, people, places, and events, but also provides tools and models for exploring those issues and indicates new subjects towhich they might apply. The eight opening essays address the physical marginalizing of medievalism in annotated texts on medieval studies; the marginalism of oneself via medievalism; medievalism's dearth of ecotheory and religious studies; academia's paucity of pop medievalism; and the marginalization of races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and literary characters in contemporary medievalism. The seven subsequent articles build on this foundation while discussing: the distancing of oneself (and others) during imaginary visits to the Middle Ages; lessons from the margins of Brazilian medievalism; mutual marginalization among factions of Spanish medieval studies; and medievalism in the marginalization of lower socio-economic classes in late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Spain, of modern gamers, of contemporary laborers, and of Alfred Austin, a late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century poet also known as Alfred the Little. In thus investigating the margins of and marginalization via medievalism, the volume affirms their centrality to the field. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Nadia R. Altschul, Megan Arnott, Jaume Aurell, Juan Gomis Coloma, Elizabeth Emery, Vincent Ferre, Valerie B. Johnson, Alexander L. Kaufman, Erin Felicia Labbie, VickieLarsen, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly, Alicia C. Montoya, Serina Patterson, Jeff Rider, Lindsey Simon-Jones, Richard Utz, Helen Young.

Essays on the modern reception of the Middle Ages, built round the central theme of the ethics of medievalism. Ethics in post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages form the main focus of this volume. The six opening essays tackle such issues as the legitimacy of reinventing medieval customs and ideas, at what point the production and enjoyment of caricaturizing the Middle Ages become inappropriate, how medievalists treat disadvantaged communities, and the tension between political action and ethics in medievalism. The eight subsequent articles then build on this foundation as they concentrate on capitalist motives for melding superficially incompatible narratives in medievalist video games, Dan Brown's use of Dante's Inferno to promote a positivist, transhumanist agenda, disjuncturesfrom medieval literature to medievalist film in portrayals of human sacrifice, the influence of Beowulf on horror films and vice versa, portrayals of war in Beowulf films, socialism in William Morris's translation of Beowulf, bias in Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, and a medieval source for death in the Harry Potter novels. The volume as a whole invites and informs a much larger discussion on such vital issues as the ethical choices medievalists make, the implications of those choices for their makers, and the impact of those choices on the world around us. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Mary R. Bowman, Harry Brown, Louise D'Arcens, Alison Gulley, Nickolas Haydock, Lisa Hicks, Lesley E. Jacobs, Michael R. Kightley, Phillip Lindley, Pascal J. Massie, Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, Daniel-Raymond Nadon, Jason Pitruzello, Nancy M. Resh, Carol L. Robinson, Christopher Roman, M.J. Toswell.

Definitions of key words and terms for the study of medievalism. The discipline of medievalism has produced a great deal of scholarship acknowledging the "makers" of the Middle Ages: those who re-discovered the period from 500 to 1500 by engaging with its cultural works, seeking inspiration from them, or fantasizing about them. Yet such approaches - organized by time period, geography, or theme - often lack an overarching critical framework. This volume aims to provide such a framework, by calling into question the problematic yet commonly accepted vocabulary used in Medievalism Studies. The contributions, by leading scholars in the field, define and exemplify in a lively and accessible style the essential terms used when speaking of the later reception of medieval culture. The terms: Archive, Authenticity, Authority, Christianity, Co-disciplinarity, Continuity, Feast, Genealogy, Gesture, Gothic, Heresy, Humor, Lingua, Love, Memory, Middle, Modernity, Monument, Myth, Play, Presentism, Primitive, Purity, Reenactment, Resonance, Simulacrum, Spectacle, Transfer, Trauma, Troubadour Elizabeth Emery is Professor of French and Graduate Coordinator at Montclair State University (Montclair, NJ, USA); Richard Utz is Chair and Professor of Medievalism Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA, USA). Contributors: Nadia Altschul, Martin Arnold, Kathleen Biddick, William C. Calin, Martha Carlin, Pam Clements, Michael Cramer, Louise D'Arcens, Elizabeth Emery, Elizabeth Fay, Vincent Ferre, Matthew Fisher, Karl Fugelso, Jonathan Hsy, Amy S. Kaufman, Nadia Margolis, David Matthews,Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberly, Kevin Moberly, Gwendolyn Morgan, Laura Morowitz, Kevin D. Murphy, Nils Holger Petersen, Lisa Reilly, Edward Risden, Carol L. Robinson, Juanita Feros Ruys, Tom Shippey, Clare A. Simmons, Zrinka Stahuljak, M. Jane Toswell, Richard Utz, Angela Jane Weisl.

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the middle ages, with a particular focus on its relationship with business and finance. Academia has never been immune to corporate culture, and despite the persistent association of medievalism with escapism, perhaps never has that been more obvious than at the present moment. The six essays that open the volume explore precisely how financial institutions have promoted, distorted, appropriated, resisted, and repudiated post-medieval interpretations of the middle ages. In the second part of the book, contributors explore medievalism in a variety of areas, juxtaposing specific case studies with broader investigations of the discipline's motives and methods; they include Charles Kingsley's racial Anglo-Saxonism, Jessie L. Weston's Sir Gawain and the treatment of womenin medievalist film. The book also includes a spirited response to previous Studies in Medievalism volumes on the topic neomedievalism. Contributors: Harry Brown, Henrik Aubert, Helen Brookman, Pamela Clements, KellyAnnFitzpatrick, Jil Hanifan, Michael R. Kightley, Felice Lifshitz, Lauren S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, E. L. Risden, Carol L. Robinson, M. J. Toswell, J. Ruben Valdes Miyares

Medievalism examined in a variety of genres, from fairy tales to today's computer games. As medievalism is refracted through new media, it is often radically transformed. Yet it inevitably retains at least some common denominators with more traditional responses to the middle ages. This latest volume of Studies inMedievalism explores this phenomenon with a special section on computer games, examining digital echoes of the medieval past in subjects ranging from the sovereign ethics of empire in Star Wars to gender identity in on-line role playing. Medievalism in more conventional venues is also addressed, ranging from early French fairy tales to nineteenth-century neo-Byzantine murals. Great innovation and extraordinary continuity are thus juxtaposed not only within each article but also across the volume as a whole, in yet further testimony to the exceptional flexibility and enduring relevance of medievalism. CONTRIBUTORS: ALICIA C. MONTOYA, ALBERT D. PIONKE, GRETCHENKREAHLING MCKAY, CHENE HEADY, BRUCE C. BRASINGTON, STEFANO MENGOZZI, CAROL L. ROBINSON, OLIVER M. TRAXEL, AMY S. KAUFMAN, BRENT MOBERLY, KEVIN MOBERLY, LAURYN S. MAYER