This book, first published in 2000, uses interpretations of the French Revolution as a model to ask what history meant to Victorian Britain, how events became enshrined with the authority of history, and how such cultural assumptions might help us to read nineteenth-century British literature. By examining reactions to French revolution in a broad selection of texts, this book explores how the Victorians responded to developments in France in historical terms, repeatedly comparing new events to the touchstone of the first French Revolution, yet always with the goal of finding ways to understand Britain’s own past, present and future.

This book, first published in 2000, uses interpretations of the French Revolution as a model to ask what history meant to Victorian Britain, how events became enshrined with the authority of history, and how such cultural assumptions might help us to read nineteenth-century British literature. By examining reactions to French revolution in a broad selection of texts, this book explores how the Victorians responded to developments in France in historical terms, repeatedly comparing new events to the touchstone of the first French Revolution, yet always with the goal of finding ways to understand Britain's own past, present and future.

A survey of the rituals of the year in Victorian England, showing the influence of the Middle Ages. What does a maypole represent? Why eat hot cross buns? Did Dick Whittington have a cat? All these questions are related to a larger one that nineteenth-century Britons asked themselves: which was more fun: living in their own time, or living in the Middle Ages? While Britain was becoming the most industrially-advanced nation in the world, many vaunted the superiority of the present to the past-yet others felt that if shadows of past ways of life haunted the present, they were friendly ghosts. This book explores such ghosts and how real or imagined remnants of medieval celebration in a variety of forms created a cultural idea of the Middle Ages. As Britons found, or thought that they found, traces of the medieval in traditions tied to times of the year, medievalism became not only the justification but also the inspiration for community festivity, from Christmas and Boxing Day through Maytime rituals to Hallowe'en, as show in the writings of amongst many others Keats, Browning and Dickens.

Medievalism, the later reception of the Middle Ages, has been used by many writers, not just during the Victorian period but from the Renaissance to the present, as a means of commenting on their own societies and systems of values. Until recently, this self-interest was used to distinguish between Medievalism, a selective, often romanticised, view of the past, and medieval studies, with its quest for an authentic Middle Ages. The essays in this collection suggest that the search for knowledge of a "real" Middle Ages has always been a problematic one, and that the vitality of the vision of Medievalism is demonstrated by its constant adaption to current concerns.

Medievalism, the later reception of the Middle Ages, has been used by many writers, not just during the Victorian period but from the Renaissance to the present, as a means of commenting on their own societies and systems of values. Until recently, this self-interest was used to distinguish between Medievalism, a selective, often romanticised, view of the past, and medieval studies, with its quest for an authentic Middle Ages. The essays in this collection suggest that the search for knowledge of a "real" Middle Ages has always been a problematic one, and that the vitality of the vision of Medievalism is demonstrated by its constant adaption to current concerns.

Articles which survey and map out the increasingly significant discipline of medievalism; and explore its numerous aspects. This latest volume of Studies in Medievalism further explores definitions of the field, complementing its landmark predecessor. In its first section, essays by seven leading medievalists seeks to determine precisely how tocharacterize the subjects of study, their relationship to new and related fields, such as neomedievalism, and their relevance to the middle ages, whose definition is itself a matter of debate. Their observations and conclusions are then tested in the articles second part of the book. Their topics include the notion of progress over the last eighty or ninety years in our perception of the middle ages; medievalism in Gustave Dore's mid-nineteenth-century engravings of the Divine Comedy; the role of music in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films; cinematic representations of the Holy Grail; the medieval courtly love tradition in Jeanette Winterson's The Passionand The.Powerbook; Eleanor of Aquitaine in twentieth-century histories; modern updates of the Seven Deadly Sins; and Victorian spins on Jacques de Voragine's Golden Legend. CONTRIBUTORS: Carla A. Arnell,Aida Audeh, Jane Chance, Pamela Clements, Alain Corbellari, Roberta Davidson, Michael Evans, Nickolas Haydock, Carol Jamison, Stephen Meyer, E.L. Risden, Carol L. Robinson, Clare A. Simmons, Richard Utz, Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on its relationship with business and finance. In the wake of the many passionate responses to its predecessor, Studies in Medievalism 22 also addresses the role of corporations in medievalism. Amid the three opening essays, Amy S. Kaufman examines how three modern novelists have refracted contemporary corporate culture through an imagined and highly dystopic Middle Ages. On either side of that paper, Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz explore how the Woolworth Company and Google have variously promoted, distorted, appropriated, resisted, and repudiated post-medieval interpretations of the Middle Ages. And Clare Simmons expands on that approach in a full-length article on the Lord Mayor's Show in London. Readers are then invited to find other permutations of corporate influence in six articles on the gendering of Percy's Reliques, the Romantic Pre-Reformation in Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, renovation and resurrection in M.R. James's "Episode of Cathedral History", salvation in the Commedia references of Rodin's Gates of Hell, film theory and the relationship of the Sister Arts to the cinematic Beowulf, and American containment culture in medievalist comic-books. While offering close, thorough studies of traditional media and materials, the volume directly engages timely concerns about the motives and methods behind this field and many others inacademia. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Aida Audeh, Elizabeth Emery, Katie Garner, Nickolas Haydock, Amy S. Kaufman, Peter W. Lee, Patrick J. Murphy, Fred Porcheddu, Clare A. Simmons, Mark B. Spencer, Richard Utz.

A survey of the rituals of the year in Victorian England, showing the influence of the Middle Ages. What does a maypole represent? Why eat hot cross buns? Did Dick Whittington have a cat? All these questions are related to a larger one that nineteenth-century Britons asked themselves: which was more fun: living in their own time, or living in the Middle Ages? While Britain was becoming the most industrially-advanced nation in the world, many vaunted the superiority of the present to the past-yet others felt that if shadows of past ways of life haunted the present, they were friendly ghosts. This book explores such ghosts and how real or imagined remnants of medieval celebration in a variety of forms created a cultural idea of the Middle Ages. As Britons found, or thought that they found, traces of the medieval in traditions tied to times of the year, medievalism became not only the justification but also the inspiration for community festivity, from Christmas and Boxing Day through Maytime rituals to Hallowe'en, as show in the writings of amongst many others Keats, Browning and Dickens.

New essays attempt to survey and map out the increasingly significant discipline of medievalism. Medievalism has been attracting considerable scholarly attention in recent years. But it is also suffering from something of an identity crisis. Where are its chronological and geographical boundaries? How does it relate to the Middle Ages? Does it comprise neomedievalism, pseudomedievalism, and other "medievalisms"? Studies in Medievalism XVII directly addresses these and related questions via a series of specially-commissioned essays from some of the most well-known scholars in the field; they explore its origins, survey the growth of the subject, and attempt various definitions. The volume then presents seven articles that often test the boundaries of medievalism: they look at echoes of medieval bestiaries in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the influence of the Niebelungenlied on Wagner's Ring cycle, representations of King Alfred in two works by Dickens, medieval tropes in John Bale's Reformist plays, authenticity in Sigrid Undset's novel Kristin Lavransdatter, incidental medievalism in Handel's opera Rodelinda, and editing in the audio version of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf. CONTRIBUTORS: KATHLEEN VERDUIN, CLARE A. SIMMONS, NILS HOLGER PETERSEN, TOM SHIPPEY, GWENDOLYN A. MORGAN, M. J. TOSWELL, ELIZABETH EMERY, KARL FUGELSO, EMILY WALKER HEADY, MARK B. SPENCER, GAIL ORGELFINGER, DOUGLAS RYAN VAN BENTHUYSEN, THEA CERVONE, WERNER WUNDERLICH, EDWARD R. HAYMES

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 tackling the difficult but essential question of how medievalism studies should look at the issue of what is and what is not "authentic". Given the impossibility of completely recovering the past, the issue of authenticity is clearly central to scholarship on postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages. The essays in the first part of this volume address authenticitydirectly, discussing the 2017 Middle Ages in the Modern World conference; Early Gothic themes in nineteenth-century British literature; medievalism in the rituals of St Agnes; emotions in Game of Thrones; racism in Disney's Middle Ages; and religious medievalism. The essayists' conclusions regarding authenticity then inform, even as they are tested by, the subsequent papers, which consider such matters as medievalism in contemporary French populism; nationalism in re-enactments of medieval battles; postmedieval versions of the Kingis Quair; Van Gogh's invocations of Dante; Surrealist medievalism; chant in video games; music in cinematic representations of the Black Death; and sound in Aleksei German's film Hard to Be a God. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Aida Audeh, Tessel Bauduin, Matthias Berger, Karen Cook, Timothy Curran, Nickolas Haydock, Alexander Kolassa, Carolyne Larrington, David Matthews, E.J. Pavlinich, Lotte Reinbold, Clare Simmons, Adam Whittaker, Daniel Wollenberg.

Essays on the continuing power and applicability of medieval images, with particular reference to recent films. The middle ages provide the material for mass-market films, for historical and fantasy fiction, for political propaganda and claims of legitimacy, and these in their turn exert a force well outside academia. The phenomenon is tooimportant to be left unscrutinised: these essays show the continuing power and applicability of medieval images - and also, it must be said, their dangerousness and often their falsity. Of the ten essays in this volume, several examine modern movies, including the highly-successful A Knight's Tale (Chaucer as a PR agent) and the much-derided First Knight (the Round Table fights the Gulf War). Others deal with the appropriation of history and literature by a variety of interested parties: King Alfred press-ganged for the Royal Navy and the burghers of Winchester in 1901, William Langland discovered as a prophet of future Socialism, Chaucer at once venerated and tidied into New England respectability. Vikings, Normans and Saxons are claimed as forebears and disowned as losers in works as complex as Rider Haggard's Eric Brighteyes, at once neo-saga and anti-saga. Victorian melodramaprovides the cliches of "the bad baronet" who revives the droit de seigneur (but baronets are notoriously modern creations); and of the "bony grasping hand" of the Catholic Church and its canon lawyers (an image spread in ways eerily reminiscent of the modern "urban legend" in its Internet forms). Contributors: BRUCE BRASINGTON, WILLIAM CALIN, CARL HAMMER, JONA HAMMER, PAUL HARDWICK, NICKOLAS HAYDOCK, GWENDOLYN MORGAN, JOANNE PARKER, CLARE A. SIMMONS, WILLIAM F. WOODS. Professor TOM SHIPPEY teaches in the Department of English at the University of St Louis; Dr MARTIN ARNOLD teaches at University College, Scarborough.