Emery,
Elizabeth, and Richard Utz, eds. Medievalism: Key Critical Terms. Medievalism,
5. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. pp. 229. $99.00 (hardback). ISBN:
978-184-3843-856 (hardback).
Matthews,
David. Medievalism: A Critical History. Medievalism, 6. Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 2015. pp. . $90.00 (hardback). ISBN: 978-184-3843-924 (hardback).
Reviewed
by:
Kathleen
ForniLoyola University, Marylandkforni@loyola.edu
David Matthews'
Medievalism: A Critical History and Medievalism: Key Critical Terms edited by
Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz are valuable resources for both newcomers to
the field and experienced practitioners, whether theoretical or recreational.
Matthews offers a fresh overview and compelling meta-commentary on the history
and practice of medievalism, focusing on its uneasy relationship with medieval
studies. Emery and Utz provide an encyclopedia of essential vocabulary (e.g.,
authenticity, gothic, primitive) written by leading scholars, often accompanied
by brief but engaging case studies. Both volumes are marked by the topical,
innovative, and solid scholarship that characterizes the Medievalism series
edited by Karl Fugelso and Chris Jones. And both are gorgeous books featuring
useful illustrations, and eye-catching artistic covers by graphic designer
Simon Loxley. The studies work quite well in tandem, providing an historical
analytical survey of medievalism and a handy reference guide--with both
offering a number of fruitful topics ripe for further scholarly exploration.
Matthews'
account of the history and contemporary status of medievalism is both highly
readable (he is an elegant stylist) and frequently provocative. Offering an
overview of primarily Anglophone medievalism from its origins in the sixteenth
century to current popular and canonical manifestations, Matthews convincingly
maintains that the Medieval Revival in 1840s Britain, flourishing in a period
of social unrest and revolution, "was unique and never to be
repeated" (xi). The mid-nineteenth century also saw the rise of medieval
studies, professionalized and institutionalized between 1870 and 1925, a period
coinciding with the decline of broad interest in medievalism. In the late
twentieth and now early twenty-first centuries, one finds a decline in academic
medieval studies coinciding with a rise again in public engagement with
medievalism, especially in popular culture. For the future health of the
profession, Matthews convincingly maintains that medieval studies needs to more
closely link itself with medievalism studies. And the latter could use some
disciplinary focus, relying more coherently on cultural studies (itself a
malleable and flexible theoretical field).
Medievalismis
most useful for Matthews' effort to define his terms and to account for our
interest in the medieval past. Based on Leslie Workman's definition,
medievalism is both the "process of creating the Middle Ages" and
"the constructed idea of the Middle Ages." The cover reproduction of
John Everett Millais' The Knight Errant (1870), depicting a nude woman chained
to a tree being rescued by a knight in shining armor who has killed her captor,
iconically encapsulates two dominant conceptions of the Middle Ages pervasive
in medievalism of all ages: the gothic grotesque (violent, dark, barbaric,
primitive) and the romantic (chivalric, pastoral, pre-industrial, communal).
The long-held contradictory, dualistic conception of the Middle Ages in part
accounts for its pervasive cultural appeal as a time both worse (supporting an
historical narrative of progress) and better (often appealing to forces of
conservatism). In short, the medieval represents a bewildering array of
associations ranging from retrograde religion to the carnivalesque, illicit
sexuality to sublime spirituality.
The Middle
Ages, however, is conceived of less as a chronological time period than as an
ideological construct, useful in times of social or political crisis and
change. Medievalism has historically flourished as a cultural response to
social unrest and revolution and in the resultant quest for national
self-definition. Although perceived to reflect the effort to reinforce the
status quo by appealing to hierarchical feudal order, the invocation of
medievalism is not wholly conservative. The Middle Ages is also imagined as
embodying communal socialism, a lost world of workers' rights and liberties,
before the advent of capitalism, or indeed industrialism. Matthews describes
these functions as relevant to the mid-nineteenth century, but similar
contemporary ailments (technological advancements, social upheaval, questions
of national self-identity) perhaps account for the resurgence in popular
interest in the medieval in the early twenty-first century.
Matthews
also explores how we contact the medieval through reenactment, role-play, and
tourism, focusing on the hyperreal slippage and palimpsestic nature of efforts
to embody the past. He suggests that groups such as the SCA (Society for
Creative Anachronism) provide not only the opportunity for self-fashioning but
also provide a substitute for church or workplace (i.e., trade unions)
communities. But if medievalism is well entrenched in popular culture, Matthews
finds less evidence of its influence in modern high art or canonical
literature. His tentative suggestion is that medieval culture suffers from
infantilisation and that the idea of the medieval continues to be a (repressed)
construct against which all forms of modernity, dating back to the sixteenth
century, are measured.
One might
assume by the title that Key Critical Terms, a project inspired by the late
Leslie Workman, would be a handy reference guide to cover one's
secondary-source backside when invoking the idea of, for instance, simulacrum
or presentism. But the collection of thirty essays is intended as far more than
a theoretical primer since key terms such as medieval, medieval studies,
neomedievalism, and medievalism itself are missing (nonetheless, several
topics, including "Authenticity," "Middle," "Modernity,"
"Gothic," and "Lingua" address the problems of
terminology). Instead, the essays address subjects seminal to both the theory
and practice of medievalism and problematic vocabulary related to larger
theoretical constructs (Marxism, gender studies, culturalism) utilized by
medievalism studies. The reader is left with a firm grounding in the depth and
scope of the scholarly field and various recreational pursuits of both amateurs
and specialists. Ranging from "Archive" (the indeterminacy of archival
resources) to "Troubador" (their influence on the Romantics), the
topics address common misconceptions of medieval cultural practices
("Christianity," "Heresy," "Genealogy,"
"Love"); aspects of performance medievalism ("Gesture,"
"Feast," "Resonance," "Spectacle,"
"Reenactment"); theoretical lenses ("Trauma,"
"Play," "Memory," "Transfer"); ideological uses
of medievalism ("Myth," "Purity"); and characteristics of
medievalism ("Humor"; "Co-disciplinarity"). Indeed, the
range of interests reflected in Key Critical Terms attests to the eclectic
vitality of medievalism studies and captures the intellectual excitement of
this burgeoning field. Most of the essays, purposefully and tantalizingly
brief, will no doubt provide inspiration for further research and consideration.
As with Matthews' study, a central concern throughout is the relationship
between academic medieval studies and medievalism studies and practice, and the
blurring of traditional boundaries between these fields--to the intellectual
and imaginative benefit of both.
Reinventing
King Arthur: The Arthurian Legends in Victorian Culture (The Nineteenth Century
Series) 1st Edition
by Inga
Bryden
In her
systematic reassessment of the remaking of the Arthurian past in
nineteenth-century British fiction and non-fiction, Inga Bryden examines the
Victorian Arthurian revival as a cultural phenomenon, offering insights into
the relationship between social, cultural, religious, and ethnographic debates
of the period and a wide range of texts. Throughout, she adopts an intertextual
and historical perspective, informed by poststructuralist thinking, to reveal
nineteenth-century attitudes towards the past. Starting with a review of the
historical evidence available to Victorian writers and an examination of how
historians of the time represented Arthur, the author connects Victorian
accounts of Arthur's quest to contemporary scientific and historical searches
for origins and knowledge, and to his appropriation by competing religious
movements. She shows how writers explored the dynamics of heroism by recruiting
Arthur and his knights to define codes of chivalric service, and to personify
the psychological complexities of love. Finally, the legend of his death and
transportation to Avalon is deconstructed and placed in the context of cultural
attitudes towards commemorating the dead and theological debates about the
afterlife. Inga Bryden engages not only with well-known Arthurian texts by
Tennyson, Swinburne, Morris and Rossetti, but with lesser-known works by
Bulwer-Lytton, Robert Stephen Hawker, Sebastian Evans, Diana Maria Mulock,
Christiana Douglas and Joseph Shorthouse.
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