Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T02:34:52.799Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Re-creating the Middle Ages

from Part four - Legacies and re-creations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

Andrew Galloway
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

The re-creation, re-envisioning, and reinterpretation of the Middle Ages, or medievalism, may be more than the imitation of artistic style, often implying a desire for the authentic or imagined values and way of life of the medieval era. Both conservatives anxious to preserve traditional values and those seeking radical change have invoked the Middle Ages in support of their social ideals. From the nation's beginnings, medievalism has also proved a powerful influence on cultural conceptions in the United States of America. The idea of the Middle Ages has served as an inspiration both to high culture and to popular culture in a variety of artistic media and social forms.

English medievalism is largely a phenomenon of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – the word “medievalism” was only coined in the mid-nineteenth century – but it has some significant precursors in earlier times. For example, when Sir Thomas Malory remarks in the Morte d'Arthur that he cannot tell what Launcelot and Gwenyver might have been doing in private because “love that tyme was nat as love ys nowadays,” he is making a conscious distinction between his own time and that of the Arthurian stories. Even a fifteenth-century text, then, may have a medievalist consciousness of a difference between “then” and “now” that allows for points of comparison between the two time periods and real or imagined ways of life.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×