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John Richardson’s Wacousta exemplifies both the cultural transfer of gothicisms into Upper Canada and the transmission of romance as a genre from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when in this very case it adopts the form of colonial romance. It shows the two manners in which the Middle Ages existed in the Enlightenment, which apparently continued in Romanticism, at least in Canada. The choice of 1763 as a temporal setting entails the presence of indigenous peopl...

Habermas’ identification of a ‘public sphere’ as a democratic, open, and fundamentally participatory space is often identified as the emergence of a kind of modern political consciousness. Given its identification within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it thus emerges as a modern invention to be contrasted against the implied feudalism of the Middle Ages. However, at the same time, there is a growing recognition that such a public sphere belonging to the prosperous middle-classes is “less a signifier of democracy than a shift in power toward an educated, property-owning middle class ”. The translation of a Habermasian public sphere to the equally ‘democratic’ Web 2.0 environment has prompted renewed celebrations of its apparently participatory online sphere, even if in the context of the above critique the parallels with a less demotic shift of power are abundantly clear. In this chapter, I analyse the use of the hashtag ‘#medieval’ across Instagram and Twitter in particular to explore the ways in which those same dominant voices have collocated and constructed the new Middle Ages through a so-called participatory culture. I will show how the medieval has come to be created, in the context of a narrower participatory culture than is usually imagined, as a specifically western, class-based phenomenon which both controls and constricts our abilities to connect with it. L’identificazione di Habermas di una “sfera pubblica” come uno spazio democratico, aperto e fondamentalmente partecipativo, è spesso ritenuta corrispondente all’emergere di una consapevolezza politica di tipo moderno. Dato che la sua identificazione è avvenuta tra i secoli XVII e XVIII, essa sarebbe come un’invenzione moderna emersa per contrastare il sottinteso feudalesimo medievale. Tuttavia, allo stesso tempo, il riconoscimento crescente del fatto che questa sfera pubblica appartiene alle prospere classi medie, è «meno significativo di democrazia che dello spostamento di potere verso una classe media istruita e proprietaria». Il trasferimento del concetto di sfera pubblica habermasiana nell'ambiente altrettanto “democratico” del Web 2.0 ha suscitato rinnovate celebrazioni della sfera online, apparentemente partecipativa, anche se, nel contesto della critica appena espressa, appaiono ben chiari i parallelismi con una riduzione del potere popolare del potere. In questo capitolo, analizzo l’uso dell'hashtag “#medieval” su Instagram e Twitter in particolare per esplorare i modi in cui quelle stesse voci dominanti hanno collocato e costruito il nuovo medioevo attraverso una cultura cosiddetta partecipativa. Mostrerò come il medioevo è arrivato a essere creato, nel contesto di una cultura partecipativa più ristretta di quanto si immagini di solito, come un fenomeno specificamente occidentale, basato sulla classe, che insieme controlla e restringe le nostre capacità di connetterci con esso. L’identification par Habermas d’une « sphère publique » en tant qu’espace démocratique, ouvert et fondamentalement participatif est souvent identifiée comme le moment de l’apparition d’une sorte de conscience politique moderne . Compte tenu de son identification aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, il apparaît ainsi comme une invention moderne, qu’il convient d’opposer à la féodalité implicite du Moyen Âge . Cependant, dans le même temps, on observe la reconnaissance croissante qu’une telle sphère publique appartenant aux classes moyennes prospères est « moins un signifiant de la démocratie qu'un déplacement du pouvoir vers une classe moyenne éduquée et propriétaire » . La traduction d’une sphère publique habermasienne en un environnement Web 2.0 tout aussi « démocratique » a suscité de nouvelles célébrations de la sphère en ligne apparemment participative, même si, dans le contexte de la critique que l’on vient d’énoncer, les parallèles avec un changement de pouvoir moins démocratique sont évidents. Dans ce chapitre, j'analyse l’utilisation du hashtag «#medieval» sur Instagram et Twitter en particulier pour explorer les façons dont ces mêmes voix dominantes ont localisé et construit le nouveau Moyen Âge à travers une culture dite participative. Je montrerai comment le médiéval en est venu à se créer, dans le contexte d'une culture participative plus étroite qu'on ne l'imagine habituellement, comme un phénomène de classe spécifiquement occidental qui contrôle et restreint à tout la fois nos capacités de s’y connecter.

Academic involvement with medievalism can be found in many different fields, such as history, literature, and media studies, but surprisingly there are hardly any works on linguistic issues. This frequent oversight is strikingly illustrated, for example, in the recent Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (d’Arcens 2016a), which has no contribution on language. However, a significant number of compositions in, as well as translations into, Old English and Middle English is available, in the form...

In 2017-18 I adopted a new approach to teaching medieval history courses, engaging students in discussions of the role played by nostalgia, fantasy, and politics in shaping modern views of the Middle Ages. A confluence of nearly simultaneous factors in the summer and fall of 2017 underpinned this decision. These included: “alt-right” visions of a white, Christian Middle Ages and their defense by some medievalists; the rise of “free speech” debates at Canadian universities; and the roundtable ...

In 1888, the young Danish painter Agnes Slott-Møller (1862-1937) travelled to Italy to see for herself the medieval artworks she had only known from lectures in art history. Her experience of Italian medieval art was a revelation that set her course as an artist. In her autobiography she writes: “Without at that time having ever heard of the modern English school of painters who in their partiality for pre-Raphaelite Italian art called themselves ‘Pre-Raphaelites,’ I became directly and immed...

In this paper I examine how the Bourbon dynasty used the Middle Ages to legitimize its rule after the restoration of the monarchy in France in 1814. When King Louis XVIII came to France in 1814 his position was not undisputed. Napoleon’s return and the Hundred Days further destabilized the French monarchy. The king and his supporters had to use multiple means to strengthen their position, and history was one significant source of legitimization. Besides the events of the Revolution, the royal...

The unfinished literary saga A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as its HBO adaptation Game of Thrones, mainly deals with the various representations and moral implications of the human quest for power. Whereas some characters favour a tyrannical or religious approach in order to seize the throne and keep it through violence and manipulation, a more lasting approach seems to reside in the control of a social power, as experienced involuntarily by Tyrion Lannister. He remains one of the characters...

The late medieval shift in the English word trothe from something like fidelity or integrity to something closer to the modern “truth” has been well documented, most comprehensively by Richard Firth Green in his 1999 book A Crisis of Truth. My paper will trace how the long history of truth can help illuminate its varying uses in the political discourse of twenty-first century U.S. politics. I focus on two main ways the idea of truth has been central to our politics: the idea of “truthiness” t...

What can Architrenius by Johannes of Hauvilla, an obscure poem in Latin hexameters from 1184 Northern France, classified by modern editors as a “satyrical allegory,” have in common with one of the most famous and characteristic prose works of the Italian nineteenth-century poet Giacomo Leopardi, his Dialogue of Nature with an Icelander? The latter is considered the main expression of Leopardi’s original anti-providentialistic, anti-anthropocentric, anti-Christian—if not plainly materialistic ...

Historical re-enactments were a central part of the historical imaginary of totalitarian regimes during the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing upon a Romantic medievalist culture—which inspired events such as the medieval pageant of Munich in 1835 and the Eglinton Tournament in 1839, as well as the revival of traditional urban feasts and games in nineteenth-century Italy—these regimes elevated historical re-enactments to unprecedent levels of detail and grandiosity. From the reinvention of the Palio di...

The picture of the Viking Ragnar Lodbrok singing his death song in an English snake pit has been immortalized for centuries, most recently in History’s TV series Vikings (2013–). Many adaptations are based on Old Norse manuscripts, in which the dying Ragnar recounts his exploits and portrays himself as a warrior and a skald simultaneously. The song combines warrior traits with the art of storytelling and was one of the first pieces of Old Norse literature translated into English. It is also a...

In the cultural formation now known as post-punk gothic, the medieval plays a markedly ambiguous, and so aesthetically generative, role. At once decidedly “modern” in juxtaposition to the “classic” rock that defined a previous generation, post-punk gothic, as evinced through a number of initially disparate yet subsequently related musical acts, engages the non-modern within the very contemporary moment these artistic forms occupy and index. As we see in early reviews of Joy Division, Siouxsie...

“Where do you draw the line between fact and fiction?” “How do you balance authenticity with the need for a good story?” “How historically accurate is your work?” “Is it based on real events?” “How much research do you have to do?” These are some of the most common questions asked of historical novelists. We often feel compelled to justify and explain our work in terms of its historical underpinnings and our preparatory research. In contrast to writers in other genres, we are often expected t...

In exploring contemporary arts practices and medieval culture, this panel took inspiration from William Kentridge’s Triumphs and laments, on the banks of the Tiber. Five artists—Neil Jeffries, Sharon Morris, Jayne Parker, Liz Rideal, and Jo Volley, from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London—considered the relationship between the medieval and the contemporary arts, using their own work as a focus. The panel illustrated how medieval materials and artefacts resource contempora...

This paper examines the reception of Late Antique, Byzantine, and early modern Ottoman architecture in Istanbul, Turkey, in both the later nineteenth and twenty-first centuries as examples of the use of the past in nation building. In the later years of the Ottoman Empire and also now in contemporary Turkey, the architecture of past imperial states was and is invoked by the ruling political group to bolster the image of the contemporary government and to provide legitimizing foundations upon ...

Some historians pretend that there was no middle-class consciousness in Prerevolutionary France. Sarah Maza relies on the paucity of historical discourses glorifying the bourgeoisie to argue that their existence as a social class during the ancien régime is a myth. She notes that historical accounts of the period focus on the debates between the “Germanists” and the “Romanists” who argue over the role of the nobility. Certainly, Mably and abbé Duclos denounce feudalism and comment on the emer...

It can be argued that scientists and journalists are to the modern world what grail-knights, mendicants, and pilgrims were to the medieval: standard-bearers and dogged seekers of meaning and truth. But during the last decades of the twentieth century (and continuing even today), two modern investigative teams headed by the unlikeliest of protagonists ventured on “pilgrimage” around the world in search, of all things, of the blood of Christ. This October marks the fortieth anniversary of the S...

In The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919), Johan Huizinga identified medieval Europe as not only a time and a place, but also as a distinct emotional regime. According to his narrative, life during the Middle Ages consisted of intense contrasts—between sickness and health, violence and mercy—that were unknowable to Huizinga’s modern audience. This framework of difference, however, did not originate with the Dutch historian. He contributed to a broader conversation among European scholars and pu...

In order to analyze the perspective with which Marga­rethe von Trotta represented the figure of Hildegard von Bingen (Ber­mersheim vor der Höhe, 1098 - Bingen am Rhein, 17 September 1179) in her film Vision - Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen (2009), it is appropriate to look at the work of the German director in light of contemporary sources for the necessary historical-chronological, philosophical, and above all theological monastic contextualization. The film, presented in competition...

Medieval and Renaissance people danced—as their ancestors and their descendants did and do. Then as now, dancing was a combination of vigorous exercise, social interaction, and class identity: dance is never uncomplicated. For much medieval dancing, we must rely on images and the occasional, not detailed description. However, starting in the fifeenth century, we find dance choreographies written down; manuscripts exist from France, Italy, England, and Spain, which give more or less detailed i...

The exhibition Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination was on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Cloisters from 10 May to 8 October 2018. Some 200 garments and ornaments dating from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century were shown, as were some 40 (from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) from the Vatican. The material from the Vatican was installed apart in the Met’s Anna Wintour Costume Center. The other items were displayed in the Medieval galleries in the Met and in the Cloisters, many in close proximity to medieval works of art. In this paper I discuss the rationales the curators and administrators of the Met and the Vatican proposed for mounting the exhibition and their descriptions of the purposes it aimed to serve, particularly important given the exhibit’s timing, a moment of grave crisis in the Church, which had commenced long before the show opened but accelerated sharply while it was on view. I then discuss the range of reactions to the exhibit and Gala. Finally, I comment on two broader themes. First, the place of wealth and display in the Catholic Church and particularly the Church’s adoption of material tokens of secular power and magnificence. Second, the relationship between the fashions exhibited in New York, papal and secular, on the one hand, and, on the other, a hypothetical Catholic imagination (or imaginations), as well as the varied motivations that may lead designers and artists to appropriate religious symbols, images, and stories for their own secular purposes. La mostra Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination è stata aperta dal 10 maggio all’8 ottobre 2018 al Metropolitan Museum e ai Cloisters di New York. Sono stati esposti circa 200 indumenti e ornamenti datati dal XIX al XXI secolo, dei quali circa 40 (del XIX e XX secolo) provenienti dal Vaticano. Il materiale del Vaticano è stato installato separatamente nello Anna Wintour Costume Center del Metropolitan, mentre gli altri oggetti sono stati messi in mostra nelle Medieval galleries del Metropolitan e presso i Cloisters, spesso vicini a opere d’arte medievali. In questo contributo illustro i fondamenti logici che i curatori e gli amministratori del Metropolitan e del Vaticano hanno proposto per allestire la mostra e le loro descrizioni degli scopi a cui mirava, in un momento particolarmente importante data la sua tempistica: un momento di grave crisi nella Chiesa, iniziato molto prima dell'apertura ma che ha subito una forte accelerazione durante l’esposizione. Successivamente, prendo in esame la gamma delle reazioni alla mostra e al Gala. Infine, commento due temi più ampi. In primo luogo, il posto della ricchezza e dell’ostentazione nella Chiesa cattolica e in particolare l'adozione da parte di essa di segni materiali di potere secolare e magnificenza. In secondo luogo, il rapporto tra le mode esposte a New York, papale e laica, da un lato, e, dall'altro, un'ipotetica immaginazione cattolica (o immaginazioni), nonché le varie motivazioni che possono indurre designer e artisti ad appropriarsi di immagini, storie e simboli religiosi per i loro scopi secolari. L’exposition Heavenly Bodies : Fashion and the Catholic Imagination a été présentée au Metropolitan Museum de New York et aux Cloisters du 10 mai au 8 octobre 2018. Quelque 200 vêtements et ornements datant du XIXe au XXIe siècle ont été présentés, dont une quarantaine (des XIXe et XXe siècles) provenant du Vatican. Le matériel du Vatican a été installé séparément dans le Centre de costumes Anna Wintour du Met. Les autres objets ont été exposés dans les galeries médiévales du Met et dans les Cloisters, beaucoup à proximité d'œuvres d'art médiévales. Dans cet article, je discute des justifications proposées par les conservateurs et administrateurs du Met et du Vatican pour monter l'exposition et de leurs descriptions des objectifs qu'elle visait, particulièrement importants compte tenu du moment de l'exposition, un moment de grave crise dans l'Église, qui avait commencé bien avant l'ouverture du salon, mais s'était fortement accélérée pendant qu'il était à l'affiche. Je discute ensuite de l'éventail des réactions à l'exposition et au Gala. Enfin, je commente deux thèmes plus vastes : la place de la richesse et de la magnificence dans l’Église catholique et en particulier l’adoption par l’Église de gages matériels de puissance et de magnificence laïques ; et la relation entre les modes exposées à New York – papale et laïque – et une hypothétique imagination catholique (ou des imaginations, peut-être), ainsi que les motivations variées qui peuvent conduire les designers et les artistes à s'approprier symboles religieux, images et histoires pour leurs propres fins séculières.

This paper argues that, although questions of historicity and ahistoricity are central to medievalism, some medieval living history cultures and scene-adjacent media are better understood as primarily spatial practices. I draw on Bernd Mahr’s model theory and spatial hermeneutics to reimagine medievalism as a set of modelling processes. In this case, field research in the German medieval re-enactment and living history scene is combined with a case study of the Norwegian metal band Wardruna a...

This volume contains the acts of the international conference “The Middle Ages in the Modern World,” held in Rome November 21-24, 2018. Following the previous iterations of MAMO – as the founders and attendees of this biennial event call it – organized in Scotland (St. Andrews, 2013) and England (Lincoln, 2015; Manchester, 2017), the conference left Great Britain and the anglophone world for Italy and a large, multilingual gathering whose cultural and linguistic diversity is preserved in the ...

On 18 June 2015, the Vatican website released Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for our Common Home. Uploaded in English, Arabic, and six European languages also spoken in Africa and Latin America, it was instantly and globally available. Addressing his message to “every person living on this planet,” Francis, the first Latin American pope, ameliorates the Eurocentrism of the encyclical’s origin by emphasising the Church’s presence in former colonial societies and the economic g...

White’s animal symbolism relies on religious, scientific and ideological analogies in its examination of the human condition. To begin with, an obvious source was the medieval bestiary, one of which White himself translated and edited (White, The Book of Beasts). Each animal has an “added symbolism” of vices, virtues, and character traits, already seen in Christ’s dictum to be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). The bestiary is not a mere medieval “zoology book” but a h...

Philosopher Robert Pogue Harrison posits that our species’ particular consciousness of our dead is a primary generative force for the cultures of our living, proposing that “the living housed the dead before they housed themselves.” By the 1804 opening of Paris’s Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Harrison’s halcyon days of the dead were long past. Inhumed in churches and churchyards, they were often forgotten or, worse, exhumed to make way for their successors. The nineteenth-century cemetery refor...

In 1968, a lead token with Hebrew inscriptions was discovered during excavations of Lower Brooks Street, Winchester, England. The artefact was dated to the late twelfth to thirteenth century and is thought to have been a synagogue token used by the medieval Jewish community. The Winchester Jewry was one of the earliest settlements in England. Jews were present in the city from the mid-1100s until their expulsion from the country in 1290. The significance of the token lies in its status as one...

In 1996, the American author George R. R. Martin published the first volume of the overwhelming saga A Song of Ice and Fire. In this saga, noble families plot and fight against one another to rule the Seven Kingdoms from the Iron Throne, a seat created by melting together the swords of those who have fallen in battle against the king. The Iron Throne is there to remind both the members of court and the citizens that there will always be someone revolting against the king, just as there will a...

Last year was the thirtieth anniversary of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe. It is interesting to note that some of these cultural itineraries refer to important medieval pilgrimage routes; this is the case for instance, with “St. James’ Way” and the “Via Francigena.” Both itineraries have experienced a growth in the number of tourists in recent years. Their success is due to two main factors: firstly, they are slow-tourism products, different from those for mass tourism; secondly...

Medievalism is not alien to heavy metal music. It is actually a prominent feature of two of its most successful subgenres, power metal and pagan metal, and it recurs in the aesthetics and the lyrics of most classical heavy metal bands. Warriors, knights, sorcerers, minstrels, and the whole cast of contemporary popular medievalising literature and cinema alternate with Germanic mythology, traditional ballads, epic poetry, Crusaders, Vikings, and many other supposedly more historical topics. Th...

The historiography of medieval Anglo-Jewry is generally consistent with opinion on the level of interaction of Jews with their Christian neighbours in the urban space. This typically refers to marked differences in religion and customs and secular aspects of medieval English society that precluded Jews from integrating fully and upon which the construction of their ‘otherness’ is based. Recourse to the European model of community, specifically the requirements for communal buildings, when int...

The Middle Ages—both “real” and “imaginary”—have inspired more than a century of ostensibly forward-thinking artistic modernism, a contradiction whose recognition, I contend, might do much to shake up an increasingly tired narrative concerned, principally, with notions of “progress” and the breakup of tradition. For musical strains of modernism, specifically, that sense of the “medieval” leaves its enigmatic trace, redolent of a strange dialogue with traditions whose “sounds” are truly lost t...

Laudato si’ has been hailed by progressives for taking the urgency of the environmental crisis seriously, and for its injunction to believe the scientists. Its subtitle declares that we ought to care for “our common home,” the earth. Such lovely words, care and home, denote intimacy and the everyday. The problem of environmental degradation is a domestic one. It hits home, so to speak. And this home is womanly. Francis tells us, “our common home is like our sister with whom we share our life,...

In many of Gawain’s appearances in Arthurian Romances, he has been posed as the ideal: the best lover, the perfect knight from the noblest family, and Arthur’s most loyal follower. A similar identity can be applied to Superman, the “American Crusader,” the first and the perfect superhero. Both characters demonstrate and practise the perfection of masculinity within their own cultural contexts (medieval Europe and contemporary America), which is why I attempt to bring them into conversation. T...

On November 9th, 1988, precisely one year before the Reunification of Germany and 50 years after Kristalnacht, a memorial fountain was inaugurated for the synagogue in Hildesheim. The new landmark was placed at Lappenberg (am Lappenberg), where the synagogue had stood since its erection in 1849 until its destruction on the Night of the Broken Glass. The 1988 fountain, a cube-like sculpture made of Verona marble and decorated with bronze and marble reliefs, was designed by Elmar Hillebrand (19...

The National Trust is the United Kingdom’s largest heritage organisation and boasts hundreds of medieval buildings as part of its collection. This paper explores the re-presentation of these sites as heritage attractions, focusing on the use of “edutainment” to engage visitors’ interest in the medieval past. Taking the “War of the Roses Weekends” at Tattershall Castle and Oxburgh Hall as its starting point, the paper unpacks the intersections between pedagogy, authenticity, and place within t...

In 2008, members of the world’s most popular Viking Metal band, Amon Amarth, produced and distributed online a short video that explained how to make mead, describing it as “obviously a very special Viking drink, which we like to consume lots of.” Fans of the band could be more like Vikings by drinking mead, for that, as everyone knows, is what Vikings did. Whenever Vikings appear in film, books, television, cartoons or any other mass culture medium there is a very good chance that, if they a...

This paper explores the extent to which early modern and modern French intellectuals shaped the memory of Marguerite Porete to advance their gendered religious and political goals. In 1310, Marguerite Porete was burned in Paris for writing and circulating a treatise on the annihilation of the soul entitled the Mirouer des simples âmes. After her death, her book continued to circulate anonymously in multiple languages. Given the lack of known historical references to Porete, scholars assumed t...

The wedding of the Polish Princess Hedwig Jagiellon (1457-1502) with the Bavarian Duke George the Rich (1455-1503) in 1475 in Landshut became a model example of a most lavish and extravagant wedding feast for all the later Middle Ages. The ceremony was proverbial and served as a point of reference for many princely and royal weddings taking place in the region and beyond. In the early modern period, the Landshut wedding remained virtually forgotten and out of the collective memory of the loca...

This paper aims to analyze how the Middle Ages have been perceived and represented by the Catholic Italian world during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The Council was in fact the place where different views about the modern world and the role played by the Church in contemporary and past societies emerged. However, even if this topic could be investigated by analysing the works of priests, bishops and even popes, I will focus my attention on the ways secular Catholic intellectuals ha...

The Jews arrived in medieval England in around 1066 and were expelled in 1290. During that period, a tradition of writing about the Jews in the narrative sources emerged, and a number of themes became commonplace (notably the ritual murder allegation). This literary tradition did not cease with the Expulsion. Rather, as historians like Gavin I. Langmuir have demonstrated, these narratives continued to be developed until at least the nineteenth century. For example, Chaucer referred to the mur...

In the wake of the French Revolution, European Jews began a long process of return to the European stage, after having continually lived an essentially medieval existence. The challenges of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western culture generated and highlighted many discontinuities between the medieval Jewish experience and the realities of contemporary life (e.g. religious continuity and political emancipation). This prompted the radical recasting of the Jewish Middle Ages by both academ...

The final books of the Esprit des lois (1748) are dedicated to the institutions of the kingdom of France in medieval centuries. According to Montesquieu, the study of the Middle Ages is fundamental to addressing the political and institutional issues of contemporary France. Indeed, Montesquieu lived in a time of political and institutional changes. The long-lasting government of Louis XIV led to a far-reaching reform in the constitutional structure of the kingdom. The death of the king and th...

This book presents the proceedings of the international conference “The Middle Ages in the Modern World,” held in Rome November 21-24, 2018. Attended by more than a hundred participants of different ages, educational backgrounds, and places of origin, the conference constituted a landmark in the study of medievalism: the historical discipline, now in full bloom, that investigates the ways in which the thousand-year period between 500 and 1500 was, and continues to be, presented, reconstructed, and imagined in successive eras. The book opens with a substantial bibliography drawn from all of its components, followed by the seven keynote lectures and ninety-three shorter texts - abstracts of the individual conference papers - organized along eight thematic pathways, which together provide a vivid image of the current state of the field.

This paper showed how the new borders of the Bulgarian nationat the end of the 19th century forced the local Jewish population to reframe the historical understanding and situatedness of its own community in order to envision and negotiate their place in society. It argued that the Sofia Jewish community used a myth of a common, Bulgarian and Jewish, medieval local history as a means of establishing a belonging to the Bulgarian nation. The need arose from the advent of antisemitism and an inc...

Replicas have long been relegated to the realm of kitsch. However, they form a vital component of Michelangelo’s legacy, as they have helped make him a synecdoche for Old World artistic achievement. This paper analyzes two prominent examples of Michelangelo re-creations—one in California and the other in Paris—in order to draw conclusions about how his corpus has been mobilized for differing purposes yet with surprisingly similar outcomes. The world’s largest collection of full-scale marble r...

When Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin, began asking questions about how Russia had ended up where it was in the 1830s, he donned the hat of historian and went looking for answers in the socio-historical turning points that defined Western culture. This paper discusses one of these threshold moments that captured Pushkin’s imagination: the end of the European Middle Ages. By tracing particular influences, such as Walter Scott’s essay on chivalry, Henry Hallam’s history of Europe, and ...

Following one of the four reception models proposed by Gentry and Müller (1991), I focus my medievalist analysis on creative reception—that is, on the way twenty-first-century Portuguese literature reuses medieval subject matters, motifs, themes, and genres. In the journey back in time that Mário Cláudio, a contemporary Portuguese novelist, takes in his two medievalist short stories, readers feel as if they are visiting another world but, at the same time, they look at it through the lenses o...

Having first read Dante in an air-raid shelter in 1944, Dorothy L. Sayers undertook what she considered her greatest work: her Penguin translation of The Divine Comedy. Her Dante, read by millions, was a fellow master of story-telling: ludic, self-deprecating, even Austenesque. Following her training in continental romance and the “romantic theology” of Charles Williams, Sayers imagined an interpersonal relationship with Dante as a living, embodied man. Strikingly, she fantasised about his qu...

Although the study of medievalism is relatively young, its central tenet holds that current responses to the Middle Ages work through a double lens, to the Middle Ages themselves by way of a mediated perception of the Middle Ages established in the nineteenth century. That is, we see the Middle Ages through a glass darkly, through the Victorian period. This perception holds for the countries of western Europe and for Commonwealth countries and the United States, and for other countries strong...