Through the consideration of canonical authors such as Blake, Scott, and Wordsworth and of lesser-studied works such as radical press writings and popular drama, this study explores the imaginative appeal of the social structures and literary forms of the Middle Ages, and how they raised awareness of Britain's tradition of freedom.

Through the consideration of canonical authors such as Blake, Scott, and Wordsworth and of lesser-studied works such as radical press writings and popular drama, this study explores the imaginative appeal of the social structures and literary forms of the Middle Ages, and how they raised awareness of Britain's tradition of freedom.

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An introduction to medievalism offering a balance of accessibility and sophistication, with comprehensive overviews as well as detailed case studies.

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 Ferré, 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.

showing that contrary to the commonly held view that romances are representative of the "popular culture" of their day, in fact such texts appealed primarily to the gentry, England's elite landowners who lacked titles of nobility.

Medievalism - the creative interpretation or recreation of the European Middle Ages - has had a major presence in the cultural memory of the modern West, and has grown in scale to become a global phenomenon. Countless examples across aesthetic, material and political domains reveal that the medieval period has long provided a fund of images and ideas that have been vital to defining 'the modern'. Bringing together local, national and global examples and tracing medievalism's unpredictable course from early modern poetry to contemporary digital culture, this authoritative Companion offers a panoramic view of the historical, aesthetic, ideological and conceptual dimensions of this phenomenon. It showcases a range of critical positions and approaches to discussing medievalism, from more 'traditional' historicist and close-reading practices through to theoretically engaged methods. It also acquaints readers with key terms and provides them with a sophisticated conceptual vocabulary for discussing the medieval afterlife in the modern.