Medievalism and the Quest for the Real Middle Ages

Description

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. Cover MEDIEVALISM AND THE QUEST FOR THE ''REAL'' MIDDLE AGES Copyright Contents Introduction Samuel Daniel's Defense of Medievalism Chivalry and Romance in the Eighteenth Century: Richard Hurd and the Disenchantment of The Faerie Queene Waging Battle: Ashford v. Thornton, Ivanhoe, and Legal Violence Marianne: Mystic or Madwoman? Representations of Jeanne d'Arc on the Parisian Stage in the 1820s The "Truth" About the Middle Ages: La Revue des Deux Mondes and Late Nineteenth-Century French Medievalism Medieval Religion, Victorian Homosexualities Heraldry and Red Hats: Linguistic Skepticism and Chesterton's Revision of Ruskinian Medievalism The Return of the King: Medievalism and the Politics of Nostalgia in the Mythopoetic Men's Movement Abstracts Notes on Contributors Index