Medievalism

The early Middle Ages provided twentieth-century poets with the material to reimagine and rework local, religious, and national identities in their writing. Poet of the Medieval Modern focuses on a key figure within this tradition, the Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895–1974), and represents the first extended study of the influence of early medieval culture and history from England on Jones and his novel-length late modernist poem The Anathemata (1952). Drawing on unpublished archival material including manuscripts, sketches, correspondence, and, most significantly, the marginalia from David Jones’s Library, Poet of the Medieval Modern reads with Jones in order to trouble the distinction we make between poetry and scholarship. Placing this underappreciated figure firmly at the centre of new developments in modernist and medieval studies, Poet of the Medieval Modern argues that Jones uses the textual and material culture of the early Middle Ages—including Old English prose and poetry, Anglo-Latin hagiography, early medieval stone sculpture, manuscripts, and historiography—to re-envision British Catholic identity in the twentieth-century long poem. At a time when the Middle Ages are increasingly weaponized in far-right and nationalist political discourse, the book offers a timely discussion of how the early medieval past has been resourced to both shore up and challenge English hegemonies across modern British culture.

‘Éowyn, Aragorn and the Hidden Dangers of Drink.’ In Inklings 17, Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik. Moers: Brendow, 217-225.
Summary: My paper discusses Tolkien’s depiction of the ‘wassail’ scene(s) in The Lord of the Rings, its parallels and analogues in Beowulf and other medieval texts, and the possible implications for an interpretation of the relationship between Éowyn and Aragorn. I argue that the existence of those parallels and analogues in medieval texts constitutes an instance of ‘covert depth’ in Tolkien’s work. This dimension of ‘covert depth’ goes beyond the established limits of Shippey’s ‘depth’ since it can only be appreciated if the reader is acquainted with the relevant parallel passages.

ABSTRACT: Portrayals of noblewomen and the courtly love ideal are familiar themes in medieval songs and romances. This essay challenges the legitimacy of these themes, tracing an archeology of courtly love as a scholarly and cultural construct: a medievalism in and of itself, with origins in the nineteenth century. Using the Arthurian tradition as a case study, the essay explores reinterpretations of medieval portrayals of love in postmedieval cultures from Restoration Britain to the Swinging Sixties. As women increasingly occupied public and private spaces that were once exclusively men’s domain, male musicians in these settings employed the character of Guinevere and the idea of courtly love to address contemporary cultural anxieties about gender.

With the release of ‘Outlaw King’, the upcoming film ‘Robert the Bruce’ and the long shadow cast by ‘Braveheart’, the wars for Scottish independence of the fourteenth century are being re-fought in modern popular culture, just as they were later in the middle ages, according to Iain MacInnes.

Desde hace ya unas décadas, el estudio de mujeres filósofas se ha visto favorecido con múltiples ediciones y estudios específicos. El caso de Margarita Porete es un ejemplo paradigmático al respecto, y muestra de ello es este libro, el primer Companion a la autora y su obra

In search of specific national traditions nineteenth-century artists and scholars did not shy of manipulating texts and objects or even outright manufacturing them. The essays edited by János Bak, Patrick Geary and Gábor Klaniczay explore the various artifacts from outright forgeries to fruits of poetic phantasy, while also discussing the volatile notion of authenticity and the multiple claims for it in the age.

Dans le roman graphique Perceval, séquences dialoguées et images muettes, poétique de l'espace et chatoiement des couleurs, gros plans métonymiques et paysages panoramiques - tout concourt à transposer la poésie de Chrétien de Troyes en un trajet intérieur que le roman découpe en cadrages élégants ou par l'occupation impromptue de la page blanche par quelques silhouettes. La quête de l'identité – le nom du héros et le nom du père –  compose l'essentiel du parcours en forme d'errance du jeune et silencieux Perceval, plus contemplatif qu'aventurier, et dont le "regard caméra" interrogateur dirigé vers le lecteur recèle les interrogations du héros médiéval. La perte de la mère, les motifs de la Lance qui saigne et de la coupe du graal, le château perdu du roi pêcheur, la forêt profonde, la cour étincelante d'Arthur et quelques demoiselles en détresse, constituent la trame narrative que les auteurs ont alliée à un adjuvant moderne (une pie facétieuse), figure obligée dans la bande dessinée. Suivant l'héroïsme "passif" des romans médiévaux Perceval se soumet au destin que la légende lui réserve et renonce à chercher son chemin. Le récit initiatique prend la forme du rêve, jusqu'à la non-résolution finale des énigmes et l'acceptation de ce que, peut-être, le héros savait déjà. L'enluminure médiévale et son bestiaire sont convoqués pour compléter la sobriété du texte et le graphisme épuré. Loin de la tradition anglo-saxonne exubérante et réaliste de la bande dessinée de fantasy, ce roman graphique réactive les invariants de la légende en une fresque picturale onirique.

Super-héros : histoire d’un mythe américain
UE libre pour le Bureau des enseignements transversaux de l’université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle
Année universitaire 2020-2021
Du 27 janvier 2021 au 21 avril 2021
Descriptif :
En plus de quatre-vingts ans, l’histoire des super-héros, apparus dans les comics des années 1930 aux États-Unis, est longue et complexe. Le genre d’ailleurs ne cesse de s‘enrichir chaque année de nouveaux personnages et de nouveaux récits alors qu’il se diffuse dans de nombreux médias (séries télévisées, jeux vidéo, cinéma, etc.) et sur tous les continents. Si une telle profusion interdit toute exhaustivité, il reste toutefois possible de comprendre, à travers les exemples les plus célèbres (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, les X-Men, etc.), mais aussi d’autres cas bien moins connus en France et parfois aujourd’hui oubliés (Namor, l’Escadron Suprême, le Punisher) les raisons sociales, économiques et politiques qui ont présidé à l’apparition et au succès de ce genre.

The  essay highlights the various patriotic and nationalist uses of imagined  versions of the European Middle Ages from the nineteenth through the  twenty-first century, surveying examples from architecture, art,  literature, politics, and religion in Brazil, Britain, France, Germany,  Russia, and the United States.

From the Reformation onwards, English historiography exhibited mixed ideas about the pre-Conquest era. There was respect for the ‘liberty’ and ‘independence’ in ancient English laws and institutions, but also contempt for the perceived weakness of later Anglo-Saxon rulers, often attributed to monkish influence. Charles Kingsley’s choice of an eleventh-century East Anglian of Danish descent as his avatar of true Englishness in Hereward the Wake (1866) is significant in this context. Kingsley, an early supporter of Darwin, shapes his account of English historical evolution around inter-related factors of race, gender and environment which make the medieval past indicative for him of later developments, and which outline an overarching providentialist pattern. Kingsley’s treatment of sources for Hereward, situates his novel in the broader picture of Victorian attitudes to the medieval period, and invokes comparison with Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake (2014).

ÉDITION POCHE réactualisée et complétée par un chapitre inédit.

Cinéma, séries télévisées, romans, jeux... les super-héros, nés en 1938 avec l’apparition de Superman, ont envahi la culture populaire planétaire.
Loin d’être un simple produit de divertissement, le genre super-héroïque a été pensé dès son origine comme un outil politique par des auteurs issus de milieux modestes. Captain America a ainsi été créé par deux auteurs juifs pour corriger Hitler dans des comics alors que Wonder Woman a été pensée pour promouvoir l’émancipation des femmes.
D’autres super-héros ont eu pour fonction de faire croire à l’existence d’un futur radieux à portée de main dans lequel le modèle démocratique se répandrait sur l’ensemble du globe en triomphant des tyrannies « féodales » totalitaires. Plus tard, de nouveaux personnages ont symbolisé une Amérique en plein doute, frappée de plein fouet par la crise pétrolière, la défaite au Vietnam, puis le 11 septembre 2001. Évoquant tour à tour Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Namor, l’Escadron suprême, Black Panther, Luke Cage, Green Arrow, Spider-Man, Red Sonja, Howard the Duck, Punisher, Iron Man, les super LGBT et Wolverine, cet ouvrage se propose d’explorer les discours politiques qui se cachent derrière le masque des surhumains.

This essay analyzes Zorns Lemma (1962–1970), a film made by American artist Hollis Frampton (1936–1984). Noting Frampton’s use of Robert Grosseteste’s thirteenth-century treatise De luce [‘On Light’] as a key aspect of the film’s soundtrack, the essay argues that Grosseteste’s investigations of light as a medium played a key role in Frampton’s theorization of cinema. As such, his interest in medieval light theories spurred him to develop a powerful, idiosyncratic response to prevailing discourses of media and medium specificity during the 1960s. When examined in light of contemporaneous projects by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) and Roland Barthes (1915–1980), Zorns Lemma points up the significance of medieval thought in the period’s conceptions of art and time.

This paper aims to illustrate the post-medieval reception of the Cathar heresy and the birth and development of a real «neo-Cathar mithology» from the end of XIX century to present day. After a brief historiographical introduction on Cathars, it will consider the contemporary neo-Cathar revival, which can be divided into two different phases. During the first one (end of the XIX century-first half of the XX), the Albigensian heresy was mostly considered as an esoteric and syncretic belief or as the founding myth of Occitanian identity; in the second one, instead, it was regarded as a sort of ancient and authentic gnostic-Christian message in opposition to Roman Catholicism. Both phases converged, during the second half of the XX century, in a succesful commercial phenomenon, which has led to the production of novels, movies and songs dedicated to the cathar epic.
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"Questo studio intende illustrare la ricezione post-medievale dell’eresia catara e la nascita e lo sviluppo, dalla fine del XIX secolo fino ai nostri giorni, di una vera e propria «mitologia neocatara». Dopo una breve introduzione storiografica sui catari, esso prenderà in esame il revival neocataro contemporano, che può essere diviso in due diverse-fasi. Durante la prima (fine del XIX secolo-prima metà del XX), l’eresia albigese fu vista principalmente come una credenza esoterica e sincretica o come il mito fondativo dell’identità occitana; nella seconda fu invece considerata come una sorta di antico-e autentico messaggio gnostico-cristiano contrapposto al cattolicesimo romano. Entrambe le fasi sono confluite, durante la seconda metà del XX secolo, in un fenomeno commerciale di successo, che ha portato alla produzione di romanzi, film e brani-musicali dedicati all’epopea catara.

Le roi Arthur : un mythe contemporain
(cinéma, séries télévisées, bandes dessinées)
UE libre pour le Bureau des enseignements transversaux de l’université Paris Sorbonne-Nouvelle

Descriptif :
Cinéma, séries télévisées, univers ludiques, romans, bandes dessinées, le Moyen Âge rêvé semble aujourd’hui être présent sur de vastes portions des horizons culturels, sociaux et politiques. Ce phénomène, appelé médiévalisme, que l’on retrouve aussi bien dans la littérature généralistes, l’architecture, que dans la fantasy (Le Seigneur des Anneaux, Game of Thrones), ou la science-fiction (Star Wars, Star Trek) a aussi une histoire. Il touche d’abord l’Occident à partir de la fin du XVIIIe siècle pour se répandre, deux cents ans plus tard, sur l’ensemble du globe. La mythologie arthurienne, qui, au Moyen âge, était confinée à une petite élite dans les frontières de l’Europe occidentale, suscite ainsi aujourd’hui une adhésion massive et des versions réactualisées en Amérique et au Japon. Un tel phénomène n’a rien d’anodin et mérite que l’on s’y attarde.

Over the course of the twentieth century, various political regimes in Europe used medieval images to demonstrate and legitimize their power. In a previous survey, I have addressed the study of the Portuguese case, showing how the the 12th century Lorvão Beatus – a manuscript preserved at the National Arquives since 1853 - was frequently utilized and turned into a sort of object of devotion,  during the first decades of the Estado Novo, the corporatist authoritarian regime that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974. At this time, I will address the study of another major work of Portuguese art history, the so-called Tomb of Egas Moniz, one of the greatest heroes of Portuguese history. To what extent might this artwork be considered as the result of a well-planned project in order to make it an object of devotion for 20th century Portuguese society?

Although studies of Middle English literature normally traffic in textuality, this essay interrogates medievalism by taking as its object one of the great material remnants of the English Middle Ages, Glastonbury Abbey, examining this magnificent ruin both as tourist site and object of scholarly interest. We believe this is a significant intervention because, for readers of Middle English literature, acquaintance with England's heritage-its ancient
monuments and historic buildings-subtends their reading. And, unlike other forms of medievalism-literary, cinematic, artistic-that depend upon reproduction, heritage tourism brings the Middle Ages into the present through its claims to offer spectators the "real" Middle Ages rather than mere fabrication. Exploring Glastonbury Abbey as a form of public memory, we trouble this claim of authenticity by investigating the temporal dislocations,
the "imbricated succession" (Austin 2011: 129), that interleaves the past with the present in physical relics that survive in England as ruin, restoration, and re-creation. For tourists
(including scholars of medieval studies) who flock to England's medieval heritage sites, the cultural nostalgia produced by medieval tourism becomes a form of telepathy, a means of
touching the dead.

Le roi Arthur : un mythe contemporain
(cinéma, séries télévisées, bandes dessinées)
UE libre pour le Bureau des enseignements transversaux de l’université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle


Descriptif :
Cinéma, séries télévisées, univers ludiques, romans, bandes dessinées, le Moyen Âge rêvé semble aujourd’hui être présent sur de vastes portions des horizons culturels, sociaux et politiques. Ce phénomène, appelé médiévalisme, que l’on retrouve aussi bien dans la littérature généralistes, l’architecture, que dans la fantasy (Le Seigneur des Anneaux, Game of Thrones), ou la science-fiction (Star Wars, Star Trek) a aussi une histoire. Il touche d’abord l’Occident à partir de la fin du XVIIIe siècle pour se répandre, deux cents ans plus tard, sur l’ensemble du globe. La mythologie arthurienne, qui, au Moyen âge, était confinée à une petite élite dans les frontières de l’Europe occidentale, suscite ainsi aujourd’hui une adhésion massive et des versions réactualisées en Amérique et au Japon. Un tel phénomène n’a rien d’anodin et mérite que l’on s’y attarde.

Assesses the reasons for the relative disregard for the study of the continuity of religious thought and faith by scholarship in Medievalism Studies over the last 25 years. Postulates that medievalism scholars have an ethical obligation to investigate and historicize religion and theology, at least in its temporal manifestations. An extended version was published in: "Medievalism and the Subject of Religion." Studies in Medievalism 24 (2015): 11-19.

Quoique le Moyen Âge joue un rôle plutôt discret dans la série Doctor Who, il n’en est pas pour autant absent, et ces quelques apparitions ne sont pas dénuées d’intérêt.
Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons à la représentation de
la période médiévale The Time Warrior (1973-74), The King’s Demons (1983) et Battlefield (1989), après avoir mis en avant le thème majeur qui les regroupe : la violence. Enfin, le serial le plus récent de notre corpus offre la possibilité d'observer la rencontre entre la mythologie arthurienne et celle de la série.

The nine-hundredth anniversary of the First Crusade (1095-99) saw hundreds of evangelical Western Christians trace the route of the medieval expedition apologising to local communities for the violence of the crusades. The Reconciliation Walk embodied an active and direct engagement with the crusading past and an attempt to defuse its perceived toxic legacies. The criticisms of the walk by crusade historian Jonathan Riley-Smith went beyond factual disagreement and illustrate tensions at the interface of popular and academic perceptions of the past. This article revisits Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s analysis of the rhetorical structure of an historical apology and his application to the Reconciliation Walk to reveal the ways in which both the organisers of the walk and their critics constructed continuities and discontinuities between communities over time. Rather than agreeing with Trouillot that the walk constituted an “abortive ritual”, I suggest that the performance and reception of the apology demonstrate the affective power of perceptions of the past, and reinforce the need for historians to take these – often factually inaccurate – collective memories seriously in considering the presentist significance of the past.