Medievalism and Reception - by Ellie Crookes & Ika Willis (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The relationship between medievalism and reception explored via a rich variety of case studies.

At the intersection of the twin fields of medievalism and reception studies is the timely and fascinating question of how a contested past is deployed in the context of a conflicted and contradictory present. Despite their shared roots and a fundamental orientation towards the entanglement of past and present, the term "reception" is rarely taken up in medievalist scholarship, and they have developed along parallel but divergent lines, evolving their own emphases, problematics, sensibilities, vocabularies, and critical tools.

This book is the first to reunite these two fields. Its introduction and first chapter clearly set out their tangled intellectual and disciplinary histories. The ten essays that follow reflect upon the relationship between medievalism and reception in theory and in practice, through thematically, temporally, and geographically expansive case studies, engaging with theories of translation, postcolonialism, fan studies, persona studies, and Indigenous studies. Individual topics examined include the cultural impact of Robin Hood; the Tulsa race massacre; the crusades in the nineteenth century; later representations of Chaucer's works; Victorian representations of Anne Boleyn; and media such as Star Wars and Game of Thrones. As a whole, this collection models and demonstrates the value of a new and self-aware approach to medievalism, enriched by a conscious and critical redeployment of reception theories and methodologies.

Review Quotes

Cinq reproductions en noir et blanc, minutieusement étudiées par les autrices, complètent l'étude. L'ouvrage est enfin conclu par un index de près de 14 pages, très riche et comme toujours très utile."
(Five black-and-white reproductions, carefully analysed by the authors, complement the study. The volume concludes with a nearly 14-page index, which is both rich and, as always, highly useful.)-- "MODERNITÉS MÉDIÉVALES"