Medieval Revival Research Articles

The early medieval origins of copper ore extraction in the Carpathian Mountains

The case study addresses the question of the early medieval revival of copper production in Europe. The focus of the research area is the Carpathian Basin, located on the eastern periphery of the zone influenced by European early medieval processes. The research of where and when early medieval metal production started in the region in our case also provides answers to the question of how the region was linked to the European continental economic network, which is until recently an unresolved problem. Ore extraction and the production of various non-ferrous metals (copper, silver, gold) had important centres in the Carpathian Mountains throughout the Middle Ages until the Modern Era. Concerning the Avar period, our study comprises lead isotope and chemical analyses of ‘Late Avar’ (c. 8th century AD) copper rivets, used for certain purposes alongside the copper alloys predominant in the period. As rivets were selected from the entire Avar cultural area, expanding virtually to all lowland and hilly areas in the Carpathian Basin, results are representative of the entire region. It shows that Avar craftsmen producing large quantities of copper alloy objects in the 8th and the early 9th century were supplied with copper from a single mining district, from the ore deposits of the Slovak Ore Mountains in the today Central Slovakia, a region which became an important metal-processing centre in the 11th century AD.

Heroic Narratives and Chopin's Polonaise in Ab Major, Op. 53

Fryderyk Chopin's Polonaise in Ab Major, op. 53, is widely known as the “Heroic.” It's tempting to dismiss this seemingly generic title, which was not Chopin's. But what can notions of a “heroic polonaise,” taken from nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century contexts, do for our current understanding of the piece? The appellation evokes a constellation of distinct cultural contexts, such as nostalgia, nationalism, Polish messianism, the medieval revival in the arts, and ideas of the artist as a prophetic hero. Not only do these contexts come together and interact in the then pervasive cultural narrative of Poland's fall and eventual rebirth, but they also color the mythicized reception accorded to Chopin and his music. Taken collectively, these contexts help to shape the amorphous concept of heroicness. So, I deploy topic theory and narratology in a close reading of the piece in order to reconcile these contexts with this polonaise's putative heroic qualities. As a topic, the polonaise takes the form of several types throughout the piece, each with its own affective connotations and temporal associations, and this fluidity of topical references muddles a straightforward apprehension of the piece's heroicness. Combining the topical dimension with an examination of the tonal and formal logic of the piece, I demonstrate how the piece might be re-interpreted in light of the previously mentioned narrative of Poland's fall and resurrection. Moreover, the piece's specificities interact with certain theoretical issues related to musical meaning, such as music's capacity to denote temporalities distinct from its unfolding. That said, my turn to the historical contexts for the piece's heroicness is meant to open up rather than to pin down musical meaning. A comparison between my interpretation and a nineteenth-century one by a Polish musician illustrates how the same interpretative framework yields diverse readings, while a survey of a few works of art that draw on op. 53, each with their own framing contexts, shows how op. 53's heroicness has been understood anew across time and cultures.

The United States of Medievalism

The United States of Medievalism

Socio-Religious Visionaries in Bulgaria (1920–1950s): the Christo Oustabachieff Case

The article is a case study of the life, work and ideas of the Bulgarian political and religious figure Christo Oustabachieff (1871–1953). Beginning his career as a financial official, political activist and founder of one of the first xenophobic organizations, after the First World War he devoted himself entirely to religious activities: he founded the “Good Samaritan” Religious Society (1921), became leader and ideologist of the Orthodox Holy Society for Spiritual Renewal of the Bulgarian people (1924), of the "Greater (Peaceful) Bulgaria" Union (Political Party) (1926–1944), of the "St. John of Rila” National Defense Organization (1933) and of the Slavic-Bulgarian People's Christian Union (1945–1953). His ideas have a religious and political character and represent a prototype of the Christian Democratic tradition in Bulgaria. In the context of the post-WW1 crisis and the widespread of the New Religious Movements, he declared himself a spiritual leader and initially guided his numerous followers with oral prophecies, revelations and dreams. Developed in the 1930s in written messages, they acquired an eclectic character, uniting religious fundamentalism, messianism and prophetism. Oustabachieff 's political visions in the 1930s–1940s were strongly influenced by authoritarianism, nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. Their core was an idea of a Slavic monarchy – based on Christian Democratic values, a future center of a Balkan federation, and a realized Medieval and Bulgaria Revival period ideal of "Great Bulgaria”. The study uses historical approach and is based on unknown archival sources, combined with data from periodicals and published works of Oustabachieff.

Medievalising Homer: William Morris’s archaising translation of The Odyssey

ABSTRACT This essay explores how William Morris’s archaising translation of Homer’s epic can be read as a critique of modernity. In The Odyssey (1887) the translator’s use of archaic forms is intended to create a medieval world and offer a vision of pre-modern values and qualities as a counter-point to nineteenth century equivalents. As part of a widespread movement of medieval revival in the Victorian age, Morris transforms the ancient Greek epic into a medieval romance through the use of archaic diction, romance-associated words and long rhyming couplets, and the thematic overlap: an idealised medieval world is contrasted with a modern society that is perceived as undermined by capitalism and commercialism.

‘[A] single, true, certain authenticity’: The authenticity wars in English twentieth-century folk and medieval music revivals

At intervals throughout the twentieth century, serious disputes about authentic musical values arose amongst performers, collectors, scholars, directors, reviewers, and audiences in the folk and medieval music spheres. Analysis of these controversies offers insights into the deep emotions, fantasies, and desires in arguments around authenticity in medievalism. This essay considers two examples of English musical revivalism, one exemplified by the folk song collector Cecil Sharp, the other by Christopher Page, the medieval literature and music scholar and director of music group Gothic Voices. In the writings of both men, emotional concerns about the purity of English musical traditions reveal the role music is given in the maintenance of English nationalism, and more generally in defending notions of identity and social order against feared sources of contamination.

The medieval revival and historical topographic representations in The Byzantine monuments of Serbia

The work of Felix Kanitz titled Serbiens byzantinische Monumente. Gezeichnet und beschrieben von F. Kanitz [The Byzantine Monuments of Serbia. Drawn and Described by F. Kanitz] published in German and Serbian in 1862 has never been subjected to more detailed analysis from the perspective of art history. The need for the contextualization of illustrated books and their relation to the European culture of historicism, to nature and landscape, as well as their relationship with various artistic phenomena of the mid-nineteenth century, demands the placement of Kanitz?s book into the wider cultural framework of the epoch.

How the Bad Guys Won

How the Bad Guys Won Peter Heinegg Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church. By John W. O'Malley, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 307 pp. $24.95 Needless to say, the urbane, scholarly, serenely judicious Father O'Malley (now 91, a professor emeritus at Georgetown University, and perhaps best known for his Trent: What Happened at the Council, 2013) would never use the crude colloquialism “bad guys.” But his precise, immaculate account of the events leading up to the official definition of papal infallibility by Pius IX (1792‐1878) in the “Dogmatic Constitution” Pastor Aeternus (1870) shows that this was more than a dreadful theological‐philosophical mistake. It was the signal triumph of a period of deeply conservative Vatican ideology and control that would continue until at least the Second Vatican Council (1962‐1965) and is still far from over. The now canonized reactionary Pius X (1835‐1914) waged war, most notably in his blasts (e.g., in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907) against the secular hydra‐heresy he called “modernism”: any attempt to make any changes in church tradition (doctrine, liturgy, biblical interpretation), the kind of concessions to the Enlightenment that Pio Nono assailed in his ferocious‐ludicrous catalog Syllabus of Errors (1864). Vatican II reversed or qualified some features of this anti‐intellectual piety, but strains of it could still be found in the reigns (that telling term!) of Paul VI (1963‐1978), who famously condemned “artificial” contraception in 1968, and John Paul II (1978‐2005) and Benedict XVI (2005‐2013), who made life miserable for proponents of liberation theology and other innovative thinkers. For liberals like O'Malley, the more than a century and a half from Pius IX up until Pope Francis must seem like a long series of missed opportunities for real reforms in the overclericalized, overcentralized, and overdogmatized Roman Catholic Church. To be fair, there have been some promising moments, as in 1943 when Pius XII, silent about the Nazis, put in a good word, in Divino Afflante Spiritu, for “Wissenschaft”: the mostly Protestant‐devised contemporary methods of scriptural explication. On the other hand, the horrific revelations of priestly pedophilia—acts typically concealed under the aegis of unchallenged church authority—have made it increasingly hard to have an optimistic view of the twenty‐first‐century R.C.C. O'Malley knows all this, but barely adverts to it, sticking to his position of fair‐minded ecclesiastical historian. He begins by noting the irony that the major impulse for defining papal primacy and infallibility came, not from prelates, but from conservative Catholic laymen like the powerful, zealous journalist Louis Veuillot (1819‐1883), who saw it as a way to block the spread of post‐French‐Revolutionary culture. And before Veuillot and Co., there had been the influence of the far more gifted Joseph de Maistre (1753‐1821), whose On the Pope (1819) is still considered a classic of nineteenth‐century French literature. The Church in Pius’ day was beleaguered by anticlerical regimes in France, Italy, and Germany, but the same time it witnessed a Romantic resurgence in Catholic sentiment, as seen in all sorts of medieval revivals, personal conversions, and crucially, from O'Malley's perspective, edifying books like Chateaubriand's The Genius of Christianity, or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion (1802), a kind of grand aesthetic apotheosis, glorifying the Catholic faith and its artistic splendors. The book was hailed as a masterpiece, though nowadays it's often disdained by critics as showy and superficial. In any case, Catholics were building churches, going on pilgrimages, and praying in public with old‐fashioned fervor. Skeptics and unbelievers may have been ruling academia and making the headlines, and they are certainly better remembered today than the religious apologists they attacked; but southern Europe was still a very Catholic continent, as seen in the visions of Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes (1858) and the cult of the Immaculate Conception, which was formally endorsed by Pius IX in the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus (1854). This was the first time an individual pope had ever defined an article of faith (repeated in 1950, when another passionate Mariolater, Pius XII, declared that Mary “was...

In Search of Lost Feeling: The Emotional History of Medievalism

The aim of this article is to chart sets of emotions and affects within medievalism over a longue durée. By “medievalism” I mean here chiefly artistic, cultural, and political reactions to the idea of the Middle Ages; reducing this even further, one could argue that “medievalism” is feeling about the Middle Ages at any given epoch. I select three exemplary moments, going first to the post-Reformation moment in which the medieval Catholic past was decisively rejected and in which, as a consequence, the very notion of the Middle Ages was invented and shaped. The primary emotional disposition here is that of fear and terror. Secondly, I look at the so-called medieval revival of the later eighteenth century when, whatever apprehensions remained about the Catholic medieval past, in the intellectual-antiquarian milieu of such figures as Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton, there is a form of “negative pleasure” (in Kant’s terminology) in the contemplation of the Middle Ages. Finally, in the period 1815–1850, I look not at the numerous instances from high- and middle-brow culture of conservative, celebratory medievalism in this period, but instead at the understudied archive of political uses of medievalism. I examine more subaltern reactions to the Middle Ages from ephemeral forms (specifically, newspapers and popular entertainment), which reveal a somewhat more fluid and variable set of feelings about the Middle Ages than an understanding of Walter Scott and his many legacies tends to offer.

"Me pare nu film" [It Looks Like a Movie]. High and Low Tragedy

A comparison between the medieval revival of tragedy and some contemporary experiences,, before and after the chronological area in which it becomes a normative literary genre, tries to detect some characteristic features, taking as reference bands the theory of Rene Girard and Walter Benjamin's essay on destiny and character.

Charles Macready’s King John: Victorian Theatre and Double-voiced Medievalism

During the nineteenth century, there was a revival of interest in the Middle Ages, which was considered the birth of English culture and identity in opposition to Classical Antiquity. This movement was called the Medieval Revival. It was expressed in several areas of knowledge and artistic manifestations, including in the theatre. Charles Macready’s reconstruction of Shakespeare’s King John in 1842 at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London is inserted in this context. Macready’s production brings together two perspectives of the Middle Ages on stage: the more negative Renaissance view along with the Victorian idealised outlook, cha0racterising a phenomenon I call double-voiced medievalism, based on Richard Schoch’s concept of double-voiced historicism.

Imagining Rāhula in Medieval Japan

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Among the many koshiki associated with the Kamakura-period revival of the old Nara schools is the koshiki ..., a liturgy that pays homage to Sakyamuni's son, Rahula (Jp. ?? or Ragora ? ??). Although clerics belonging to the Nara schools created and performed many different koshiki during this time, attention to the koshiki in particular sheds light on the monastic goals and values shared by these groups, especially those committed to the revival of the vinaya and the return to Indian practices such as devotion to Sakyamuni and his disciples. This article will describe and analyze the koshiki, addressing not only its use and content, but also its place in the religious life of medieval Japan. Ultimately I will argue that the text's author, Yuishin ?? (dates unclear), presented Rahula both as a model for young novices and as a savior figure capable of saving sentient beings.Rahula Veneration in Medieval NaraThe koshiki, which venerates the Buddha's son, is one of only several koshiki that honor disciples of the Buddha. The others that fall into this category include the Juroku rakan koshiki ?????? (Koshiki on the sixteen arhats) and the Anan koshiki ???? (Koshiki on Ananda). As the other articles in this issue demonstrate, there were many categories of koshiki created in medieval Japan. More visible categories of koshiki include those that celebrate Sakyamuni himself, including his birth, teachings, final nirvana, relics, and so on; those that honor particular Buddhas, bodhisattvas, heavenly beings, and kami (there are scores that fall into this category); those that praise eminent monks; those that mark particular ritual occasions or goals of Buddhist practice; and those that commemorate particular texts (such as the Lotus Sutra, the Heart Sutra, the Ullambana Sutra, the Brahma Net Sutra, the Abhidharma Kosa Sastra, and so on).In some ways the koshiki may appear an unusual or marginal text for, as Sekiguchi (1998) points out, there is little evidence that widespread cults to the Buddha's son, Rahula, ever existed in Japan. Veneration of the arhats as a group did become popular in Japan, especially within Zen lineages. In the Kamakura period, devotion to the sixteen arhats became popular, especially among Zen groups, and in the Edo period, we see the spread of cults to the five hundred arhats as well (Mross 2007, 20). Although Rahula was commonly depicted in devotional images of the arhats, it was extremely rare for such images to feature Rahula as a stand-alone figure. Within the context of the medieval revival of the old Nara schools, however, rites honoring Rahula appear to have reached a certain level of popularity. Today two known copies of the koshiki are extant: one belonging to the archives of Toshodaiji ????, with a postscript stating that it was copied during the fifth month of 1312, and another held in the archives of Todaiji's ??? library. According to its postscript, this second version was copied in the year 1315. There are also a handful of related texts found in Ritsu-school circles: notable here are the kuyo no gi ????? (Ceremony for making offerings to Rahula), copied at Saidaiji ??? in 1290, and the ko no hossoku ????? (Procedures for the koshiki on Rahula), held at Shomyoji ??? and dating to the Kamakura period. These texts also make mention of separate, relevant works, such as a hyobyaku ?? (a chanted text stating the intent of a given liturgy) in honor of the ko kuyo and a kada (Sk. gatha) called Raun (Sekiguchi 1998, 4-5). Taken together, the survival of these various texts suggest that priests active in Nara circles-at places like Toshodaiji, Todaiji, Saidaiji, and Saidaiji's Kanto temple Shomyoji-actively promoted the veneration of Rahula using koshiki and related kuyo during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.Indeed, references to these rites appear in a number of historical records as well. …

Materializing and Performing Prajna: Jōkei's Manjusri Faith and the Kasagidera Restoration

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)In studies of medieval Japanese Buddhism that privilege the new Kamakura schools, scholar-monks belonging to the Nara, Shingon, and Tendai schools are typically cast in a negative light. Despite his renown in the medieval period, the Hosso monk Jokei ... (1155-1213) is no exception. In fact, Jokei has often served as the poster child for the elitist and oppressive tendencies of scholar-monks from the established schools due to his putative role in suppressing Honen's ... (1133-1212) new Pure Land movement. Recent studies, however, have challenged standard theories on Jokei's relationship to the early Kamakura period suppression of Honen and his followers from a variety of angles.1 But most significant here among new developments in Jokei studies are those spurred by the landmark publication in Jokei koshiki shu (Taisho Daigaku 2000) of thirteen koshiki he authored and the increased attention to the performative and popularizing dimensions of his diverse cultic activities.2 As I will suggest, koshiki texts also represent a chief means by which Jokei and other Nara scholar-monks packaged their cultic concerns for broader, trans-sectarian audiences.The activities of leading medieval Nara monks have typically been characterized as reactionary responses by elites to popularizing tendencies championed in the new Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren schools rather than as creative adaptations of Buddhist teachings and practices in their own right. Even amid revisionist studies of Japanese religion, the textual and doctrinal concerns of Jokei and other scholar-monks are often contrasted with the lived religion expressed in such activities as icon veneration, simplified chanting rituals, and pilgrimage practices. This article, however, uses Jokei's involvement in the restoration of Kasagidera ... and in the Manjusri cult-including a koshiki dedicated to Manjusri that Jokei composed-as a case study of how one leading Nara scholarmonk integrated these same on-the-ground practices with his doctrinal and other textual activities.Jokei's Monju and other koshiki texts were not composed in a vacuum. For many of his koshiki, we have colophons or other testimony by Jokei that iden- tify the context of their composition. Some were composed upon request and thus tailored to the needs of the practitioners soliciting Jokei's textual and ritual expertise. Others were initiated by Jokei himself and reflect such well-known aspects of his cultic activities as his devotion to the buddha Sakyamuni, the bodhisattva Kannon (Sk. Avalokitesvara), and the future buddha, Maitreya.3 For other koshiki, however, including his Monju koshiki ... (Manjusri Koshiki), we lack such firsthand testimony to the date, place, or other circumstances of their composition and need to reconstruct their contexts based on both the internal evidence of the texts and their fit with other examples of his cultic activities.The connections of the Maitreya cult with Kasagidera, and accordingly with Jokei's activities after his move to this mountain temple about twelve miles northeast of Nara, are well known due to a massive cliffside image of Maitreya that had attracted devotees for centuries by the time of the restoration.4 However, the interlinked significance of the Maitreya and Manjusri cults during Jokei's Kasagi years (1193-1208), the most productive period of his career, has been little explored, even though that significance is attested in diverse material constructions, textual genres, and ritual performances. Particularly important for this study is recognizing that Jokei's Monju koshiki shows close thematic connections with his other activities at Kasagidera, including his composition of the Shin'yosho ... (Essentials of the mind), one of his best-known doctrinal treatises. And particularly important for understanding Jokei's place in the medieval revival of Nara Buddhism more broadly is recognizing that in the early Kamakura period (1185-1333), Nara scholar-monks took the lead in the production of koshiki, and Jokei was the most prolific author across time periods. …

Medievalism: A Critical History by David Matthews (review)

Reviewed by: Medievalism: A Critical History by David Matthews John Martyn Matthews, David, Medievalism: A Critical History (Medievalism, 6), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2015; hardback; pp. 229; 13 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £50.00; ISBN 9781843843924. In his recent book on medievalism, David Matthews traces the history of medievalism from its first appearance in the sixteenth century down to modern times. He provides examples from literature, art, film, music, and from trends in architecture, identifying the grotesque and the romantic, and explaining the rise of medievalism both in England and in Germany. Matthews considers medievalism to be an influential field, but still in a minority form, especially beside medieval studies, with its rich tradition of scholarship. He shows great diversity in his choice of sources, ranging over nearly a hundred years of literature, architecture, and medievalist films. Matthews divides his book, rather repetitively, into seven sections: ‘Taxonomies, how many Middle Ages?’; ‘Time, space, self, society: Welcome to the current Middle Ages – asynchronous medievalism’; ‘This way to the Middle Ages: the spaces of medievalism’; ‘On being medieval: medievalist selves and societies’; ‘History and discipline: Wemmick’s castle; the limits of medievalism’; ‘Realism in the crypt: the reach of medievalism’; and ‘Conclusion; Against a synthesis: medievalism, cultural studies, and antidisciplinarity’. In his Afterword, Matthews describes a stage performance, at London’s Southbank Centre, of Lavinia Greenlaws’s ‘A Double Sorrow’, her version of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, ending his text with ‘As Troilus’s laughter echoed, there was some future in all of this, some future for the Middle Ages’. Appendix I is based on sixty-seven responses to a Middle Ages survey, giving the ages, countries, employment, education, and periods chosen, [End Page 392] while Appendix II gives a very useful list of data and dates relating to religion, literature, and art, from 1534 to 1906. A bibliography follows and an index of names. There are a few illustrations, including a barely relevant picture of the interior of Sydney’s Opera House, and six on Charles Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop – depicting Quilp and Nell and the grim sexton in the crypt – which are all very medieval. Matthews notes Studies in Medievalism, started in 1970 by Leslie Workman, which has attracted eminent contributors and he sees the acceptance of medievalism at Kalamazoo in the 1970s and in Leeds in 1994 as a possible breakthrough for the field. But the lack of scholarship in the journal, with only modern authors, provides an obstacle to his contention, and he fails to stress the irony in the ten different Middle Ages described by Umberto Eco. The brilliant Scot, George Buchanan, is not mentioned, although author of the first history of Scotland and tutor to Mary Queen of Scots. Nor does Matthews mention the Inquisition, all too active in its operations, with its brutal variety of tortures to break the spirits, or bodies, of the most brilliant of men and women, which serves as a grim symbol of horror in the Middle Ages. Even so, Matthew’s studies of works by Walter Scott, Dante, Rosetti, John Ruskin, Jane Austen, Chaucer, Tennyson, Hilaire Belloc, Charlotte Bronte, Dan Brown, Norman Cantor, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, and many other authors from England, and Germany, attest to his very wide reading of primarily English literature, for which anyone reading his book should be grateful. As a major new work on medievalism, it deserves to be studied by students or scholars interested in this latest period of a medieval revival. John Martyn The University of Melbourne Copyright © 2015 John Martyn

Concours des vitraux de Jeanne d’Arc: The Multiple Ways of Materializing the Past in Late Nineteenth-Century French Stained Glass

In 1893 the competition to design ten stained glass windows for the Cathedral Sainte-Croix, Orleans, depicting the life of Joan of Arc, concluded with a traveling exhibition held in Paris and Orleans. This little-known event might have been entirely forgotten had it not been for the debate that raged after the announcement of the winner. The jury’s award to L. Jacques Galland and Esprit Gibelin contrasted with the critical reception that favored the designs of Swiss artist Eugene Grasset. The discussions surrounding the competition reveal disagreement over how best to materialize the past in French stained glass, what techniques should be deployed to produce architecturally consistent windows, and the response to technological advances that were widely used by commercial firms producing windows for middle-class audiences. The article demonstrates how technique, technology, and the question of “how it was made” were key factors in shaping critical judgment of medieval revival in one of France’s illustrious...

Medieval Roles for Modern Times: Theater and the Battle for the French Republic (review)

Reviewed by: Medieval Roles for Modern Times: Theater and the Battle for the French Republic Emine Fisek (bio) Helen Solterer . Medieval Roles for Modern Times: Theater and the Battle for the French Republic. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010; 287 pp. If the title of Helen Solterer's fascinating new book, Medieval Roles for Modern Times: Theater and the Battle for the French Republic gives us a brief glimpse into the palimpsestic worlds that lie therein, it nonetheless only begins to signal the complicated relationships that the book will unpack: precisely how "modern" desires and impulses fashioned themselves through "medieval roles" in early twentieth century France as well as how the most institutionalized form of role-playing, the "theater," imagined national identity at a time when the "French Republic" was undergoing rapid changes. The result is a work whose research trajectory is dizzying and whose keen analytic moves will resonate with scholars in a range of disciplines and working within a variety of historical eras, from performance studies to French cultural studies and from medievalists to scholars of interwar political life. Medieval Roles for Modern Times traces the history of the amateur theater troupe founded in 1933 by Sorbonne professor Gustave Cohen: the Théophiliens. Dedicated to reviving a medieval theatrical repertoire, the group drew on the evocative power of the Middle Ages at a time when doing so meant negotiating contradictory impulses. As Solterer demonstrates, medieval French culture was often referenced to brand the Middle Ages with a sense of national patriotism that made little historical sense but said much about the consolidation of French identity during the years leading up to the Second World War. For the Right, the Middle Ages held out the promise of a world of hierarchy and obedience to authority, all the while re-emphasizing the [End Page 963] theatrical repertoire's Christian framework. For the Left, troupes such as the Théophiliens materialized the Popular Front's promise of theater as a public, egalitarian and in many ways modern and secular good, revolutionary rather than regressive. "What poses a challenge, then," Solterer notes, "is grasping the full political force of medieval revival across the spectrum—from Right to Left" (4). Over the course of Solterer's book, this involves placing the Théophiliens' "full life cycle of medieval revival" (12-13) into conversation not only with interwar cultural policy and political conflict but also with the collaborationist French state, the Holocaust and the early years of the Fourth Republic. Importantly however, Solterer's understanding of theater neither renders the practice into an aesthetic mirror of political change nor focuses exclusively on the content of the Théophiliens' literary remains. Instead, there is relentless emphasis on the three-dimensionality and generative potential of theater. Solterer asks how we might consider the corporal dimensions of medieval enactment at a time when theater practitioners from Europe to Russia conducted experiments in acting and embodiment. Following a prologue that canvasses the political paradoxes of the Théophilien revival, the first chapter traces the twin trajectories of Belgian Gustave Cohen and Russian director Nikolai Evreinov, artists who occupied the two parallel yet distinct ends of an early twentieth century interest in miracle and mystery plays (and who would both eventually find themselves stationed in Paris). For Cohen, as for many others, medieval drama helped make sense of the massive human sacrifice that the Great War demanded of the French public. Additionally, it allowed the foreign-born and Jewish Cohen to render "his work on medieval Christian drama a matter of civic service and commit it to the ongoing campaign of laicizing the French Third Republic" (33). For Evreinov, medieval religious drama and in particular the French repertoire served as the groundwork for an artist "in search of primordial techniques of role-playing" (34) while sacrificial role-play and the mise-en-scène of impassioned crowds bore a more-than-passing resemblance to public life in St. Petersburg in 1905. The second chapter traces Cohen's initial ventures with the Théophiliens, an adaptation of thirteenth-century Parisian poet Rutebeuf's Miracle of Théophile (which stages the encounter between the clerk Théophile and the...

All Dressed Up: Revivalism and the Fashion for Arthur in Victorian Culture

This essay discusses the representation and cultural meanings of dress in relation to the Victorian medieval revival and popular fascination with the Arthurian legends. It considers the notion of 'bodying forth' the past by focusing on chivalric fashion and the symbolism of clothing in selected Pre-Raphaelite texts.

Genealogie der Säkularisierungstheorie

As a master narrative of modernity, secularization was a product of the European Culture Wars. It was invented in the 1840s by male progressive elites who witnessed conflicts over the place and meaning of religion. Instead of acknowledging the new religiosity of this period as a product of modernity, they described it as a medieval revival. At the same time, they began to narrate and to visualize the rise of modernity as a process of secularization: as a differentiation of religion from other 'spheres', a privatization of religion, or a disenchantment of the world. While secularization failed in practice, it succeeded on a theoretical level by influencingWestern conceptions of modernity.

Politics of culture in liberal Italy: from unification to fascism

Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy discusses the controversial process of modernization and nation-building between Unification and Fascism. Analysing cultural policy on the level, the book includes chapters on theatre and opera, the medieval revival, the rediscovery of the Etruscan past and on the Italians’ changing relationship to the nation state and the monarchy. Challenging the stereotypical idea of a nation obsessed with its home-grown culture, Italy’s political, social and cultural transformation during the nineteenth century was closely linked to the European experience of modernity, reflected in philosophical and political debates and in Italy’s cosmopolitan approach to music and the arts. The book takes the former Papal Legations and their capital Bologna as a case study - a large region in the north of the peninsula, which played a crucial role during the political and diplomatic process of Unification. Conflicts between ancient elites and the rising middle class, between the Moderate and the Democratic traditions of the Risorgimento, and between Catholicism and anti-clericalism demonstrate how throughout the second half of the nineteenth century Italians negotiated national, regional and identities. After a short experience of municipal socialism during World War One, Bologna was the first city in which the Fascist squads replaced a democratic administration. Comparing Bologna to examples of other Italian cities and the nation as a whole, the book offers a new explanation of Italy’s road to Fascism and a fresh approach to studying the relationship between culture, politics and societal change during the European Fin-de-siecle.

<i>Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England Stephanie Barczewski Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England. By Michael Alexander. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. xxviii + 306; 106 illustrations. $45. Michael Alexander begins his new study of the impact of medievalism on English culture from the late eighteenth to the twentieth centuries with the claim that he is tracing "the evolution of a neglected movement in English cultural history" (p. xviii). This assertion may be slightly exaggerated, given the number of previously published studies of English medievalism, but there is certainly room for another survey as insightful as Alexander's. Most previous scholarship on the medieval revival has focused on a specific aspect or author; Alexander's work proves the value of breadth. His only real competitor is Mark Girouard's Return to Camelot, now over a quarter-century old. Alexander proceeds for the most part chronologically, beginning with the "Gothic Decade" of the 1760s and concluding with recent expressions of medievalism in the late twentieth century. His focus is on individual, representative works; he makes no attempt to provide a comprehensive listing of every product of the medievalist impulse. This allows him the scope to do what he does best, which is to discuss in depth and detail the evolution and meaning of various literary, artistic, and architectural works. In age of ever-increasing academic specialization, Alexander's range of knowledge and interpretive ability is impressive indeed. His analyses are sophisticated but delightfully free of jargon; his writing style is characterized by a finely honed sense of academic detachment that occasionally engenders humorous phrases such as "Rossetti was fond of wombats" (p. 142). Much of this is well-trodden turf: the medievalist aspects of the works of Alfred Tennyson, William Morris, and John Ruskin have been thoroughly discussed and dissected by numerous previous scholars. The originality of Alexander's study emanates from his command of the canon-medievalist and non-medievalist-and ability to derive fresh insights from his analysis of it. For example, the medievalist artist Edward Burne-Jones is revealed by comparisons to the non-medievalist James MacNeill Whistler. He also points out connections between medievalist literary works and others not often associated with the medieval revival, such as Disraeli's Sybil. The depth of his knowledge, particularly about literary history, is extremely impressive, and allows him to trace evolutionary links between various works with precision and insight. Even more illuminating are his discussions of Edwardian and twentieth-century medievalism, which cover less familiar scholarly ground. Alexander sees the "Edwardian relaunch of medievalism" as "a second Medieval Revival" (p. 212), whereas most previous scholars have seen it as a diminished continuation of its Victorian predecessor whose anachronistic, chivalric romanticism was eventually killed off by the mud and blood of the Great War. Alexander challenges the latter argument, which was most prominently advanced by Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory, by making a compelling case that pre-war medievalist authors such G. K. Chesterton were more than mere populist promoters of the kind of romantic pablum that the modernist writers later despised and disparaged. Instead, Chesterton represented an advance on the democratizing impulses of [End Page 239] Morris and the proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement. His intolerance for the pretensions of modernism was less parochial anti-intellectualism than a resolute determination to maintain a lightness of touch that would allow connection with, but not condescension to, a broader audience. In Alexander's eyes, the stark dichotomy created by Fussell and others between modernism and medievalism is a false one: Modernism and medievalism are labels for academic parcels. Labels should be scrutinized, and parcels checked, before they are passed to the young . . . Headline literary history gives the impression that shortly after the accession of King George V in 1910, Georgian poetry (hedgerows, tweed, cider, nostalgia) was overtaken by Modernist Poetry (experimental, intellectual, American) and in 1916 by War Poetry (short, moving, British). But poets do not live in boxes. (pp. 223-24) Certainly, the strand of romantic medievalism that had flourished in late Victorian England was challenged by the horrors of trench warfare, but it is far too simplistic...