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 rase 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.
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction
Ika Willis & Ellie Crookes
1. Newly Receptive? Histories of the Discipline, Medievalism, and Reception Studies – David Matthews
2. The Impossibility and Promise of Chaucerian Medievalism – Candace Barrington
3. Reading the Ripples of Reception: Reviewing the Crusades in Nineteenth-Century Britain – Mike Horswell & Elizabeth Siberry
4. Global Greenwoods, Global Robins – Richard Utz
5. The Dead Ladies Club; or The Pleasures and Pitfalls of Fannish Reading – Kavita Mudan Finn
6. ‘Liege Lady’: Queen Victoria’s Political Medievalism – Clare Broome Saunders
7. Medievalism or Tudorism? Ambivalence and the Past in Nineteenth-Century Representations of Anne Boleyn – Stephanie Russo
8.
Robbie Hood and the Indigenous Reclamation of Australian Medievalism – Sabina Rahman
9. Embodied Medievalism: The Beatricified Persona of ‘Lizzie Siddal’ – Ellie Crookes
10. Reception, Conspiracy, and Legitimation: A Case Study in Medievalist
Star Wars Fan Theories – Usha Vishnuvajjala
11. Hosting Chaucer’s Pilgrims in Turkish – Nazmi Ağıl
Circa l’autore
IKA WILLIS is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Melbourne University, Australia.