Medievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of the middle ages or devotion to elements of that period, which has been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture (e.g. comic books, fantasy novels, computer games).^[1] Since the eighteenth century a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including the gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite movement and neo-medievalism (a term often used interchangeably with medievalism). Medievalism can also be used as an insult, implying conservatism and outdated attitudes.

[edit] Origins

Two of the most important intellectual movements in Western history, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, were in general terms, reactions against medieval models of thinking and creativity, tending to emphasise instead classical models and (later) modernity.^[2] However, the Renaissance retained many models of thinking that can also be seen as medieval.^[3] Similarly, the Enlightenment was at its height in the eighteenth century when there was an increasing intellectual interest in and awareness of the medieval period.^[4] Knowledge was not sufficient to create a movement in itself and the rise of medievalism as a distinct school has been associated with reaction to the major socio-economic and political upheavals of the late eighteenth century, particularly the Industrial and French Revolutions.^[5] As a result, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries neo-classicism and medievalism developed as models for thought and creativity side by side. They were not entirely separate or exclusive, with several architects developing buildings in both styles and the apparent contradiction evident in Romanticism, which used both as a source for creativity.^[6]

[edit] Romanticism

Blake's The Lovers' Whirlwind illustrates Hell in Canto V of Dante's Inferno

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the eighteenth century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution.^[7] It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature. The movement stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. It elevated folk art and custom to something noble, and argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar and distant in modes more authentic than chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape. The Romantic interest in the medieval can particularly be seen in the illustrations of English poet William Blake, the Ossian cycle published by Scottish poet James Macpherson's in 1762, which inspired both Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1773), and the young Walter Scott. The latter's Waverley novels, including Ivanhoe (1819) and Quentin Durward (1823) helped popularise, and shape views of, the medieval era.^[8]

[edit] Gothic revival

[edit] Gothic revival architecture

Notable Neo-Gothic edifices: top - Palace of Westminster, London; left - Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh; right - Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, Ostend.

The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms in contrast to the classical styles prevalent at the time. In England, the epicentre of this revival, it was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convert Augustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism. In parallel to the ascendancy of neo-Gothic styles in nineteenth-century England, interest spread rapidly to the continent of Europe, in Australia and to the Americas; indeed perhaps the number of Gothic Revival and Carpenter Gothic structures built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries exceeds the number of authentic Gothic structures that had been built previously.

[edit] Gothic fiction

The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by medievalism, which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities. It also took on political connotations, as well; with the "rational" and "radical" Neoclassical style being seen as associated with republicanism and liberalism (as evidenced by its use in the United States), the more "spiritual" and "traditional" Gothic Revival became associated with monarchism and conservatism. In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to the Gothic novel genre, beginning with Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, and inspired a nineteenth-century genre of medieval poetry like Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, which recast specifically modern themes in medieval settings of Arthurian romance.^[9]

[edit] The Pre-Raphaelites

"God Speed!" by Edmund Blair Leighton: 19th century Medievalism

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form a seven member "brotherhood". The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art. Hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, they objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, believing that his broad technique was a sloppy and formulaic form of academic Mannerism. In contrast, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.^[10]

[edit] Neo-medievalism

Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism) is a neologism that was first popularized by Italian medievalist Umberto Eco in his 1973 essay "Dreaming in the Middle Ages".^[11] The term has no clear definition but has since been used to describe the intersection between popular fantasy and medieval history as can be seen in computer games such as MMORPGs, films and television, neo-medieval music, and popular literature.^[12] It is in this area—the study of the intersection between contemporary representation and past inspiration(s) -- that medievalism and neomedievalism tend to be used interchangeably.^[13] Neomedievalism has also been used as a term describing the post-modern study of medieval history;^[14] and as political theory about modern international relations, first discussed in 1977 by theorist Hedley Bull, who argued that society was moving towards a form of "neomedievalism" in which individual notions of rights and a growing sense of a "world common good" were undermining national sovereignty.^[15]

[edit] Notes