The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism

Description

Medievalism - the creative interpretation or recreation of the European Middle Ages - has had a major presence in the cultural memory of the modern West, and has grown in scale to become a global phenomenon. Countless examples across aesthetic, material and political domains reveal that the medieval period has long provided a fund of images and ideas that have been vital to defining 'the modern'. Bringing together local, national and global examples and tracing medievalism's unpredictable course from early modern poetry to contemporary digital culture, this authoritative Companion offers a panoramic view of the historical, aesthetic, ideological and conceptual dimensions of this phenomenon. It showcases a range of critical positions and approaches to discussing medievalism, from more 'traditional' historicist and close-reading practices through to theoretically engaged methods. It also acquaints readers with key terms and provides them with a sophisticated conceptual vocabulary for discussing the medieval afterlife in the modern.

Louise D'Arcens is Associate Professor in the English Literatures Program at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she teaches medieval and medievalist literature. Her PhD and BA (Hons) are from the University of Sydney. She holds a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for the project 'Comic Medievalism and the Modern World', has been a recipient of grants from the Australian Academy of Humanities and the ARC, and is an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, 100-1800. Her publications include the books Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages (2014) and Old Songs in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature, 1840-1910 (2011), as well as the edited volumes The International Medievalism and Popular Culture (Andrew Lynch, 2014), The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting (Anne Collett, 2010), and Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars (Juanita Ruys, 2004). She has also published numerous book chapters on medievalism as well as articles in journals such as Representations, the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Screening the Past, Parergon, and Postmedieval.

'[This book] offers 14 substantial essays that succeed both in introducing topics of medievalism to new scholars and in providing new insights that will benefit those already familiar with the re-presentation and re-imagination of the medieval period ... Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.' A. L. Kaufman, Choice 'A valuable addition to the Cambridge Companions series. Its paperback price puts it within the reach of most students, and its range and the quality ... makes it a desirable addition to the shelves of any medievalist scholar. It is to be hoped that it will inspire fuller explorations of the countless intriguing medievalist works it surveys.' David Clark, The Medieval Review