International Medievalisms

Identifies and investigates international medievalism through three distinct strands: "Internationally Nationalist", "Someone Else's Past?", and "Activist Medievalism".

Identifies and investigates international medievalism through three distinct strands: "Internationally Nationalist", "Someone Else's Past?", and "Activist Medievalism".

Medievalism - the reception of the Middle Ages - often invokes a set of tropes generallyconsidered 'medieval', rather than consciously engaging with medieval cultures and societies. International medievalism offers an additional interpretative layer by juxtaposing two or morenational cultures, at least one of which ismedieval. 'National' can be aspirational: it might refer to the area within agreed borders, or to the people who live there, but it might also describe the people who understand, or imagine, themselves to constitute a nation. And once 'medieval' becomes simply a collection of ideas, it can be re-formed as desired, cast as more geographically than historically specific, or function as a gateway to an even more nebulous past.

This collection explores medievalist media from the textual to the architectural. Subjects range fromThe Green Children of Woolpit toRefugee Tales, and from Viking metal to Joan of Arc. As the contributors to each section make clear, for centuries the medieval has provided material for countless competing causes and cannot be contained within historical, political, or national borders. The essays show how the medieval is repeatedly co-opted and recreated, formed as much as formative: inviting us to ask why, and in service of what.

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

IntroductionMary Boyle

I. Internationally Nationalist
1. Making up the Middle Ages: Roman Scotland and Medievalism in the Eighteenth CenturyKristina Hildebrand
2. Emma Letherbrow'sGudrun:Kudrun for 'Modern' VictoriansMary Boyle
3. Nationalism and Colonialism: The Early German Reception ofThe Tale of Igor's CampaignFlorian Gassner
4. Inhabiting an Unpredictable Past - the Paradoxes of Russian Cultural HistoricismMichael Makin

II. Someone Else's Past?
5. The Medievalism of Gregor Jordan'sNed Kelly, Sabina Rahman
6. 'The Northland of Old': The Use and 'Misuse' of (Medieval) IcelandHannah Armstrong
7. 'Out of My Country and Myself I Go': A Discourse of the Troubadour in British and Irish LiteratureKayleigh Ferguson
8. 'The old magic of the mind': the Influence of Wales and Medieval Welsh Literature in John Cowper Powys'sMaiden Castle, Felix Taylor

III. Activist Medievalism
9. 'Green Growing Pains': the 'Green Children of Woolpit' and Child RefugeesCarolyne Larrington
10. Medievalisms of Welcome: Medieval Englishness and the Nation's Migrant Other inRefugee Tales, Matthias D. Berger
11. Nordic Giants: Using Left-Wing Post-Rock to Deepen Our Understandings of White Supremacist Interpretations of VikingsEirnin Jefford Franks
12. 'The Great Original Suffragist': Joan of Arc as a Symbol in the U.S. Women's Suffrage MovementSuzanne LaVere

Index