Medievalism

Medievalism is the arrangement of acceptance and convenance appropriate of the Middle Ages, or adherence to elements of that period, which has been bidding in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and assorted cartage of accepted culture.1

Since the 18th century, a array of movements accept acclimated the medieval aeon as a archetypal or afflatus for artistic activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and arts and crafts movements and neo-medievalism (a appellation generally acclimated interchangeably with medievalism).

Medievalism can additionally be acclimated as an insult, implying abnegation and anachronous attitudes. The words "medievalism" and "Medieval" are both aboriginal recorded in the 19th century. "Medieval" is acquired from Latin average aevum (Middle Ages). This appellation comes from the abstraction the Middle Ages was an abeyance in the beforehand of classical learning.

History

Renaissance to Enlightenment

Main articles: Average Ages, Protestant Reformation, and Age of Enlightenment

Voltaire, one of the key Enlightenment critics of the medieval era.

In the 1330s, Petrarch bidding the appearance that European ability had stagnated and drifted into what he alleged the "Dark Ages," back the abatement of Rome in the 5th century, attributable to amid added things, the accident of abounding classical Latin texts and to the bribery of the accent in abreast discourse.2 Scholars of the Renaissance believed that they lived in a fresh age that bankrupt chargeless of the abatement declared by Petrarch. Historians Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo developed a three bank outline of history composed of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.3 The Latin appellation media tempestas (middle time) aboriginal appears in 1469.4 The appellation average aevum (Middle Ages) is aboriginal recorded in 1604.4 "Medieval" aboriginal appears in the 19th aeon and is an Anglicised anatomy of average aevum.5

The agreement Medieval and Average Ages betoken that the aeon was one of bookish and aesthetic inferiority. Nevertheless, the Renaissance retained abounding models of cerebration that can additionally be apparent as medieval,6 with abstracts like Erasmus criticising medieval Scholasticism and superstition, but absolute loyal to the Catholic Church and Church doctrine.7 These criticisms, and the angel of the Average Ages as a aeon of a beneath developed civilisation, accept been alternating capacity in angle of the period.8

During the Reformations of the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants about followed the analytical angle bidding by Humanists, but for added reasons. They saw classical antique as a aureate time, not alone because of the Latin literature, but because it was the aboriginal ancestry of Christianity. The amid 1000 year Average Age was a time of darkness, not alone because of abridgement of civil Latin literature, but because of bribery aural the Church such as Popes who disqualified as kings, agnostic superstitions with saints relics, chaste priesthood, and institutionalized moral hypocrisy.9 Best Protestant historians did not date the ancestry of the avant-garde era from the Renaissance, but later, from the ancestry of the Reformation.10

In the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Average Ages was apparent as an "Age of Faith" back adoration reigned, and appropriately as a aeon adverse to acumen and adverse to the spirit of the Enlightenment.11 For them the Average Ages was barbarian and priest-ridden. They referred to "these aphotic times", "the centuries of ignorance", and "the awkward centuries".12 The Protestant appraisal of the Medieval Church was taken into Enlightenment cerebration by works including Edward Gibbon's Abatement and Abatement of the Roman Empire (1776–89).13 Voltaire was decidedly active in advancing the religiously bedeviled Average Ages as a aeon of amusing stagnation and decline, accusatory Feudalism, Scholasticism, The Crusades, The Inquisition and the Catholic Church in general.12

edit Romanticism

Main article: Romanticism

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

Romanticism was a circuitous artistic, literary, and bookish movement that originated in the additional bisected of the 18th aeon in Western Europe, and acquired backbone during and afterwards the Industrial and French Revolutions.14 It was partly a defection adjoin the political norms of the Age of Enlightenment which rationalised nature, and was embodied best acerb in the beheld arts, music, and literature.14 Romanticism has been apparent as "the awakening of the activity and anticipation of the Average Ages", extensive above rational and Classicist models to drag medievalism and elements of art and anecdotal perceived to be absolutely medieval, in an attack to escape the borders of citizenry growth, burghal drape and industrialism, all-embracing the exotic, alien and distant.15

The name "Romanticism" itself was acquired from the medieval brand arresting romance. This movement contributed to the able access of such romances, asymmetric to their absolute assuming amid medieval literature, on the angel of Average Ages, such that a knight, a afflicted damsel, and a dragon is acclimated to adjure up the time pictorially.16

The Adventurous absorption in the medieval can decidedly be apparent in the illustrations of English artisan William Blake and the Ossian aeon appear by Scottish artisan James Macpherson's in 1762, which aggressive both Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1773), and the adolescent Walter Scott. The latter's Waverley Novels, including Ivanhoe (1819) and Quentin Durward (1823) helped popularise, and appearance angle of, the medieval era.17 The aforementioned actuation embodied itself in the adaptation of medieval civic epics into avant-garde colloquial languages, including Nibelungenlied (1782) in Germany,18 The Lay of the Cid (1799) in Spain,19 Beowulf (1833) in England,20 The Song of Roland (1837) in France,21 which were broadly apprehend and awful affecting on consecutive arcane and aesthetic work.22

In Jacob encountering Rachel with her father's herd, Joseph von Führich attempted to anamnesis the affection of Perugino and Raphael, 1836 (Österreichische Galerie, Vienna).

edit The Nazarenes

Main article: Nazarene movement

The name Nazarene was adopted by a accumulation of aboriginal 19th-century German Adventurous painters who reacted adjoin Neoclassicism and hoped to acknowledgment to art which embodied airy values. They approved afflatus in artists of the backward Average Ages and aboriginal Renaissance, abnegation what they saw as the apparent adroitness of afterwards art.23 The name Nazarene came from a appellation of derision acclimated adjoin them for their affectation of a biblical address of accouterment and beard style.23 The movement was originally formed in 1809 by six acceptance at the Vienna Academy and alleged the Brotherhood of St. Luke or Lukasbund, afterwards the angel saint of medieval artists.24 In 1810 four of them, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr, Ludwig Vogel and Johann Konrad Hottinger confused to Rome, area they active the alone abbey of San Isidoro and were abutting by Philipp Veit, Peter von Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and a apart alignment of added German artists.23 They met up with Austrian adventurous mural artisan Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) who became an actionable babysitter to the accumulation and in 1827 they were abutting by Joseph von Führich (1800–76).23 In Rome the accumulation lived a semi-monastic existence, as a way of re-creating the attributes of the medieval artist's workshop. Religious capacity bedeviled their achievement and two above commissions for the Casa Bartholdy (1816–17) (later confused to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin) and the Casino Massimo (1817–29), accustomed them to attack a awakening of the medieval art of adorn painting and acquired again all-embracing attention.25 However, by 1830 all except Overbeck had alternate to Germany and the accumulation had disbanded. Abounding Nazareners became affecting agents in German art academies and were a above access on the afterwards English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.23

Gothic revival

The Gothic Awakening was an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England.26 Its acceptance grew rapidly in the aboriginal 19th century, back more austere and abstruse admirers of neo-Gothic styles approved to animate medieval forms in adverse to the classical styles accustomed at the time.27 In England, the epicentre of this revival, it was intertwined with acutely abstract movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic catechumen Augustus Welby Pugin) anxious by the advance of religious nonconformism.26 He went on to aftermath important Gothic barrio such as Cathedrals at Birmingham and Southwark and the British House of Parliament in the 1840s.28 Ample numbers of absolute English churches had appearance such as crosses, screens and decrepit bottle (removed at the Reformation), adequate or added, and best fresh Anglican and Catholic churches were congenital in the Gothic style.29 Viollet-le-Duc was a arch amount in the movement in France, abating the absolute belted burghal of Carcassonne as able-bodied as Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle in Paris.28 In America Ralph Adams Cram was a arch force in American Gothic, with his best aggressive activity the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Fresh York (claimed to be the better Cathedral in the world), as able-bodied as Collegiate Gothic barrio at Princeton Graduate College.28 On a added akin the board Carpenter Gothic churches and houses were congenital in ample numbers beyond North America in this period.30

In English literature, the architectural Gothic Awakening and classical Affect gave acceleration to the Gothic novel, generally ambidextrous with aphotic capacity in animal attributes adjoin medieval backdrops and with elements of the supernatural.31 Beginning with Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, it additionally included Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which helped begin the avant-garde abhorrence genre.32 This helped actualize the aphotic affect or American Gothic of authors like Edgar Allan Poe in works including "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) and Nathanial Hawthorne in "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) and "The Birth-Mark" (1843).33 This is about-face afflicted American novelists like Herman Melville in works such as Moby Dick (1851).34 Aboriginal Victorian Gothic novels included Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847).35 The brand was active and modernised against the end of the aeon with works like Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).36

Late nineteenth century

Romantic nationalism

Main article: Romantic nationalism

By the backward 19th aeon pseudo-medieval symbols were the bill of European august accompaniment propaganda. German emperors dressed up in and proudly displayed medieval apparel in public, and they rebuilt the abounding medieval alcazar and airy home of the Teutonic Order at Marienburg.37 King Ludwig II of Bavaria congenital a absurd alcazar at Neuschwanstein and busy it with scenes from Wagner's operas, addition above Romantic angel maker of the Average Ages.38 The aforementioned adumbration would be acclimated in Nazi Germany in the mid-20th aeon to advance German civic character with affairs for all-encompassing architectonics in the medieval appearance and attempts to animate the virutes of the Teutonic knights, Charlamagne and the Round Table.39

In England, the Average Ages were trumpeted as the birthplace of capitalism because of the Magna Carta of 1215.40 In the administration of Queen Victoria there was ample absorption in things medieval, decidedly amid the cardinal classes. The belled Eglinton Tournament of 1839 attempted to animate the medieval amplitude of the absolution and aristocracy.41 Medieval adorned dress became accepted in this aeon at aloof and aloof masquerades and assurance and individuals and families were corrective in medieval costume.42 These trends aggressive a 19th-century brand of medieval balladry that included Idylls of the King (1842) by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson and "The Sword of Kingship" (1866) by Thomas Westwood, which adapt accurately avant-garde capacity in the medieval settings of Arthurian romance.4344

edit The Pre-Raphaelites

Main article: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

"Artichoke" wallpaper, by John Henry Dearle for William Morris & Co., about 1897 (Victoria and Albert Museum).

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a accumulation of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.45 The three founders were anon abutting by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to anatomy a seven affiliate "brotherhood".46 The group's ambition was to ameliorate art by abnegation what they advised to be the mechanistic access aboriginal adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo.45 They believed that the Classical poses and affected compositions of Raphael in accurate had been a allurement access on the bookish teaching of art. Hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, they objected to the access of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the artist of the English Aloof Academy of Arts, assertive that his ample address was a awkward and formulaic anatomy of bookish Mannerism. In contrast, they capital to acknowledgment to the abounding detail, acute colours, and circuitous compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.47

edit The arts and crafts movement

Main article: Arts and crafts movement

The arts and crafts movement was an artful movement, anon afflicted by the Gothic awakening and the Pre-Raphaelites, but affective abroad from aristocratic, nationalist and aerial Gothic influences to an accent on the idealised peasantry and medieval community, decidedly of the 14th century, generally with left-wing political tendencies and extensive its acme amid about 1880 and 1910. The movement was aggressive by the writings of the analyzer John Ruskin and spearheaded by the assignment of William Morris, a acquaintance of the Pre-Raphaelites and a above amateur to Gothic-revival artist E. E. Street. He focused on the accomplished arts of textiles, copse and metal assignment and autogenous design.48 Morris additionally produced medieval and age-old themed poetry, beside left-wing tracts and the medieval Utopia News From Nowhere (1890).48 Morris formed Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861, which produced and awash accoutrement and furniture, generally with medieval themes, to the arising average classes.49 The aboriginal arts and crafts exhibition in the United States was captivated in Boston in 1897 and bounded societies advance beyond the country, committed to attention and perfecting dematerialization ability and adorning abode interiors.50 Whereas the Gothic awakening had tended to challenge ecclesiastical and aggressive architecture, the arts and crafts movement looked to rustic and colloquial medieval housing.51 The conception of aesthetically adorable and affordable accoutrement accepted awful affecting on consecutive aesthetic and architectural developments.52

Twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Popular culture

Main article: Depiction of the Middle Ages in accepted culture

edit Film

Main article: Middle Ages in film

Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood

Film has been one of the best cogent creators of images of the Middle Ages back the 20th century. The aboriginal medieval blur was additionally one of the ancient films anytime made, about Jeanne d'Arc in 1899, while the aboriginal to accord with Robin Hood dates to as aboriginal as 1908.53 Influential European films, generally with a nationalist agenda, included the German Nibelungenlied (1924), Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), while in France there were abounding Joan of Arc sequels.54 Hollywood adopted the medieval as a above genre, arising alternate remakes of the King Arthur, William Wallace and Robin Hood stories, adapting to the awning such actual adventurous novels as Ivanhoe (1952—by MGM), and bearing epics in the attitude of El Cid (1961).55 More contempo revivals of these genres accommodate Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991), The 13th Warrior (1999) and The Kingdom of Heaven (2005).56

edit Fantasy

Main article: Fantasy

While the ballad that fantasy drew on for its abracadabra and monsters was not alone medieval, elves, dragons, and unicorns, amid abounding added creatures, were fatigued from medieval ballad and romance. Earlier writers in the genre, such as George MacDonald in The Princess and the Goblin (1872), William Morris in The Able-bodied at the World's End (1896) and Lord Dunsany in The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924), set their tales in fantasy worlds acutely acquired from medieval sources, admitting generally filtered through after views.57 In the aboriginal bisected of the 20th aeon lurid fiction writers like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith helped popularise the brand and abracadabra annex of fantasy, which generally utilised aged and non-European settings beside elements of the medieval.58 In contrast, authors such as E. R. Eddison and decidedly J.R.R. Tolkien, set the blazon for aerial fantasy, commonly based in a pseudo-medieval setting, alloyed with elements of medieval folklore.59 Added fantasy writers accept emulated him, and films, role-playing and computer amateur additionally took up this tradition.60 Avant-garde fantasy writers accept taken elements of the medieval from these works to aftermath some the best commercially acknowledged works of fiction of contempo years, sometimes pointing to the absurdities of the genre, as in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, or bond it with the avant-garde apple as in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.61

edit Active history

2003 re-enactment of the Battle of Grunwald.

Main article: Medieval reenactment

In the additional bisected of the 20th aeon absorption in the medieval was more bidding through anatomy of re-enactment, including action reenactment, re-creating actual conflict, armour, accoutrements and skill, as able-bodied as active history which re-creates the amusing and cultural activity of the past, in areas such as clothing, aliment and crafts. The movement has led to the conception of medieval markets and Renaissance fairs, from the backward 1980s, decidedly in Germany and America.62

edit Neo-medievalism

Main article: Neo-medievalism

Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism) is a neologism that was aboriginal affected by Italian medievalist Umberto Eco in his 1973 article "Dreaming in the Middle Ages".63 The appellation has no bright analogue but has back been acclimated to call the circle amid accepted fantasy and medieval history as can be apparent in computer amateur such as MMORPGs, films and television, neo-medieval music, and accepted literature.64 It is in this area—the abstraction of the circle amid abreast representation and accomplished inspiration(s) - that medievalism and neomedievalism tend to be acclimated interchangeably.65 Neomedievalism has additionally been acclimated as a appellation anecdotic the post-modern abstraction of medieval history;66 and as political approach about avant-garde all-embracing relations, aboriginal discussed in 1977 by theorist Hedley Bull, who argued that association was affective appear a anatomy of "neomedievalism" in which alone notions of rights and a growing faculty of a "world accepted good" were abrasive civic sovereignty.67