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Medievalism

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Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Medieval Studies

"Sing It Again": Linguistic Medievalisms In Geoffrey Hill And Seamus Heaney, Christian Cotten-Dixon Jan 2026

"Sing It Again": Linguistic Medievalisms In Geoffrey Hill And Seamus Heaney, Christian Cotten-Dixon

Honors College Theses

This study examines the use of early medieval structure and language in the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill, focusing on their near-contemporary collections, North and Mercian Hymns. Both collections use etymological and poetic structures to fashion an imagined medieval past in order to discuss personal and cultural narratives of history. Leveraging these structures in poetry and digging them out of past strata like a material artifact, Heaney and Hill collapse linear systems of time and language and access past word forms even as they evolve. This archaeological approach to poetry gives them the means to place the …


Performing Piety, Commerce, And Community In The Medieval Italian Town, John D. Treat Sep 2025

Performing Piety, Commerce, And Community In The Medieval Italian Town, John D. Treat

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper explores the characters and set–like aspects of the Italian medieval town where much of the drama of the emergence of the modern individual and economy played out and examines the various changes in the presentation of the human body within Christianity and the evolution of the façades of the buildings of the medieval Italian street.


“The Atmosphere That Supports Life On Earth”: An Ecocritical Approach To Tolkien’S Arda, Elizabeth Anne Turello May 2025

“The Atmosphere That Supports Life On Earth”: An Ecocritical Approach To Tolkien’S Arda, Elizabeth Anne Turello

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Ecocriticism speaks to the relationship between the environment and literature, a progressively vital topic of discussion. What is often overlooked, however, is the necessity of the theory’s applicability to stories of speculative fiction; that is, ones existing outside the realm of the real world or, as is the case with the father of modern-day fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien, a mythology set in the ancient days of our world (“Arda”). At first, it may seem contradictory to learn about our surroundings through fictionalized ones seemingly irrelevant to Earth’s own; this apparent contradiction is not valid, though, as the relationship between humans and …


The Architect Of The Past: Heinrich Himmler's Remaking Of Germany's History., Chad M. White Aug 2024

The Architect Of The Past: Heinrich Himmler's Remaking Of Germany's History., Chad M. White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the complex interplay between historical narratives, ideological manipulation, and cultural artifacts in Heinrich Himmler’s efforts to reshape Germany’s history during the Nazi regime. The study shows how Himmler used historical revisionism to mythologize Germanic history to support Nazi ideology. Himmler used the Ahnenerbe, an SS organization, to research and propagate distorted narratives, fabricating artifacts to legitimize the Aryan myth and assert Germanic superiority. Influenced by movements like the Völkisch Movement, Himmler's ideology relied on pseudo-historical narratives to shape public perception and Nazi policies. The study analyzes Himmler's writings and the spatial transformation of sites like Wewelsburg Castle …


Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb May 2023

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …


Final Master's Portfolio, Tooba Amin Apr 2023

Final Master's Portfolio, Tooba Amin

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Tooba Amin covers the following topics in her Final Master's Portfolio: Capitalism, Medievalism, Women's Studies, and Indigenous Studies.


Understanding Authoritarianism, Fascism, Far-Right Politics, And Anti-Democratic Processes, Paul Viafranco Apr 2023

Understanding Authoritarianism, Fascism, Far-Right Politics, And Anti-Democratic Processes, Paul Viafranco

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Paul Viafranco seeks to understand the rise of Authoritarianism, Fascism, Far-Right Politics, and Anti-Democratic Processes, by delving into Executive Order 9066, Marine Le Pen’s use of medievalism, Donald Trump’s discourse, and the various factors that contribute to the need for seeking asylum or refugee status.


Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene May 2022

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …


Femininity Reclaiming Chivalry In The Harry Potter Series, Ashley M. Watson Jan 2022

Femininity Reclaiming Chivalry In The Harry Potter Series, Ashley M. Watson

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This paper focuses on the reclaiming of chivalric values by female characters in the Harry Potter series by comparing them to Arthurian characters. Scholars have extensively compared the narrative of the Knights of the Round Table to the global phenomenon of the Harry Potter series, but in this paper I explore, through a feminist lens, a character comparison of the Harry Potter novels and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. I will show how female characters in modern literature reclaim chivalry. This is important because it exemplifies a shift in the position of women into a more active role. I …


Uprooting Medievalism: Ya And The Future Of Fantasy, Zoe Phillips Apr 2021

Uprooting Medievalism: Ya And The Future Of Fantasy, Zoe Phillips

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This thesis looks at the development of the young adult neo-medieval fantasy genre, measuring famous works from the Medieval period against works such as Tolkien's, to examine the impact of female protagonists and female authors on the genre and readers alike as neo-medieval fantasy continues to gain in popularity. Works examined include: Beowulf, Lanval, Le Roman de Silence, The Hobbit, Uprooted, and The Hero and the Crown.


Middle English "Tarantulas": A New Edition Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Kara Mcshane Sep 2020

Middle English "Tarantulas": A New Edition Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Kara Mcshane

Faculty Baden Presentations

In this Baden presentation, Kara McShane gives an overview of her forthcoming edition of the understudied Middle English Destruction of Jerusalem, a late medieval siege narrative, and explores how the poem expands contemporary understandings of religious and cultural contact, conflict, and exchange in medieval English literature. The talk includes an interactive introduction to editing medieval texts.


Recovered Images: Medieval Echoes In C. S. Lewis’S Space Trilogy, Nathan Earl Houston Fayard Dec 2019

Recovered Images: Medieval Echoes In C. S. Lewis’S Space Trilogy, Nathan Earl Houston Fayard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

C. S. Lewis has begun to garner more scholarly attention in the last few decades, but his first novels, his science fiction or Space trilogy, continue to be largely ignored by academia. Yet, these three novels are deserving of more serious study, as they are pioneering works of literary science fiction, and even more surprisingly, of literary medievalism. Though long derided as mere reactionary attacks on Modernism and science, when properly understood, these strange and wonderful tales actually reveal the complexity and nuance of Lewis’s response to his times. In them, the Inkling author creates a unique combination of the …


Hamlet And Amleth, Princes Of Denmark: Shakespeare And Saxo Grammaticus As Historians And Kingly Actions In The Hamlet/Amleth Narrative, Megan Arnott Jan 2015

Hamlet And Amleth, Princes Of Denmark: Shakespeare And Saxo Grammaticus As Historians And Kingly Actions In The Hamlet/Amleth Narrative, Megan Arnott

The Hilltop Review

Shakespeare played a decisive role in creating a Middle Ages for the generations that came after him. The two tetralogies, which include Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Part 1-3 and Richard III, comprise the body of work that is commonly studied for medievalisms, and in these plays Shakespeare’s interpretation of the past demonstrates nation building, ‘Englishness,’ and a concern about the nature of power. A different kind of engagement with the medieval past is occurring in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, though Hamlet is no less concerned with …


(Re)Producing (Neo)Medievalism, Kellyann Fitzpatrick Jan 2015

(Re)Producing (Neo)Medievalism, Kellyann Fitzpatrick

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Addressing a need that Tom Shippey calls out in his seminal essay “Medievalisms and Why They Matter,” (Re)producing (Neo)medievalism endeavors to trace connections, expose errors, and make its voice heard in regard to the ways in which the medieval is employed in academic and everyday life. Focusing on recent evolutions in articulations of the medieval, this project produces a working understanding of the term “neomedievalism” that takes into account what would be considered “popular” forms as well as scholarly treatments, and posits it as a method of reading that acknowledges its own practices as forms of neomedievalism. After surveying existing …


Serializing The Middle Ages: Television And The (Re)Production Of Pop Culture Medievalisms, Sara Mcclendon Knight Jan 2012

Serializing The Middle Ages: Television And The (Re)Production Of Pop Culture Medievalisms, Sara Mcclendon Knight

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In his now canonical "Dreaming the Middle Ages," Umberto Eco famously quips that "it seems that people like the Middle Ages" (61). Eco's apt sentiment still strikes a resonant chord some twenty years after its publication; there is indeed something about the Middle Ages that continues to fascinate our postmodern society. One of the most tangible ways this interest manifests itself is through our media. This project explores some of the ways that representations of the medieval past function within present-day reimaginings in the media. More specifically, television's obvious visual textuality, widespread popularity, and virtually untapped scholarly potential offer an …