Medievalism and Medieval Romances (original) (raw)

Abstract

Medievalism and Medieval Romances Within the history of the reception of medieval culture in postmedieval times the reception of medieval romances plays a special role. In fact, medieval romances provide a perfect case study of a medieval genre that attracts the attention of antiquarians and other enthusiastic readers of past texts because of their otherness and popular nature. After this first phase of reception, romances quickly become the subject of philologists and linguists in medieval studies, especially because they are considered not to have the poetic everlastingness attributed to the works of Chaucer or Gower. However, soon after most manuscripts of romances have appeared in scholarly editions, and after the language of the romances has served as a quarry for language studies, only romances with sufficient national appeal (Matter of Britain) continue to attract scholarly attention. Thus, medieval romances suffer the same fate as the term, "medievalism" which, born in the first half of the nineteenth century to describe the increasingly historically-minded reception of a specifically defined medieval culture, is semantically narrowed by the beginning of the twentieth century to mean the unscholarly re-imagining or re-inventing of the Middle Ages. The advent of feminism, postmodernism, and the Studies in Medievalism movement has recently brought about a return to the possibility of a healthy mix between pastist medieval studies and presentist medievalism, which might bode well for a renewed interest in medieval romances. Conscious negotiations of temporality should be the hallmark of such scholarship.

Richard Utz hasn't uploaded this conference presentation.

Let Richard know you want this conference presentation to be uploaded.

Ask for this conference presentation to be uploaded.