Studies in Medievalism XXVII. Authenticity, Medievalism, Music

Essays tackling the difficult but essential question of how medievalism studies should look at the issue of what is and what is not "authentic".

Given the impossibility of completely recovering the past, the issue of authenticity is clearly central to scholarship on postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages. The essays in the first part of this volume address authenticitydirectly, discussing the 2017 Middle Ages in the Modern World conference; Early Gothic themes in nineteenth-century British literature; medievalism in the rituals of St Agnes; emotions in Game of Thrones; racism in Disney's Middle Ages; and religious medievalism. The essayists' conclusions regarding authenticity then inform, even as they are tested by, the subsequent papers, which consider such matters as medievalism in contemporary French populism; nationalism in re-enactments of medieval battles; postmedieval versions of the Kingis Quair; Van Gogh's invocations of Dante; Surrealist medievalism; chant in video games; music in cinematic representations of the Black Death; and sound in Aleksei German's film Hard to Be a God.

Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Contributors: Aida Audeh, Tessel Bauduin, Matthias Berger, Karen Cook, Timothy Curran, Nickolas Haydock, Alexander Kolassa, Carolyne Larrington, David Matthews, E.J. Pavlinich, Lotte Reinbold, Clare Simmons, Adam Whittaker, Daniel Wollenberg.