Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England

✍ Scribed by Michael Alexander

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 327
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The style of the medieval period, which flows through the bloodstream of western culture, was vigorously re-established in post-Enlightenment England. This one-volume history of the Medieval Revival is the first coherent account of it, especially those aspects that are expressed and reflected in literature. The book focuses on the period 1760 to 1971, with an Epilogue on the reverberations of medievalism in the present day.
The rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, after its destruction by fire in 1834, re-established Gothic as the national style. But medieval imitation manifests itself wherever one cares to look: in literature, architecture, the applied arts, religion, politics, and even Hollywood. In this skilled dissection of the components of this pervasive cultural movement, Michael Alexander rejects the idea that medievalism was confined to the Victorian period, and overturns the suspicion that it is by its nature escapist.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Introduction
Plates
chapter 1 The Advent of the Goths the medieval in the 1760s
chapter 2 Chivalry, Romances and Revival chaucer into scott: the lay of the last minstrel and ivanhoe
chapter 3 Dim Religious Lights the lay, christabel and ‘the eve of st agnes’
chapter 4 ‘Residences for the Poor’ the pugin of contrasts
chapter 5 Back to the Future in the 1840s carlyle, ruskin, sybil, newman
chapter 6 ‘The Death of Arthur was the Favourite Volume’ malory into tennyson
chapter 7 History, the Revival and the PRB westminster, ivanhoe, visions and revisions
chapter 8 History and Legend the subjects of poetry and painting
chapter 9 The Working Men and the Common Good madox brown, maurice, morris, hopkins
chapter 10 Among the Lilies and the Weeds hopkins, whistler, burne-jones, beardsley
chapter 11 ‘I Have Seen . . . A White Horse’ chesterton, yeats, ford, pound
chapter 12 Modernist Medievalism eliot, pound, jones
chapter 13 Twentieth-century Christendom waugh, auden, inklings, hill
epilogue ‘Riding through the glen’
Notes
Bibliography
Index