Louise D\'arcens

International Medievalism and Popular Culture Louise D\'arcens

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: Today medievalism is increasingly intelligible as a cultural lingua franca, produced in trans- and international contexts with a view to reaching popular international audiences, some of mass scope. This book offers new perspectives on international relations and how global concerns are made available through contemporary medievalist texts. It questions how research in medievalism may help us rethink the terms of internationalism and globalism within popular cultures, ideologies, and political formations. It investigates how the diverse media of medievalism (print; film and television; arts and crafts; fashion; digital media; clubs and fandom) affect its cultural meaning and circulation, and its social function, and engage questions of desire, gender and identity construction. As a whole, International Medievalism and Popular Culture differs from those studies which have concentrated on imaginative appropriations of the middle ages for domestic cultural contexts. It investigates rather how contemporary cultures engage with medievalism to map and model ideas of the international, the trans-national, the cosmopolitan and the global. This book includes examples from Europe, Britain, North America, Australia and the Arab world. It discusses the formation and the impact of popular medievalism in the globalised worlds of Braveheart, Disney and Harry Potter, but it also explores how the contemporary medieval imaginary generates international cultural perspectives, for example in considering Middle Eastern reception of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, the Byzantinism of Julia Kristeva, and Hedley Bull's postnationalist 'new medievalism'. International Medievalism in Popular Culture is an important contribution to medieval studies, cultural studies, and historical studies. It will be of value to undergraduate, postgraduate and academic readers, as well as to all interested in popular culture or medievalism. Contributor Bio:  D'Arcens, Louise Louise D'Arcens is Associate Professor in the English Literatures Program at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she teaches medieval and medievalist literature. Her PhD and BA (Hons) are from the University of Sydney. She holds a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for the project 'Comic Medievalism and the Modern World', has been a recipient of grants from the Australian Acadmy of Humanities and the ARC, and is an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, 100-1800. Her publications include the books Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages (2014) and Old Songs in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840-1910 (2011) as well as the edited volumes The International Medievalism and Popular Culture (2014, with Andrew Lynch), The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting (2010, with Anne Collett), and Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars (2004, with Juanita Ruys). She has also published numerous book chapters on medievalism as well as articles in journals such as Representations, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Screening the Past, Parergon, and Postmedieval.