This book is concerned with our ideological, technical and emotional investments in reclaiming medieval for contemporary popular culture. The authors illuminate both medieval and contemporary popular culture in surprising and productive ways while interrogating the many ways in which metamedievalism reinterprets and reconceptualises the medieval.

With contributions from 29 leading international scholars, this is the first single-volume guide to the appropriation of medieval texts in contemporary culture. Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture covers a comprehensive range of media, including literature, film, TV, comics book adaptations, electronic media, performances, and commercial merchandise and tourism. Its lively chapters range from Spamalot to the RSC, Beowulf to Merlin, computer games to internet memes, opera to Young Adult fiction and contemporary poetry, and much more. Also included is a companion website aimed at general readers, academics, and students interested in the burgeoning field of Medieval afterlives, complete with: - Further reading/weblinks - 'My favourite' guides to contemporary medieval appropriations - Images and interviews - Guide to library archives and manuscript collections - Guide to heritage collection See also our website at https://medievalafterlives.wordpress.com/.

This book is concerned with our ideological, technical and emotional investments in reclaiming medieval for contemporary popular culture. The authors illuminate both medieval and contemporary popular culture in surprising and productive ways while interrogating the many ways in which metamedievalism reinterprets and reconceptualises the medieval.

The culture of the Middle Ages was as complex, if not as various, as our own, as the essays in this volume ably demonstrate. The essays cover a wide range of tipics, from church sculpture as "advertisement" to tricks and illusions as "homeeconomics."

This fascinating study places multiple genres in dialogue and considers both medievalism and genre to be frameworks from which meaning can be produced. It explores works from a wide range of genres-children's and young adult, historical, cyberpunk, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and crime-and across multiple media-fiction, film, television, video games, and music. The range of media types and genres enable comparison, and the identification of overarching trends, while also allowing comparison of contrasting phenomena. As the first volume to explore the nexus of medievalism and genre across such a wide range of texts, this collection illustrates the fractured ideologies of contemporary popular culture. The Middle Ages are more usually, and often more prominently, aligned with conservative ideologies, for example around gender roles, but the Middle Ages can also be the site of resistance and progressive politics. Exploring the interplay of past and present, and the ways writers and readers work engage with them demonstrates the conscious processes of identity construction at work throughout Western popular culture. The collection also demonstrates that while scholars may have by-and-large abandoned the concept of accuracy when considering contemporary medievalisms, the Middle Ages are widely associated with authenticity, and the authenticity of identity, in the popular imagination; the idea of the real Middle Ages matters, even when historical realities do not. This book will be of interest to scholars of medievalism, popular culture, and genre.

The interdisciplinary volume Devotional Interaction in Medieval England and its Afterlives examines the interaction between medieval English worshippers and the material objects of their devotion, with chapters that extend the temporality of objects and buildings beyond the Middle Ages.

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.