Defining Neomedievalism(s)

The focus on neomedievalism at the 2007 International Conference on Medievalism, in ever more sessions at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, and by many recent or forthcoming publications, has left little doubt that this important new area of study is here to stay, and that medievalism must come to terms with it. In response to an essay in Studies in Medievalism XVIII defining medievalism in relationship to neomedievalism, this volume therefore begins with seven essays defining neomedievalism in relationship to medievalism. The conclusions reached in these seven essays are then tested by five articles on modern American manifestations of Byzantine art, the Vietnam War as refracted through non-heterosexual implications in the 1976 movie Robin and Marian, versions of abjection in recent Beowulf films, nationalist motives for Victorian portrayals of Chaucer, and nationalist reactions to twentieth-century scholarship on Chaucer's work. Theory and practice are thereby juxtaposed in a volume that is certain to fuel a central debate in not one but two of the fastest growing areas of academia.