Mass Mediævalisms: The Middle Ages of Popular Culture

Welcome to home page of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, a community of scholars and enthusiasts organized to promote and foster research and discussion of representations of the medieval in post-medieval popular culture and mass media. Encompassing material produced from the close of the Middle Ages to today, these medievalisms can be categorized as survivals, revivals, or re-creations of the medieval in post-medieval eras.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

New Book: The Wife of Bath: A Biography

An imminent release:

The Wife of Bath: A Biography

Marion Turner

Ordering information and further details from the publisher's website at https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691206028/the-wife-of-bath. Extras include a video trailer and preview (click the text marked "Look Inside") with the contents list, introduction, and index.

Princeton University Press.

Hardcover Price: $29.95/£20.00. ISBN: 9780691206011. Pages: 336. Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in.

Ebook Price: 30% off with code PUP30 - Sale Price: $20.97/£17.50; Price: $29.95/£25.00. ISBN:

9780691206028.

Published: Jan 17, 2023

Illus: 14 color illus.

From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers—from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. In The Wife of Bath, Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucer’s favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

A sexually active and funny working woman, the Wife of Bath, also known as Alison, talks explicitly about sexual pleasure. She is also a victim of domestic abuse who tells a story of rape and redemption. Formed from misogynist sources, she plays with stereotypes. Turner sets Alison’s fictional story alongside the lives of real medieval women—from a maid who travelled around Europe, abandoned her employer, and forged a new career in Rome to a duchess who married her fourth husband, a teenager, when she was sixty-five. Turner also tells the incredible story of Alison’s post-medieval life, from seventeenth-century ballads and Polish communist pop art to her reclamation by postcolonial Black British women writers.

Entertaining and enlightening, funny and provocative, The Wife of Bath is a one-of-a-kind history of a literary and feminist icon who continues to capture the imagination of readers.

Author:

Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include the prize-winning biography Chaucer: A European Life.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

CFP Update PCA Medievalism (now due 1/10/2023)

CFP: Medievalism in Popular Culture

PCA/ACA 2023 National Conference

April 5-8, 2023, San Antonio, TX (In-Person)

The Medievalism in Popular Culture Area (including Early to Later Middle Ages, Robin Hood, Arthurian, Chaucer, Norse, and other materials connected to medieval studies) accepts papers on all topics that explore either popular culture during the Middle Ages or transcribe some aspect of the Middle Ages into the popular culture of later periods. These representations can occur in any genre, including film, television, novels, graphic novels, gaming, advertising, art, etc. For this year’s conference, I would like to encourage submissions on some of the following topics:

Medievalism in YA Literature and Fan Fiction
Medievalism and Intersectionality
The Arthurian World
“Medieval” as a social and political signifier
Medievalism in Television (e.g., The Last Kingdom, House of Dragons, etc.)
Medievalism in Film (The Green Knight, Outlaw King, The Last Duel, etc.)
Robin Hood
Medievalism and Teaching (especially remote/distance education strategies)
Board Games (e.g., Coup, Carcassone, etc.)/Online Gaming and/or Cosplay
Anglo-Saxon or Viking Representations in Popular Culture
Medievalism in Novels/Short Stories/Poems/Graphic Novels

If your topic idea does not fit into any of these categories, please feel free to submit your proposal as well. I would like to encourage as much participation as possible, and depending on submissions, I may rearrange the topic groupings.

All papers will be included in sessions with four presenters each, so plan to present on your topic for no more than 15 minutes, inclusive of any audio or visual materials.

Panel submissions are also welcome on any topic of medievalism. If you would like to propose a panel, please submit your complete panel to me directly at cfrancis@bloomu.edu. Individual papers will then have to be submitted to the PCA online system (see below).

Submission requirements:

Please submit a title and a 250 word abstract to http://conference.pcaaca.org. All submissions must be directed to the online database.

Deadline for submission: January 10, 2023.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Christina Francis, Professor of English, Bloomsburg University, at cfrancis@bloomu.edu.