Medievalism in Play

 

My apologies for being behind on this series. There's a great mix of essays here.

Studies in Medievalism XXXII
Medievalism in Play

Edited by Karl Fugelso

Full details and ordering instructions at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843846482/studies-in-medievalism-xxxii/.

Hardcover

9781843846482

March 2023

£75.00 / $115.00

Ebook (EPDF)

9781800109438

March 2023

£24.99 / $29.95

Description

Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies.

Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies via six essays that directly address how the Middle Ages have been put in play with regard to Alice Munro's 1977 short story "The Beggar Maid"; David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; medievalist archaisms in Japanese video games; runic play in Norse-themed digital games; medievalist managerialism in the 2020 video game Crusader Kings III; and neomedieval architectural praxis in the 2014 video game Stronghold: Crusader II. The approaches and conclusions of those essays are then tested in the second section's six essays as they examine "muscular medievalism" in George R. R. Martin's 1996 novel A Game of Thrones; the queering of the Arthurian romance pattern in the 2018-20 television show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power; the interspecies embodiment of dis/ability in the 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon; late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century nationalism in Irish reimaginings of the Fenian Cycle; post-bellum medievalism in poetry of the Confederacy; and the medievalist presentation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020-21 Covid inoculation.

Contents

Preface - Karl Fugelso

I: Medievalism in Play

Sexual Play and Medievalism: Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid" - M. J. Toswell

Spoiling the Sport, Upping the Ante, and Calling His Bluff: Why St. Winifred Appears in David Lowery's 2021 Film The Green Knight - Kevin J. Harty

"My guise doth not incur thy trust": Translating English Medievalism and Archaism to and from Japanese in a Video Game Context - Jacob W. Runner

"Boy, what do those runes say?": Runic Play in Norse-Themed Digital Games - Tom Birkett

Middle (Ages) Managers: Crusader Kings III as Medievalist Managerialism - Andrew Baerg

"Castles are like possessions: merely temporary!": Neomedieval Architectural Praxis in Stronghold: Crusader II - Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly

II: Other Responses to Medievalism

George R. R. Martin's "Muscular Medievalism" in A Game of Thrones: Masculinity, Violence, and Fantasy - Steven Bruso

Big Sword-in-the-Stone Energy: Queering the Arthurian Romance Pattern in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Jessica Stanley

Interspecies Embodiment of Dis/Ability in How to Train Your Dragon - Leah Haught

Fenian Medievalisms, from Imperialist to Insurrectionist: Reimagining the Fenian Cycle and the Future of Ireland, 1878-1916 - Vanessa K. Iacocca

Medievalism and the Old South: Metaphors and References in the Works of Poets of the Confederacy - Michel Aaij

From Holy Lance to Covid-19 Syringe: Benjamin Netanyahu as Curator and Saint - Galit Noga-Banai

The Year's Work in Medievalism 33 (2018)

The latest volume of The Year's Work in Medievalism has been released. It can be accessed at https://sites.google.com/site/theyearsworkinmedievalism/all-issues/33-2018.


Full contents as follows:


The Year's Work in Medievalism 33 (2018)

Edited by Valerie Johnson & Renée Ward, with Laura Harrison

Valerie Johnson & Renée Ward: Introduction

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand: East Meets West? Heritage, Medievalism, and the Nibelungenlied on the Danube

Sarah J. Sprouse: From ides aglæcwif to “shebeast”: The Loss of the Wrecend in Thomas Meyer’s Translation of Beowulf

Loredana Teresi: Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman and the Myth of Týr: Addressing Contemporary Issues through Literary Tradition

Karl Fugelso: A Mickey Mouse Inferno: Medievalist Legacies and the Marketing of the Middle Ages

Alicia McKenzie: A Patchwork World: Medieval History and World-Building in Dragon Age: Inquisition

Scott Manning: Warriors “Hedgehogged” in Arrows: Crusaders, Samurai, and Wolverine in Medieval Chronicles and Popular Culture

Adam Debosscher: #ForTheThrone: A Study of the Emphasis on the Medievalism in the Paratext of G. R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire in HBO’s Game of Thrones

Call For Submissions

MAPACA Sessions Update

I am saddened to report that only one of our proposed sessions for MAPACA's 2019 conference received enough submissions to make a viable panel.

Here are the details. I'll update the blog further once the session has been placed on the schedule.

Michael Torregrossa


2019 Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association
Pittsburgh Marriott City Center Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA
7-9 November 2019
https://mapaca.net/conference

Medieval Undead/Undead Medievalisms (A Roundtable)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture for the Medieval & Renaissance Area of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Presider: Scott Manning, Independent Scholar

Undoubtedly, the modern concept of the zombie is a recent phenomenon, with origins in Haitian folklore and American film and fiction (notably George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend”). Nevertheless, the zombie is also indebted to horrors of earlier ages, including the revenants of medieval folklore and literature; although, enthusiasts of present-day zombies often overlook this heritage. Meanwhile, some modern creators of representations of zombie menaces seem to tap into to this tradition in bringing to life new undead creatures that mash the medieval with the modern by allowing more familiar zombies and zombie-like entities to shamble across medieval landscapes. Despite the variety and vitality of these traditions, both the medieval undead and undead medievalisms remain largely neglected by scholarship.

Through this roundtable session, the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture seeks to bridge the apparent divides between modern and medieval and medieval and modern. We endeavor to foster discussion that allows the undead of the medieval past and the zombies found in medieval-inspired narratives of today to come into contact through our teaching and research. The topic is especially relevant to this conference, given that its “unofficial” theme of is “Pittsburgh: Zombie Capital of the World” in honor of Romero and his work.


Embodying Absence: The Medieval and Modern Undead
Peter Dendle, Pennsylvania State


The Divine Undead/The Undead Divine
Elliott Mason, Concordia University


Draugar and White Walkers: Winter Zombies of the Old North
Richard Fahey, University of Notre Dame


Tomes of the Dead: Medievalism, Zombies, and Historical Fantasy-Horror in Viking Dead and Stronghold
Carl Sell, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

NEASA Sponsored Session Update and Bios

Representation(s): Image and Reality, Identity and Community: 2019 New England American Studies Association Conference.

Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA.

8 June 2019.

(full program at https://newenglandasa.wordpress.com/annual-conference/)

Session 4: 3:15-4:30

Panel 7: Make Me Medieval: Appropriations of the Middle Ages in American Culture (Percival Hall 106)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Moderator: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

“All-American Arthuriana: The Appropriation of the Matter of Britain during the American Civil War Era,” Michael A. Torregrossa (Independent Scholar)

Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and works as an adjunct instructor in English in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His research interests include adaptation, Arthuriana, Beowulfiana, comics and comic art, Frankensteiniana, medievalism, monsters, science fiction, and wizards. Michael has presented papers on these topics at regional, national, and international conferences, and his work has been published in Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children: Essays on Arthurian Juvenilia, Arthuriana, The Arthuriana / Camelot Project Bibliographies, Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays, Film & History, The 1999 Film & History CD-ROM Annual, The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, and the three most recent supplements to The Arthurian Encyclopedia. In addition, Michael is founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture (successor to The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages), and The Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic; he also serves as editor for these organizations’ various blogs and moderator of their discussion lists. Besides these activities, Michael is also active in the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association and organizes sessions for their annual conference in the fall. Michael is currently Monsters and the Monstrous Area Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, but he previously served as its Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair, a position he held from 2009-2018.

“Medievalism in America’s Mardi Gras Tradition,” Ann J. Pond (Bishop State Community College

[Bio not provided.]

“Might Makes Right: Medieval Combat Sports and the Legitimization of a Fascist Middle Ages,” Ken Mondschein (University of Massachusetts-Amherst-Mt Ida) 

Ken Mondschein floats like a leaf through academia. He has benefited from Mt. Ida College’s closing by UMass-Amherst giving him a lectureship to teach the remnant Vet Tech students, who resent him mightily (your choice for gen-eds... Mondschein... or Mondschein). Besides that, he teaches at two other colleges for a total of eight classes per semester. Publishing-wise, he is incredibly productive. His book on timekeeping finally passed peer review at Johns Hopkins, and he has a contract for a sourcebook on medieval time with Italica Press. He published Game of Thrones and the Medieval Art of War with McFarland in 2017, and just released his translation of BnF MS Lat 11269 with extensive scholarly introduction as Flowers of Battle, Vol III: Florius de Arte Luctandi with Freelance Academy Press. The introduction is its own article in Acta Periodica Duellatorum 6.1, “On the Art of Fighting: A Humanist Translation of Fiore dei Liberi’s Flower of Battle Owned by Leonello D’Este.” Ken also has chapters forthcoming in the Cultural History of Sport Vol. 2: A Cultural History of Sport in the Medieval Age (ed. Wray Vamplew, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson) and an article, “Fencing, Martial Sport, and Working-Class Culture in Early Modern Germany: The Case of Strasbourg” (with Olivier Dupuis) forthcoming in the Journal of Medieval Military History 16.

“ ‘Beautiful, willful, and dead before her time’: Reclaiming Female Characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and Its Fandom,” Kavita Mudan Finn (Independent Scholar)

Kavita Mudan Finn is an independent scholar in medieval and early modern literature currently lecturing at Simmons University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2010 and published her first book, The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography 1440-1627, in 2012. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare, Viator, Critical Survey, Journal of Fandom Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and she has edited several collections, including Fan Phenomena: Game of Thrones (2017), The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare’s Queens (2018), and Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal (2019).

Updated Panel for 2019 New England American Studies Association Conference

Here's the updated (and probably final) draft of our sponsored session for the New England American Studies Association. My thanks to the organizers for their interest in the topic and for my fellow panelists for their proposals.



Make Me Medieval: Appropriations of the Middle Ages in American Culture

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Representation(s): Image and Reality, Identity and Community: 2019 New England American Studies Association Conference.

Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA.

8 June 2019.



“All-American Arthuriana: The Appropriation of the Matter of Britain during the American Civil War Era,” Michael A. Torregrossa (Independent Scholar)

“Medievalism in America’s Mardi Gras Tradition,” Ann J. Pond (Bishop State Community College)

“Might Makes Right: Medieval Combat Sports and the Legitimization of a Fascist Middle Ages,” Ken Mondschein (University of Massachusetts-Amherst-Mt Ida)

“ ‘Beautiful, willful, and dead before her time’: Reclaiming Female Characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and Its Fandom,” Kavita Mudan Finn (Independent Scholar)

Medievalism in America Panel Draft

Here is the first draft of our proposed session for the 2019 meeting of the New England American Studies Association.


Make Me Medieval: Appropriations of the Middle Ages in American Culture

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Representation(s): Image and Reality, Identity and Community: 2019 New England American Studies Association Conference.

Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA.

8 June 2019.



“All-American Arthuriana: The Appropriation of the Matter of Britain during the American Civil War Era,” Michael A. Torregrossa (Independent Scholar)

“Might Makes Right: Medieval Combat Sports and the Legitimization of a Fascist Middle Ages,” Ken Mondschein (University of Massachusetts-Amherst-Mt Ida)

“ ‘Beautiful, willful, and dead before her time’: Reclaiming Female Characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and Its Fandom,” Kavita Mudan Finn (Independent Scholar)

(possibly a fourth presenter)