Neomedievalism: An Eleventh Little Middle Ages?

Summary

In many ways, the scholars working on establishing “neomedievalism” as a legitimate field within the academy are taking what seems to be a very parallel path to that followed in years past by the scholars who established medievalism as a legitimate field of study, distinct from Romanticism and medieval studies. That is to say, neomedievalist scholarship is establishing itself by mapping contemporary cultural phenomena that re-imagine the Middle Ages in a way that is distinctively “neomedieval” and analyzing those phenomena’s relation to culture at large, the historic Middle Ages, and previous forms of medievalism.

Among those at the forefront of the attempt to define and establish neomedievalism within the academy is the online intellectual community known as the Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization, or MEMO, a community maintained by, among others, Carol L. Robinson, who is, herself, one of the scholars most actively engaged in neomedievalist work. Through facilitating online discussion of neomedievalism, through sponsorship of conference panels devoted to the new subject at the annual International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo and the International Conference on Medievalism, and more recently through publications such as the forthcoming book The Medieval in Motion: Neomedievalism in Film, Television and Electronic Games, Robinson and other contributors to MEMOhave initiated a dynamic and vital scholarly discussion devoted to outlining the parameters of neomedievalism and to analyzing its relationship to contemporary culture, to past medievalisms, and, of course, to the Middle Ages. The collection of essays attempting to define neomedievalism in this present volume of Studies in Medievalism is testament to the early success neomedievalist scholars have had in securing the interest of medievalist scholarship at large, and it suggests the need for further inquiry into the field and exploration of its implications for culture and for medievalist studies.

Given the relative youth of neomedievalism, however, its scholars must answer several questions regarding its nature and parameters as a specific field of academic inquiry. First, of course, is what exactly is neomedievalism? What cultural phenomena are included in the neomedieval? Second, and related, is the question, why “neo”? That is to say, how is neomedievalism distinct from medievalism, and is the distinction enough to warrant its existence as a separate field of study, or is neomedievalism simply one more manifestation of medievalism, an eleventh little Middle Ages, as Umberto Eco might call it?