Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Studies since 1970 - by Alice Chandler, Mark Girouard, Raymond Chapman, R. J. Smith, Jerome Mitchell, and others - have demonstrated that the term ‘Victorian medievalism’ describes more than a widespread social phenomenon. From the late eighteenth century onward, a strong interest in medieval history and all things medieval, in fact, generated a multivalent cultural discourse that had permeated the conceptual life and practical behaviour of English men and women well before the debacle of the Eglinton Tournament in 1838, and continued to do so at least until the end of World War I. By the early Victorian period a reified language of medievalism was current and visible in politics, literature, art, architecture, theology, love-making and popular entertainments. It was characterized by a specialized vocabulary, a distinctive iconography and the use of particular literary genres (historical novels, ballads, narrative romances, love lyrics), and it involved a network of value-laden associations. This coded discourse was especially attractive to many writers, and their adaptations or appropriations of it can be seen to have generated particular ideological effects. Well before mid-century, medievalist discourse was universally understood and commonly employed by educated individuals. It was in this respect comparable, perhaps, to the discourses of political economy and evangelical Protestantism. ... log in or subscribe to read full text