The fantasy of the Middle Ages An epic journey through imaginary medieval worlds

This book provides a sumptuous record of a 2022 exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum featuring illuminated manuscripts and art from the museum, along with objects from other museum collections and from popular culture that reference the Middle Ages and engage in fanciful thinking about the period. In discussing medievalism as the transmission of ideas about the Middle Ages as value-laden or ideological, Grollemond (curator at the Getty) and Keene (Riverside City College) acknowledge the scholarship of medievalist Michael Camille as being extremely influential. Drawing from popular culture, they assess references from manga, video games, and other media, and are especially enamored of the series Game of Thrones. To survey the assimilation of medieval sources, Grollemond and Keene dedicate chapters to tropes employed over the centuries, such as the illuminated manuscript as material object; knight and princess; fairy tales; tournaments and other pageantry; and the sets, locations, and costumes of screen and film. The critical commentary expresses hope that new work will facilitate a more inclusive future. The upbeat and insightful treatment of medievalism differs from conventional approaches and should appeal to undergraduates, a prime audience for engaging in critical thinking about visual art and popular culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. --Deborah H. Cibelli, Nicholls State University

Since the mid--19th-century Gothic revival promulgated by Englishman Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the rich history and art of the medieval period (ca. 500--1500) has been endlessly "interpreted... exploited, and revitalized" by generations of creators, according to this fascinating survey from medievalists Grollemond and Keene. As Game of Thrones costume designer Michele Clapton writes in the preface, iconography from the Middle Ages--knights and princesses, swords and armor--has long been imbued with magical elements to tell human stories with "boundless possibilities." In addition to dissecting the era's cinematic reimaginings in GoT (whose fictional worlds are inspired by such real-life happenings as the 15th century Wars of the Roses), Grollemond and Keene illuminate medieval echoes in pop cultural creations as disparate as Cinderella's castle at Disney World, role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and the epic Middle-earth of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings franchise, which draws inspiration from, among many other things, motifs from the late 1400s version of Arthurian Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Giving each analysis the devotion of rigorous detectives, Grollemond and Keene reveal how, in modern retellings, these symbols and stories of the past represent timeless concerns. By turns informative and captivating, this will enchant historians as much as it will reenactors of the Renaissance Faire stripe. (July)