Medievalism 101
Since successfully defending my dissertation prospectus, life has been such that I've had little interest in blogging. I can hardly believe that the last post was in December. Time moves entirely too quickly. However, I find that working through ideas informally here is beneficial, and I'd like to maintain this here blog as a way a to help with dissertation writing. Whether I'm just learning of something or trying to work through a point of frustration, I hope you'll join me as I try to get the thing done.
And as always, please feel welcome to submit any Music 101 questions, about anything at all music related. I love answering your questions, especially when it's something I don't actually know.
To start, let me lay out the topic of my dissertation, especially since it's one that often gets a lot of surprised looks. My dissertation is on medievalisms, or medieval references, in popular music. To be very precise, popular music since 1960—rock 'n roll, baby! Just these two points, "medievalism," and "since 1960," already merit paragraphs of explanation, because we don't take anything for granted. It's something that must be established in the dissertation, and that's the hill I'm currently dying on.
They seem like such simple issues. What is the definition of "medievalism"? Why is music after 1960 more significant to my research? Start trying to explain why you like something, and you'll see how quickly this turns into a rabbit hole through which you slowly plummet. To illustrate, I like riot grrl music. Why? Because I was an angry teenage feminist and I heard my voice in angry feminist bands. Ok, but why Bikini Kill and not, say, Joan Baez? Why did I like the anger? Why was I so into politics? Why were the noisiest bands more appealing to me than gentle and refined ones? One simple question, and I need years of psychoanalysis to answer it completely.
It's a similar rabbit hole that actually brought me to this dissertation topic, but I'll get to that.
Eventually you have to draw a line, "this explanation is sufficient for my purpose," and that line may be different for a given reader than it is for you. I can find myself paralyzed by an effort to cover all eventualities—not just in writing, but in life. Well, back to psychotherapy we go.
But let's try to begin. Medievalism is a term that was first used—wait for it—in the 1960s.[1] Did I know this when I chose this dissertation topic? I did not. I just wanted to know why industrial music fans were into folk music. How on earth are neofolk and post-industrial related? Would you assume that this song had anything to do with this one? I had been wondering this virtually since onset of puberty. I climbed into neofolk's musical family tree, and I kept climbing until I arrived at hippies. I did not climb much further, for two reasons: In the popular music of the '50s, there is little material inspired by the Middle Ages. I can't think of a single rock example. Ok, that's interesting. Why not? Why do medieval things suddenly appear all over pop music (especially in Great Britain) by the late 60s? Rock music doesn't exist before the '50s, so if there are no medievalisms in '50s rock, then my starting point becomes the '60s. There! There are certainly things to be said for medievalisms in the roots of rock, such as in folk music, and other people have written about this. Rob Young's book Electric Eden is a pretty great look at how folk music becomes a part of rock music in Britain in the '60s. But traditional folk is an entirely different world from rock, and I leave it to those professionals.
If we want to find the medieval in any element of popular culture, then there essentially is no end to that family tree . Errol Flynn's Robin Hood was released in 1938 and spawned a trend that lasted all through the '50s, from Looney Tunes to film parodies such as Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1955). And Robin Hood is only one immediate point of influence.
Danny Kaye was a hugely famous pop singer (people of my generation will know his hit "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" by way of The Lion King), but I'm drawing an arbitrary line at show tunes. (Music hall/vaudeville songs have their own place of importance in rock 'n roll's family tree, though! Just listen to many of Paul McCartney's contributions to the Beatles.)
⸻⸻
Now, to define medievalism, or neomedievalism (both terms are acceptable, but in the interest of streamlining, it often appears without the "neo")... The shortest answer is, it's the study of the life or perception of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. The songs of Guillaume de Machaut are medieval—they were written in the 14th century. But Enigma's album MCMXC is medievalist—a wholly contemporary work that uses some medieval elements. I hesitate to call Enigma neo-medieval, because to my mind, this term is reserved for efforts at accurate historical recreation, such as neo-gothic architecture. This is where the term neomedievalist becomes useful. Those three little letters are important. They mean an object that hints at the medieval without any pretense of authenticity. But neo-gothic architecture is also medievalist because it exists outside of the actual Middle Ages. So to put it another way, not all medievalist works are neo-medieval, but all neo-medieval works are medievalist.
Are we confused yet?
To recap, medievalism means any object of reference to the Middle Ages after the actual Middle Ages—e.g., a retelling of the Arthur myths is a form of medievalism, or you may describe the retelling itself as medievalist. Next, the term medievalism also means a form of scholarship where we study our perceptions of the Middle Ages. There are the individual medievalisms, the references themselves, and then there is reading between the lines to see what they mean. What kind of attitudes about the Middle Ages are present in The Once and Future King? This kind of medievalism can also mean looking at scholarship itself, at the kinds of assumptions that are present in medieval studies. Race is a major topic of discussion in current scholarship, because of the resurgence of white supremacist groups using ideas of medieval Europe to support their nationalist positions. It becomes vital to look at how supposedly neutral scholarship on the Middle Ages makes assumptions about the racial makeup of medieval Europe, for example.
You can see how the point of focus, again, is "what assumptions are we making about the Middle Ages?" We can also ask this question of other times, such as the various medievalist revival movements of the 19th centuries. What perceptions of the Middle Ages are present in pre-Raphaelite art?
The term neomedievalism was popularized by Umberto Eco in his 1973 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages," in which he lays out ten "little Middle Ages." These are 10 popular tropes of the Middle Ages in the modern day. Think of ways you may have heard people refer to the Middle Ages—the era of brutality, the era of spirituality, and so on. The quality of each of these imagined eras constitutes a medievalism, or a mode of thinking about the Middle Ages.
The journal Studies in Medievalism devoted two entire issues to defining the term "medievalism," and the matter is far from settled. Just have a glance at their site to see the breadth and scope of how the term can be applied. Perhaps in time we'll develop some more precise language for each application, but for now, I rather enjoy the all-encapsulating nature of the term. It's simply up to us to establish how we're applying the term.
For myself, I am interested in identifying how Eco's "little Middle Ages" are present in popular music—the individual medievalisms of pop—because this is something that hasn't been done. But I am not merely seeking to catalog medieval references in pop. I want to know what these medievalisms can tell us about our ideas of the Middle Ages and ourselves. I want to know what role these medievalisms have in defining genres. For example, try to imagine progressive rock without any mythology, without kings and wizards, without Tolkien references. We're not left with a lot, are we? Well, why is it so full of medievalisms? When heavy metal artists want to be brutal and macho, why do they invoke medieval warriors such as knights and Vikings instead of, say, gladiators? Why not Spartans? Celtic heroes? Why not our cornucopia of racist ideas about indigenous Americans or Pacific Islanders? They have so many choices, yet medieval Europeans became the dominant trope. It is woven into the fiber of heavy metal. Join me at the end, and perhaps we'll have begun to understand why.
⸻⸻
[1] The term was actually created in the 19th century, along with the word "medieval" itself (which comes from the Latin for Middle Ages, medium aevum). But it's not until the late '60s or early '70s that it is used in the sense in which we're now using it, which was first popularized by Eco.
And as always, please feel welcome to submit any Music 101 questions, about anything at all music related. I love answering your questions, especially when it's something I don't actually know.
To start, let me lay out the topic of my dissertation, especially since it's one that often gets a lot of surprised looks. My dissertation is on medievalisms, or medieval references, in popular music. To be very precise, popular music since 1960—rock 'n roll, baby! Just these two points, "medievalism," and "since 1960," already merit paragraphs of explanation, because we don't take anything for granted. It's something that must be established in the dissertation, and that's the hill I'm currently dying on.
They seem like such simple issues. What is the definition of "medievalism"? Why is music after 1960 more significant to my research? Start trying to explain why you like something, and you'll see how quickly this turns into a rabbit hole through which you slowly plummet. To illustrate, I like riot grrl music. Why? Because I was an angry teenage feminist and I heard my voice in angry feminist bands. Ok, but why Bikini Kill and not, say, Joan Baez? Why did I like the anger? Why was I so into politics? Why were the noisiest bands more appealing to me than gentle and refined ones? One simple question, and I need years of psychoanalysis to answer it completely.
It's a similar rabbit hole that actually brought me to this dissertation topic, but I'll get to that.
Eventually you have to draw a line, "this explanation is sufficient for my purpose," and that line may be different for a given reader than it is for you. I can find myself paralyzed by an effort to cover all eventualities—not just in writing, but in life. Well, back to psychotherapy we go.
But let's try to begin. Medievalism is a term that was first used—wait for it—in the 1960s.[1] Did I know this when I chose this dissertation topic? I did not. I just wanted to know why industrial music fans were into folk music. How on earth are neofolk and post-industrial related? Would you assume that this song had anything to do with this one? I had been wondering this virtually since onset of puberty. I climbed into neofolk's musical family tree, and I kept climbing until I arrived at hippies. I did not climb much further, for two reasons: In the popular music of the '50s, there is little material inspired by the Middle Ages. I can't think of a single rock example. Ok, that's interesting. Why not? Why do medieval things suddenly appear all over pop music (especially in Great Britain) by the late 60s? Rock music doesn't exist before the '50s, so if there are no medievalisms in '50s rock, then my starting point becomes the '60s. There! There are certainly things to be said for medievalisms in the roots of rock, such as in folk music, and other people have written about this. Rob Young's book Electric Eden is a pretty great look at how folk music becomes a part of rock music in Britain in the '60s. But traditional folk is an entirely different world from rock, and I leave it to those professionals.
If we want to find the medieval in any element of popular culture, then there essentially is no end to that family tree . Errol Flynn's Robin Hood was released in 1938 and spawned a trend that lasted all through the '50s, from Looney Tunes to film parodies such as Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1955). And Robin Hood is only one immediate point of influence.
Danny Kaye was a hugely famous pop singer (people of my generation will know his hit "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" by way of The Lion King), but I'm drawing an arbitrary line at show tunes. (Music hall/vaudeville songs have their own place of importance in rock 'n roll's family tree, though! Just listen to many of Paul McCartney's contributions to the Beatles.)
⸻⸻
Now, to define medievalism, or neomedievalism (both terms are acceptable, but in the interest of streamlining, it often appears without the "neo")... The shortest answer is, it's the study of the life or perception of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. The songs of Guillaume de Machaut are medieval—they were written in the 14th century. But Enigma's album MCMXC is medievalist—a wholly contemporary work that uses some medieval elements. I hesitate to call Enigma neo-medieval, because to my mind, this term is reserved for efforts at accurate historical recreation, such as neo-gothic architecture. This is where the term neomedievalist becomes useful. Those three little letters are important. They mean an object that hints at the medieval without any pretense of authenticity. But neo-gothic architecture is also medievalist because it exists outside of the actual Middle Ages. So to put it another way, not all medievalist works are neo-medieval, but all neo-medieval works are medievalist.
Are we confused yet?
To recap, medievalism means any object of reference to the Middle Ages after the actual Middle Ages—e.g., a retelling of the Arthur myths is a form of medievalism, or you may describe the retelling itself as medievalist. Next, the term medievalism also means a form of scholarship where we study our perceptions of the Middle Ages. There are the individual medievalisms, the references themselves, and then there is reading between the lines to see what they mean. What kind of attitudes about the Middle Ages are present in The Once and Future King? This kind of medievalism can also mean looking at scholarship itself, at the kinds of assumptions that are present in medieval studies. Race is a major topic of discussion in current scholarship, because of the resurgence of white supremacist groups using ideas of medieval Europe to support their nationalist positions. It becomes vital to look at how supposedly neutral scholarship on the Middle Ages makes assumptions about the racial makeup of medieval Europe, for example.
You can see how the point of focus, again, is "what assumptions are we making about the Middle Ages?" We can also ask this question of other times, such as the various medievalist revival movements of the 19th centuries. What perceptions of the Middle Ages are present in pre-Raphaelite art?
The term neomedievalism was popularized by Umberto Eco in his 1973 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages," in which he lays out ten "little Middle Ages." These are 10 popular tropes of the Middle Ages in the modern day. Think of ways you may have heard people refer to the Middle Ages—the era of brutality, the era of spirituality, and so on. The quality of each of these imagined eras constitutes a medievalism, or a mode of thinking about the Middle Ages.
The journal Studies in Medievalism devoted two entire issues to defining the term "medievalism," and the matter is far from settled. Just have a glance at their site to see the breadth and scope of how the term can be applied. Perhaps in time we'll develop some more precise language for each application, but for now, I rather enjoy the all-encapsulating nature of the term. It's simply up to us to establish how we're applying the term.
For myself, I am interested in identifying how Eco's "little Middle Ages" are present in popular music—the individual medievalisms of pop—because this is something that hasn't been done. But I am not merely seeking to catalog medieval references in pop. I want to know what these medievalisms can tell us about our ideas of the Middle Ages and ourselves. I want to know what role these medievalisms have in defining genres. For example, try to imagine progressive rock without any mythology, without kings and wizards, without Tolkien references. We're not left with a lot, are we? Well, why is it so full of medievalisms? When heavy metal artists want to be brutal and macho, why do they invoke medieval warriors such as knights and Vikings instead of, say, gladiators? Why not Spartans? Celtic heroes? Why not our cornucopia of racist ideas about indigenous Americans or Pacific Islanders? They have so many choices, yet medieval Europeans became the dominant trope. It is woven into the fiber of heavy metal. Join me at the end, and perhaps we'll have begun to understand why.
⸻⸻
[1] The term was actually created in the 19th century, along with the word "medieval" itself (which comes from the Latin for Middle Ages, medium aevum). But it's not until the late '60s or early '70s that it is used in the sense in which we're now using it, which was first popularized by Eco.
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