Now in Paperback: Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film and Medievalism

Out now from new publisher Bloomsbury in a more affordable paperback edition:

The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film and Medievalism
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-middle-ages-in-popular-imagination-9781350124905/

By: Paul B. Sturtevant

Published: 08-22-2019
Format: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 320
ISBN: 9781350124905
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Series: New Directions in Medieval Studies
Illustrations: 20 bw illus
Dimensions: 5 1/2" x 8 1/2"
List price: $39.95


About The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination

It is often assumed that those outside of academia know very little about the Middle Ages. But the truth is not so simple. Non-specialists in fact learn a great deal from the myriad medievalisms - post-medieval imaginings of the medieval world - that pervade our everyday culture. These, like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, offer compelling, if not necessarily accurate, visions of the medieval world. And more, they have an impact on the popular imagination, particularly since there are new medievalisms constantly being developed, synthesised and remade.

But what does the public really know? How do the conflicting medievalisms they consume contribute to their knowledge? And why is this important?

In this book, the first evidence-based exploration of the wider public's understanding of the Middle Ages, Paul B. Sturtevant adapts sociological methods to answer these important questions. Based on extensive focus groups, the book details the ways - both formal and informal - that people learn about the medieval past and the many other ways that this informs, and even distorts, our present. In the process, Sturtevant also sheds light, in more general terms, onto the ways non-specialists learn about the past, and why understanding this is so important. The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination will be of interest to anyone working on medieval studies, medievalism, memory studies, medieval film studies, informal learning or public history.


Table of contents
Chapter 1: The Public Understanding of the Past
Chapter 2: The Medieval Film
Chapter 3: Learning History from Film
Chapter 4: Their Medieval-Middle Ages
Chapter 5: The Middle Ages They Viewed
Chapter 6: The Medieval Worlds They Found
Chapter 7: Conclusions

CFP Status of Medievalist Film Studies (A Roundtable) (9/7/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

The Status of Medievalist Film Studies (A Roundtable) at ICMS Kalamazoo 2020
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/29/the-status-of-medievalist-film-studies-a-roundtable-at-icms-kalamazoo-2020

deadline for submissions:
September 7, 2019
full name / name of organization:
International Society for the Study of Medievalism
contact email:
medievalismconferences@gmail.com

As medievalism has made its way into mainstream medieval studies, and the teaching of medievalist film alongside medieval texts has become commonplace, what new opportunities and challenges do scholars of medievalist film studies face? These shifts have prompted heated debates in recent years on the values and dangers of teaching Game of Thrones in medieval studies classes, the inadequate framing of medievalist films as adaptations in literature classes and as fiction in history classes, and the formal differences between cinematic and written texts. This roundtable seeks short presentations that address some aspect of this development in scholarship and teaching. Please send proposals (with Participant Information Forms) or questions to medievalismconferences@gmail.com by Sept 15; preference given to proposal submitted by Sept 1.


Last updated July 29, 2019

Out Now: Shakespeare Films: A Re-evaluation of 100 Years of Adaptations

We've been a bit remiss in covering Shakespeare on the site. Here is a recent book from McFarland.

Shakespeare Films: A Re-evaluation of 100 Years of Adaptations
https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/shakespeare-films/

Peter E.S. Babiak

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 212
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2016
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6254-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2352-8
Imprint: McFarland
$35.00


About the Book

This study reexamines the recognized “canon” of films based on Shakespeare’s plays, and argues that it should be broadened by breaking with two unnecessary standards: the characterization of the director as “auteur” of a play’s screen adaptation, and the convention of excluding films with contemporary language or modern or alternative settings or which use the play as a subtext. The emphasis is shifted from the director’s contribution to the film’s social, cultural and historical contexts. The work of the auteurs is reevaluated within present-day contexts, preserving the established canon while proposing new criteria for inclusion.


Table of Contents


Preface 1

Introduction 5

1. Silent Shakespeare 25

2. The Classical Hollywood Period to World War II 39

3. Olivier and Welles 56

4. Kurosawa 69

5. Kozintsev 84

6. Zeffirelli 99

7. Kott, Brook, Richardson and Polanski 114

8. The 1970s and 1980s 124

9. Branagh 136

10. Millennial Shakespeare 151

Conclusion 166

Chapter Notes 181

Works Cited 186

Index 198


Peter E.S. Babiak has taught composition, drama, film studies and literature at several institutions in Southern Ontario, Canada. He has contributed chapters to scholarly books, published several articles in CineAction Magazine, and been a regular presenter at the Annual Conference of the U.S. Popular Culture Association since 2004. He lives in Canada.

Kline's Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages Now in Paperback

Routledge has recently released Daniel T. Kline's collection Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages (2014) in a more affordable paperback edition. 

I originally posted on the book in 2013. This post serves as an update. 


Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages
https://www.routledge.com/Digital-Gaming-Re-imagines-the-Middle-Ages-1st-Edition/Kline/p/book/9780415630917

Edited by Daniel T. Kline
Routledge
298 pages

Purchasing Options:$ = USD

Paperback: 9781138548572
pub: 2018-02-05
$51.95

Hardback: 9780415630917
pub: 2013-08-06
$160.00

eBook (VitalSource) : 9780203097236
pub: 2013-09-11


Description

Digital gaming’s cultural significance is often minimized much in the same way that the Middle Ages are discounted as the backward and childish precursor to the modern period. Digital Gaming Reimagines the Middle Ages challenges both perceptions by examining how the Middle Ages have persisted into the contemporary world via digital games as well as analyzing how digital gaming translates, adapts, and remediates medieval stories, themes, characters, and tropes in interactive electronic environments. At the same time, the Middle Ages are reinterpreted according to contemporary concerns and conflicts, in all their complexity. Rather than a distinct time in the past, the Middle Ages form a space in which theory and narrative, gaming and textuality, identity and society are remediated and reimagined. Together, the essays demonstrate that while having its roots firmly in narrative traditions, neomedieval gaming—where neomedievalism no longer negotiates with any reality beyond itself and other medievalisms—creates cultural palimpsests, multiply-layered trans-temporal artifacts. Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages demonstrates that the medieval is more than just a stockpile of historically static facts but is a living, subversive presence in contemporary culture.


Table of Contents

Introduction: "All Your History Are Belong to Us": Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages - Daniel T. Kline

Part 1: Prehistory of Medieval Gaming
1. The Right to Dream of the Middle Ages: Simulating the Medieval in Tabletop RPGs - William J. White

Part 2: Gaming Re-imagines Medieval Traditions
2. "Best and Only Bulwark": How Epic Narrative Redeems Beowulf the Game - Candace Barrington and Timothy English
3. Systematizing Culture in Medievalism: Geography, Dynasty, Culture, and Imperialism in Crusader Kings: Deus Vult - Jason Pitruzzello
4. The Portrayal of Medieval Warfare in Medieval: Total War and Medieval 2: Total War - Greg Fedorenko
5. Gabriel Knight: A Twentieth-Century Chivalric Romance Hero - Angela Tenga

Part 3: Case Study 1 – World of Warcraft 
6. Coloring Tension: Medieval and Contemporary Concepts in Classifying and Using Digital Objects in World of Warcraft - Elysse T. Meredith
7. Sir Thomas Malory and the Death Knights of New Avalon: Imagining Medieval Identities in World of Warcraft - Kristen Noone and Jennifer Kavetsky
8. Accumulating Histories: A Social Practice Approach to Medievalism in High Fantasy MMORPGs - Jennifer C. Stone, Peter Kudenov, and Teresa Combs
9. "Awesome Cleavage": The Genred Body in World of Warcraft - Kim Wilkins

Part 4: Case Study 2 – Dante's Inferno, The Game
10. The Game's Two Bodies, or the Fate of Figura in Dante's Inferno - Bruno Lessard
11. Courtly e-Violence, Digital Play: Adapting Medieval Courtly Masculinities in Dante’s Inferno - Oliver Chadwick
12. Shades of Dante: Virtual Bodies in Dante's Inferno - Timothy J. Welsh and John T. Sebastian
13. The Middle Ages in the Depths of Hell: Pedagogical Possibility and the Past in Dante's Inferno - Angela Jane Weisl and Kevin J. Stevens

Part 5: Theoretical and Representational Issues in Medieval Gaming
14. We Will Travel by Map: Maps as Narrative Spaces in Videogames and Medieval Texts - Thomas Rowland
15. Author, Text, and Medievalism in The Elder Scrolls - Michelle DiPietro
16. Technophilia and Technophobia in Online Medieval Fantasy Games - Nick Webber
17. The Consolation of Paranoia: Conspiracy, Epistemology, and the Templars in Assassin's Creed, Deus Ex, and Dragon Age Harry J. Brown

Part 6: Sociality and Social Media in Medieval Gaming
18. Casual Medieval Games, Interactivity, and Social Play in Social Network and Mobile Applications - Serina Patterson


About the Series

Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture
This series is our home for innovative research in the field of digital media. It includes monographs and targeted edited collections that provide new insights into this subject as its influence and significance grow into the twenty-first century.


About the Editor

Daniel T. Kline is Professor of English at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA.

Nicolas Flamel on Screen

The recent film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) continues to develop the Wizarding World of J. K. Rowling and marks the first full appearance of Dumbledore’s associate, Nicolas Flamel. The character is based on a historical figure (c. 1340-1418) and first referenced in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997. In the film, Flamel is a wizard-alchemist living in Paris, six-hundred years old, and semi-retired but, as the climax of the film reveals, still capable of powerful magic.

Flamel features briefly in the following trailer for the film at 1:09, and the climax is very quickly teased at 1:52 :