Medieval Reads: Medievalists and their fiction – the case of Kari Sperring
What role does the Middle Ages play in this novel? Or is the role less the Middle Ages itself and more the application of Sperring’s intellectual skills and understanding to the story?
Medieval Reads: Perfectly Preventable Deaths, by Deirdre Sullivan
Deirdre Sullivan gives an excellent example of bringing the Middle Ages into a Young Adult fantasy in the 2019 novel Perfectly Preventable Deaths.
Medieval Reads: The point at which wallpaper history meets the Middle Ages
Wallpaper history is when the historical elements are chiefly painted onto a backdrop.
Medieval Reads: Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
The 1992 science fiction gold standard for medieval history is, then, actually the gold standard for understanding how the North American centred science fiction world understood medieval history in that decade.
Medieval Reads: Creating stories with Mary Stewart and Geoffrey of Monmouth
Mary Stewart’s rather well known Arthurian trilogy-with-extra-volumes used a sub-Roman British setting, and placed an entirely twelfth century story of Arthur into it.
Medieval Reads: Raymond E Feist and Dungeon Masters
When a game is based on any period of history, the rules for the game may be based on the designer’s knowledge of history, or they may be drawn from popular history books.
Medieval Reads: The Rebel Angels, by Robertson Davies
Today, I want to talk about Robertson Davies. His academic world is permeated by the Middle Ages, but the setting is in Canada.
Medieval Reads: Susan Cooper and positioning oneself in relation to the past
Novels like The Dark is Rising call upon the Middle Ages in the way someone might hum a bit of a favourite tune as they walk along the street.
Medieval Reads: Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott
Right near the beginning of Ivanhoe, Scott gives a description of the Norman in England and the Saxon. His description sets the Normans in England up very clearly as the evil colonisers and Anglo-Norman as the imposed language of colonisers.
Medieval Reads: The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L Sayers
So many elements of this novel link to the Middle Ages and yet, if you read it as a whodunit, it looks as if it’s contemporary for the time it was written.
Medieval Reads: The Thirteen Hallows, by Michael Scott and Colette Freedman
Arthurian horror is a thing.
Medieval Reads: The Hound and the Falcon Trilogy, by Judith Tarr
What is so special about the Medievalist trilogy?
Medieval Reads: Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice Series
The interesting thing about the invented Middle Ages is that it carries over the aspects we enjoy from history and dumps the things that are less fun.
Medieval Reads: The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander
There are many varieties of fantasy Middle Ages, but they all have this path in common. The nature of those works and the genre of those works give us different visions of the Middle Ages.
Medieval Reads: Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey is rather important in showing us how people responded in the early nineteenth century to the making of history into the mysterious and the dangerous. It shows us the mirror through which many young people viewed the Middle Ages.
Medieval Reads: The Owl Service, by Alan Garner
The Owl Service is one of the books that dragged me into becoming a medieval historian and also persuaded me that understanding who people are in relation to their culture is so very important.
Medieval Reads: Evangeline Walton and the Mabinogion
Many, many fantasy readers and writers begin their fascination with Medieval Wales with the Mabinogion.
Medieval Reads: Van Loon’s Lives by Hendrik Van Loon
My personal label for it is this-is-fantasy-fiction-but-it’s-acting-as-fact. Or I could call it a novel about dinner parties with dead people.
Medieval Reads: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Once in a generation, a writer comes along and, in making fun of his generation and in creating fun using the Middle Ages brings together a new set of stories for people to tell. This is what Mark Twain did in 1889.
Medieval Reads: Henry Treece’s Viking’s Dawn
I shall explore in this column is how each writer creates their particular Middle Ages and how that Middle Ages works at story feel.