In this lecture, Dr. Clare Broome Saunders explored the variety of ways in which writers, artists, and commentators—radical and reactionary alike—use aspects of medieval literature and culture to express their views on the major questions and conflicts that challenged Europe in the nineteenth century. The medieval revival, always present in post-medieval British culture, reached its apotheosis during the reign of Queen Victoria, when the growth and popularization of medieval history and texts coincided with a time of contemporary social, political, and religious unrest. Nineteenth-century European women in particular found medievalism a useful way to describe their social and imaginative experience, from the accession of the British liege lady Queen Victoria in 1837 to the suffragists who marched in the guise of Joan of Arc at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Dr. Broome Saunders started her discussion with Victoria’s accession in 1837 and finish at the end of World War I in 1918 when Romantic medievalism arguably died with so many in the horror, mud, and mutilation of the trenches. She considered the political significance of the Gothic and the use of King Arthur in British politics and suggested the ways in which the language of medievalism is still politically relevant today.
Michael Collins, teaching professor of English at Georgetown University, responded to Clare Broome Saunders' presentation, and Michael Scott, director of the Future of the Humanities Project, opened and closed the event.
This event was co-sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative.
