The United States of Medievalism
© 2021
The United States of Medievalism contemplates the desires, dreams, and contradictions inherent in experiencing the Middle Ages in a nation that is so temporally, spatially, and at times politically removed from them. The European Middle Ages have long influenced the national landscape of the United States through the medieval sites that permeate its self-announced republican landscapes and cities. Today, American-built medievalisms continue to shape the nation’s communities, collapsing the binaries between past and present, medieval and modern, European and American.
The volume’s chapters visit the nation’s many medieval-inspired spaces, from Sherwood Forest in Texas to California’s San Andreas Fault. Stops are made in New York City’s churches, Boston’s gardens, Philadelphia’s Bryn Athyn Cathedral, Orlando’s Magic Kingdom, Appalachian highways, Minnesota’s Viking Villages, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and the Las Vegas Strip. As Pugh, Aronstein, and their fellow essayists take the reader on this cross-country trip across the United States, they ponder the cultural work done by the nation’s medievalized spaces.
In its exploration of a seemingly distant period, this collection challenges the underexamined legacy of the Middle Ages on the western side of the Atlantic. Full of intriguing case studies and reflections, this book is informative reading for anyone interested in the contemporary vestiges of the Middle Ages.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 376 pages
- Illustrations: 60
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 1.0in x 9.0in
-
Author Information
Tison Pugh is Pegasus Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida.
Susan Aronstein is a professor of English and Honors at the University of Wyoming. -
Table of contents
Introduction
Built in the United States of America: Constructing a Medieval Past
Tison Pugh and Susan AronsteinPart I: Building the American Middle Ages
1. Translatio Horti: Medievalized Gardens in Boston and Cambridge
Kathleen Coyne Kelly2. Bryn Athyn Cathedral and Glencairn – and Philadelphia’s Other Medieval(ist) Jewels
Kevin J. Harty3. The Masonic Medievalism of Washington, D.C.
Laurie Finke4. Medieval Chicago: Architecture, Patronage, and Capital at the Fin de Siècle
Alfred ThomasPart II: Living in the American Middle Ages
5. Three Vignettes and a White Castle: Knighthood and Race in Modern Atlanta
Richard Utz6. Medieval New York City: A Walk through The Stations of the Cross
Candace Barrington7. Minnesota Medieval: Dragons, Knights, and Runestones
Jana K. Schulman8. “I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm of originality”: Searching for Salvation in Medieval Appalachia
Alison Gulley9. Wounded Landscapes: Topographies of Franciscan Spirituality and Deep Ecology in California Medievalism
Lowell GallagherPart III: Playing in the American Middle Ages
10. Orlando’s Medieval Heritage Project
Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein11. Saints and Sinners: New Orleans’s Medievalisms
Usha Vishnuvajjala and Candace Barrington12. Sherwood Forest Faire: Evoking Medieval May-Games, Robin Hood Revels, and Twentieth-Century “Pleasure Faires” in Contemporary Texas
Lorraine Kochanske Stock13. Las Vegas: Getting Medieval in Sin City
Laurie Finke and Martin ShichtmanNotes on Contributors
-
Subjects and Courses
