Medievalism

Medievalism is the revival, reinterpretation, or idealization of medieval history, art, and social forms in later periods. It appears in scholarship, architecture, literature, politics, and popular culture.

Gothic Revival: A nineteenth-century movement that revived Gothic architecture and design. Its churches and civic buildings made medieval forms a defining feature of modern landscapes.
Nationalism: A political ideology that identifies a people with a shared nation and supports its self-determination. National histories have often cast medieval kingdoms as origins of modern nations.
Renaissance: A period of European cultural change beginning in Italy in the fourteenth century and spreading across Europe. Renaissance writers helped establish the idea of the Middle Ages as a distinct age between antiquity and their own.
Middle Ages: The period of European history conventionally dated from about the fifth to the late fifteenth century. The Middle Ages are the historical period that medievalism later represents and reinterprets.
Romanticism: An artistic and intellectual movement that emphasized emotion, imagination, and the power of the past. Romantic writers and artists recast the Middle Ages as a source of wonder and national identity.
Chivalry: An idealized code of conduct associated with medieval knights, including courage, loyalty, and service. Modern medievalism often turns chivalry into a model of honor and moral order.
Giorgio Vasari: An Italian painter and writer whose 1550 and 1568 editions of Lives of the Artists shaped Renaissance art history. His account helped popularize the image of medieval art as a decline before artistic rebirth.
Medieval studies: The academic study of the societies, cultures, and histories of the medieval period. Medieval studies investigates historical evidence, while medievalism examines later uses of that past.
Walter Scott: A Scottish novelist and poet whose historical fiction shaped the modern historical novel. His medieval settings helped popularize romanticized visions of the past.
Nostalgia: Sentimental longing for an idealized past. Medievalist images commonly express longing for a simpler or more coherent past.

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