The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism

In 1859, the historian Lord John Acton asserted: 'two great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages'. The influence on Victorian culture of the 'Middle Ages' (broadly understood then as the centuries between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance) was both pervasive and multi-faceted. This 'medievalism' led, for instance, to the rituals and ornament of the Medieval Catholic church being reintroduced to Anglicanism. It led to the Saxon Witan being celebrated as a prototypical representative parliament. It resulted in Viking raiders being acclaimed as the forefathers of the British navy. And it encouraged innumerable nineteenth-century men to cultivate the superlative beards we now think of as typically 'Victorian'—in an attempt to emulate their Anglo-Saxon forefathers.

Different facets of medieval life, and different periods before the Renaissance, were utilized in nineteenth-century Britain for divergent political and cultural agendas. Medievalism also became a dominant mode in Victorian art and architecture, with 75 per cent of churches in England built on a Gothic rather than a classical model. And it was pervasive in a wide variety of literary forms, from translated sagas to pseudo-medieval devotional verse to triple-decker novels. Medievalism even transformed nineteenth-century domesticity: while only a minority added moats and portcullises to their homes, the medieval-style textiles produced by Morris and Co. decorated many affluent drawing rooms. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism is the first work to examine in full the fascinating phenomenon of 'medievalism' in Victorian Britain. Covering art, architecture, religion, literature, politics, music, and social reform, the Handbook also surveys earlier forms of antiquarianism that established the groundwork for Victorian movements. In addition, this collection addresses the international context, by mapping the spread of medievalism across Europe, South America, and India, amongst other places.

Joanne Parker, Associate Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture, University of Exeter,Corinna Wagner, Professor of Visual and Literary Arts, University of Exeter

Joanne Parker is Associate Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Exeter. Her previous publications include England's Darling: The Victorian Cult of Alfred the Great (Manchester University Press, 2007) and Britannia Obscura: Mapping Hidden Britain (Jonathan Cape, 2014), which was one of 12 books long-listed for the Thwaites Wainwright Prize, 2014. She has also published on the Victorian legends of Robin Hood and King Arthur, on the nineteenth-century reception of prehistoric megaliths, on the Victorians and the Battle of Brunanburgh, and on the late nineteenth-century obsession with live gibbetting.

Corinna Wagner is Professor of Visual and Literary Arts at the University of Exeter. Her publications on the subject of medicine and the arts include Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture (University of California, 2013) and A Body of Work: An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine (Bloomsbury, 2016). More recently, she has contributed chapters to Literature and the History of Medicine (Cambridge, 2019), The Cambridge History of the Gothic (2019), and The Anatomy of the Image: Perspectives on the (Bio)medical Body in Science, Literature, Culture and Politics (Brill, 2020). She has also published on gothic revival architecture, and the relationship between science, the gothic, and medievalism.

Introduction, Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner
Part One: Medievalism before 1750
1. King Arthur and the Tudor Dynasty, Philip Schwyzer
2. Old English and Old Norse Studies to the Eighteenth Century, Timothy Graham
3. Validating the English Church, Graham Parry
4. The Diggers and the Norman Yoke, Clare Simmons
Part Two: Romantic Period Medievalism
5. The Ballad Revival and the Rise of Literary History, David Matthews
6. Medieval Forgery, Jack Lynch
7. Grimur Thorkelin, Rasmus Rask, and the Origins of Philology, Kirsten Wolf
8. The Romantic Gothic Imagination, Joseph Crawford
9. Gothic Ruins and Revivals: The Lake Poet's Architecture of the Past, Tom Duggett
10. Sir Walter Scott and the Medievalist Novel, Jim Watt
Part Three: Sources
11. The Study of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in the Victorian Period, Jane Toswell
12. Chaucer Among the Victorians, Richard Utz
13. The Later Victorian Recovery of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture: George Forrest Brown (1833-1930), Proctor, Professor, Bishop and Anglo-Saxonist, Jane Hawkes
14. The Irish and Welsh Middle Ages in the Victorian Period, Huw Pryce
15. Scottish Neomedievalism, Sarah Dunnigan and Gerard Carruthers
16. The Lure of Boccaccio's Medievalism, Eleonora Sasso
17. Eddas, Sagas, and Victorians, Carl Phelpstead
18. Medievalism as an Instrument of Political Renewal in 19th-Century Germany, Francis Gentry
19. The Influences of French Medievalism on Victorian Britain, Elizabeth Emery and Janet T. Marquardt
Part Four: Social, Political, and Religious Praxis
20. Philology, Anglo-Saxonism, and National Identity, Will Abberley
21. Toryism and the Young England Movement, Richard Gaunt
22. The Oxford Movement, Asceticism and Sexual Desire, Dominic Janes
23. Illuminating Propaganda: Radical Medievalism and Utopia in the Chartist Era, Ian Haywood
24. Bodies and Buildings: Materialist Medievalism, Corinna Wagner
25. Medievalism and Colonialism: Orientalizing Chile and India in the Age of British Militarized Mercantilism, Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul
Part Five: Arts and Architecture
26. Ecclesiastical Gothic Revivalism, William Whyte
27. Victorian Medievalism and Secular Design, Jim Cheshire
28. The Gothic Revival Beyond Europe, Alex Bremner
29. The Pre-Raphaelites: Medievalism and Victorian Visual Culture, Ayla Lepine
30. William Morris and Medievalism, Jan Marsh
31. Revisiting the medievalism of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, Rosie Ibbotson
32. Medievalist Music and Dance, John Haines
Part Six: Literature
33. Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: Medieval Modernism, Elizabeth Helsinger
34. Women Writers and the Medieval, Clare Broome Saunders
35. Building Utopia: The Structural Medievalism of William Morris's News from Nowhere, Marcus Waithe
36. Mid-to-Late Victorian Medievalist Poetry, Antony H. Harrison
37. Re-presenting Icelandic Saga Narrative for Victorian Readers, Heather O'Donoghue
38. Anglo-Saxonism and the Victorian Novel, Joanne Parker
39. Tennyson and the Return of King Arthur, Inga Bryden