Popular Medievalism in Romantic-era Britain

Popular Medievalism in Romantic-Era Britainexamines ways in which British writers and readers used the idea of the Middle Ages to challenge contemporary political structures against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Through the consideration of canonical authors such as Blake, Scott, and Wordsworth and of lesser-studied works such as radical press writings and popular drama, this study explores the imaginative appeal of the social structures and literary forms of the Middle Ages, and how they raised awareness of Britain's tradition of freedom.

Clare A. Simmons is a Professor of English at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Eyes Across the Channel: French Revolutions, Party History, and British Writing 1830-1882; and numerous essays on nineteenth-century British literature. She is the co-editor of Prose Studies and the editor of Medievalism and the Quest for the "Real" Middle Ages and Charlotte Mary Yonge's novel The Clever Woman of the Family.

Rites and Rights: The Topography of Ancient British Law * The National Melody * Medievalism Onstage in the French Revolutionary Era * The Radical Bestiary * Buried Alive: Gothic Reading and Medievalist Subjectivity * Scottish Lawyers, Feudal Law * Epilogue: Medievalism Becomes Expensive