Medievalism and Fantasy

A Match Made in Heaven

Introduction

If you are already familiar with the fantasy genre, you are probably aware of certain medieval characteristics. Although there is a consensus regarding fantasy and medievalism, there are but a few scientific articles or webpages who risk their knowledge on it. How does it come that fantasy and medievalism seem almost inseparable? Why do we automatically think of the Middle Ages when we consider fantasy? Could it be that the fantasy genre is an inherent product of medievalism?

Medievalism

Before we even consider the relationship between fantasy and medievalism, it shall suffice to first determine and explain what is meant by medievalism. Although that there are apparently not a lot of articles that concern the relationship between fantasy and medievalism, there are a multitude of scholarly articles and literature that concern medievalism. Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz determine that medievalism is ‘developed in the nineteenth century as a way of describing an engagement either with the historical period known as the Middle Ages or with what was perceived as belonging to this historical period… the English “medievalism” in many ways represents an insular reaction against condemning and abandoning the premodern and the emerging temporal concept of the Middle Ages’.¹

Kevin Harty once had something similar to say and mentioned that medievalism is ‘a continuing process of creating and recreating ideas of the medieval that began almost as soon as the Middle Ages came to an end’.² Medievalism is, thus, a process where the creators of a piece of literature, film, art history or any other form of expression attempt to resurrect an idea called the Middle Ages. But wait before we dive in deeper, did the Middle Ages not exist? Why are we then talking about it as if it is a mere idea?

Well, to answer this question truthfully, I shall need to explain that most of what we now of the Middle Ages directly stems from medieval manuscripts. Those who are familiar with medieval studies shall instantly find agreement with the proposal that Christian monks made and tended for these manuscripts. What does this mean for their content? It, for starters, means that we could perceive the medieval world only from an overtly religious perception. While it holds true that we have a lot of secular stories in these medieval manuscripts, these could merely stem from the fact that the scribes actually liked these secular stories. Yet, in some secular stories, like Beowulf, we could see that the notion of God and Christianity lingers subtly in the background.

The idea of medievalism: is it for everyone?

Like mentioned above, we could only detect the medieval world from a mostly Christian point of view. Does this affect our perception on its world? Yes, I think that it does. Furthermore, most of the medieval consensus stems from medieval studies. Some new medievalists tend to slowly and deliberately debunk this ‘objective’ sway that academia currently holds over the Middle Ages. Stephen G. Nichols and R. Howard Bloch suggested that a new medievalism, or a new philology, must break the ice in this and that the ‘irruption of a personalized subject in the otherwise dispassionate discourse of medievalism’.³ ‘New medievalism’ must make the Middle Ages more personal and less rigid in academia.

Medievalism and fantasy: here we go

But how do you make medievalism more personal? The previous articles have already introduced J.R.R. Tolkien to the reader. If you are talking about making medievalism personal, you must mention Tolkien’s name. Tolkien was one of the first medievalists who truly made the fantasy epic stand out. Some would even deem him the father of epic fantasy (you should look for my article This Was Epic for more information).

Tolkien had the following to say about fantasy and science in his Of Fairy-Stories essay (1937):

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.⁴

Tolkien would, thus, call fantasy a ‘natural’ and perhaps ‘common’ human activity. I find it interesting to see that Tolkien mentioned specifically that an individual’s fantasy only becomes good when an individual could separate the fantastic elements from the truth. If there is no distinction made between them, he would call these individuals insane. But how did he separate the one from the other? And how did he make his fantasy not subjective to his will?

Could we call Tolkien’s fiction medieval fantasy? You could interpret his work like that, because he attempts to emulate the Middle Ages in his fiction. The Rohirrim are one of the closest entities in Tolkien’s fiction who exhibit features of his precious Anglo-Saxon history and philology. Yet, like Shippey told in his The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (1982), these Rohirrim should not be confused for the historical Anglo-Saxons, but rather for the ones found in Anglo-Saxon literature. Tolkien proves to be the perfect example of a medieval scholar who created a fantasy world using medievalism.

Is it then strange that we perceive medievalism in fantasy? Edward James said the following:

Fantasy is commonplace in children’s literature. It is also commonplace in medieval literature, from Beowulf to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other Arthurian romances. This is clearly one reason why many fantasy critics started life as medievalists and pursue double careers: they do not have the same hang-ups, and they perceive that writing fantasy may actually be another way for an author to reflect upon the world in which he or she lives or writes.⁵

When taking this perspective, medieval fantasy is the only reason how fantasy could release itself from the clutches of being seen as children’s literature.

Verdict

Medievalism and fantasy seem to have an apparent bond between each other. It almost seems that fantasy is created out of medievalism. The real question remains to what extent medievalism could be regarded as a subjective and personal experience. This seems to be one of the theories of ‘new medievalism’ or ‘new philology’. Medievalism and fantasy are not just a match made in heaven. They appear to be inherent to one another.