Cluster on the Middle Ages in Contemporary Popular Culture: Introduction

Florilegium ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-186
Author(s):  
Susan Fast
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

Visuality, Violence and the Return of the Middle Ages: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as an Adaptation of the Nibelungen Story

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Bildhauer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
National Origin ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter argues for the first time that Quentin Tarantino based his film Inglourious Basterds in part on the medieval tale of the Nibelungs, as mediated chiefly through Fritz Lang’s Nibelungen. Inglourious Basterds can therefore be fruitfully read as an instance of medievalism, perpetuating as well as re-evaluating the widespread association of the Middle Ages with violence. An awareness of this intertext allows a nuanced interpretation of Inglourious Basterds’ stance on the power as well as manipulability of visual signs, always seen in the context of their materiality. Tarantino’s adaptation also allows fresh perspectives on the medieval Song of the Nibelungs, especially on its depiction of violent revenge. These in turn throw into relief Tarantino’s interpellation of the viewer through violence and other techniques to prevent the passive spectator position that popular culture is often accused of demanding. The film succeeds in subtly altering the conventions of cinematic representations of premodernity, and in re-appropriating a tainted national origin myth for an international audience.

scholarly journals The Monobloc Chair: Democratising the Practice of Sitting

Res Mobilis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Carsten Kullmann
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article examines the cultural history of chairs to understand the many meanings the Monobloc can acquire. The history of chairs is traced from post nomadic culture through the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment period and the French Revolution. Subsequently, I will examine the Monobloc from a Cultural Studies perspective and demonstrate how its unique characteristics allow multiple meanings, which are always dependent on context and discourse. Thus, the Monobloc becomes an utterly democratic symbol of popular culture that can be appropriated for any use.

Matei Cazacu, Dracula. Ed. Stephen W. Reinert, trans. Nicole Mordarski et al. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450, 46. Leiden: Brill, 2017, pp. xxxiii, 457, 27 illus.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 438-439
Author(s):  
Thomas Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
The Middle Ages

The name Vlad III Ţepeş may be unfamiliar to the public, but Dracula certainly is not; the latter conjures up a host of images from popular culture, most of which have only a tenuous connection to the former. Yet Dracula was an actual historical figure, and Matei Cazacu’s biography reveals that his life and reign are worthy of study in their own right. Having originally appeared in French in 2004, it has now been translated into English by Nicole Mordarski, a student of Stephen Reinert at Rutgers. As Reinert explains in his introduction, Mordarski translated Cazacu’s French narrative (with assistance), while he handled translations of the quotations from their original languages into English and updated the bibliography. The result is a godsend for Anglophone readers, who now have access to a thorough, scholarly account of the Impaler’s life and times.

Joanna Miles, The Devil’s Mortal Weapons: An Anthology of Late Medieval and Protestant Vernacular Theology and Popular Culture. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018, xv, 400 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 500-502
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Middle Ages

As recent scholarship has increasingly realized, all our traditional paradigms regarding historical or cultural epochs are the results of long academic debates and represent the outcome of extensive negotiations. What we have traditionally identified as the Middle Ages and as the Renaissance or the era of the Protestant Reformation, suddenly no longer seems to be so neatly separated. In fact, much of the public discourse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially with respect to religious issues, morality, and ethics, continued well beyond 1500 and even extended into the seventeenth century, as mirrored, for instance, by Shakespeare, who certainly reveals many medieval elements in his writings.

Popular Culture in the Middle Ages

1971 ◽  
Vol IV (4) ◽  
pp. 1071-1082
Author(s):  
C. M. D. Crowder
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

scholarly journals Algunes dades sobre la transmissió de les vides de sants entre l’edat mitjana i l’època moderna a la Corona d’Aragó

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Marinela Garcia Sempere
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Cultura Popular ◽  
Legenda Aurea ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

sum: En l’edat mitjana les vides de sants eren models a seguir, exemples en els sermonaris i en els textos didacticodoctrinals. La popularitat d’aquestes vides es reflecteix en les arts plàstiques i visuals, en la literatura i en la cultura popular. A través de l’exemple de la transmissió escrita de tres vides de sants incloses en la traducció catalana de la Legenda aurea, presentem en aquest treball una aproximació a la manera en què es difonien aquelles vides, que circulaven de manera individual o integrades en compilacions i que podien oferir versions diferents en cada cas. La repercussió d’aquelles vides perviu en l’època moderna, que les recull en forma de composicions en vers, obres de teatre i altres gèneres.Paraules clau: hagiografia, Legenda aurea, traduccions, edat mitjana, època moderna.Abstract: The lives of saints in the Middle Ages were models to follow, examples to be used in sermons and didactic or doctrinal writings. Their popularity is reflected in plastic and visual arts, in literature, and in popular culture. Through the example of the written transmission in Catalan of three lives of saints, included in the Catalan translation of the Legenda aurea, we present in this work an approach to the way in which those lives circulated individually or as part of compilations, each of which could present different versions of the same life. The repercussion of those lives survives into the Modern Age, when they take the form of compositions in verse, of plays, or of works in other literary genres.Keywords: hagiography, Golden Legend, translations, Middle Ages, modern era.

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