Cinema Medievalia

This collection of original essays presents new scholarship on nearly three dozen feature-length films, including silent films, animated films, films in black and white, and films in technicolor, along with other, shorter examples of cinematic medievalism.
Written by contributors from around the globe with a wide variety of backgrounds, the essays in this volume take a critical approach to one of the most popular forms of medivalism. This book presents a full century of cinematic depictions of the Middle Ages, with new examinations of works such as The Seventh Seal, God’s Fool, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Saladin the Victorious, Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, and A Knight’s Tale, among others.

Kevin J. Harty, professor and formerly chair of English and coordinator of the Undergraduate General Education Core at La Salle University in Philadelphia, is associate editor of Arthuriana, the official journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society (of which he is the former president). He has previously written or edited 14 books, including ground-breaking studies of depictions of the Middle Ages on film.
Scott Manning has published a book on Joan of Arc, as well as essays in Studies in Medievalism, Film & History, and The Year’s Work in Medievalism and is co-chair of the Medieval & Renaissance Area for the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association.

Edited by Kevin J. Harty and Scott Manning
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 386
Bibliographic Info: 73 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-8916-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5361-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1

The Middle Ages, from Real to Reel: An Introduction

Kevin J. Harty and Scott Manning 3

Accidents of Time and Timing: The Seventh Seal (1957) and Black Death (2010)

Dorsey Armstrong 23

The Consolation of Medievalism in Vincent Ward’s The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

Helen Young 40

Francis of Assisi: Making a ­Twelfth-Century Saint Accessible to Twentieth–and ­Twenty-First-Century Audiences

Francis Berna 58

The Archbishop and the King: Peter Glenville’s Becket (1964)

Jonathan Good 79

The Book of Joan of Arc on Trial: Dreyer and Bresson

Gail Orgelfinger 97

The Northman’s Place in Viking Film History

Zachary J. Melton 112

“A decadent and ­child-murdering Wali”: The Targeted Racialization of the “Arab Sectarian” in Youssef Chahine’s Saladin the Victorious (1963)

Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan 128

Medieval Scotland on Film: Braveheart and the Scottish Discursive Imaginary

Laura S. Harrison and Andrew B.R. Elliott 145

Making Padanians: Barbarossa (2009) and Repurposing the Myth of the Lombard League

Scott Manning 163

The Illusion of Musical Authenticity in Alexander Nevsky (1938)

John Haines 181

On the Queerness of England’s King John, as Captured in 473 Years of Stage and Screen Portrayals

Tison Pugh 198

The Depths of Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic

Karl Fugelso 219

“Nevertheless, she persisted”: Marginalizing the Other at the Intersection of Gender and Race in Fritz Lang’s Film Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild’s Revenge)

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand 234

Marcel Carné’s Les Visiteurs du soir and the Principle of “Included Third”

Raeleen Chai-Elsholz 252

Authenticity, Neoliberalism, and Socialism: The Name of the Rose (1986)

Richard Utz 270

Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel and Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring in Dialog: From Shame Culture to Guilt Culture

Sandra Gorgievski 288

“Are you a woman or a blacksmith?” ­Cross-Sex Friendship Bonds in Brian Helgeland’s A Knight’s Tale

Richard Sévère 307

“Beware the Jabberwock”: Terry Gilliam’s Fractured Fairy Tale

Susan Aronstein and Taran Drummond 325

David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021): Authenticity and Accuracy, Historicons and Easter Eggs

Kevin J. Harty 343

Bibliography 361

About the Contributors 365

Index 369