Medievalism on Television

This essay highlights the similarities between Merlin and his brother wizards in contemporary popular culture. Sections explore the iconography associated with these characters and their narrative role as guides and mentors to heroes, a discussion that further refines ideas presented in "Merlin Goes to the Movies: The Changing Role of Merlin in Cinema Arthuriana" (1999).

Published in The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, edited by Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray, McFarland, 2004, pp. 167-91. ISBN  978-0786419265 (paperback); 978-0786427031 (ebook).

Comprehensive (at the time) survey of the representations of Merlin on screen. The second file includes the stills that accompanied the listing.

Published in 1999 Film & History CD-ROM Annual, edited by Peter C. Rollins, John E. O’Connor, and Deborah A. Carmichael, Film & History, 1999, 31 pp. ISBN 0-641775-6-8.

Explores three prominent narrative roles for the character of Merlin in Arthurian films. Topics covered are Merlin as teacher (The Sword in the Stone and Kids of the Round Table), Merlin as king-/kingdom-maker (Excalibur and Guinevere), and Merlin as lover (Arthur the King/Merlin and the Sword). (I refined my thinking on Merlin on screen in my 2004 essay “The Way of the Wizard: Reflections of Merlin on Film”.)

In common parlance "medieval" is synonymous with "backward" "benighted" and "barbaric."  Films, literature, and journalistic language about the Middle Ages and medievalizing fantasy worlds commonly reinforce this perceived equivalency by representing dismemberment — the cutting up or pulling apart of living human bodies — as a common element of medieval and medieval-style experience.  (Think of Monty Python's Black Knight or of Frodo Baggins's finger.) Yet legal codes, accounts of war, and other historical sources indicate that the non-medical/therapeutic severing of extremities was as much an early modern phenomenon as a medieval one.  What diminished at the end of the Middle Ages was the tendency to perceive the loss of an arm, leg, hand, or nose as somehow potentially positive: as an instrument of sexual virtue, saintly witness, religious conversion, or peacemaking.

Employing a three-part classification system, this piece offers a comprehensive discussion of the use of the figure of Mordred and his legend in Arthurian-themed film and television productions.

Published in Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays, edited by Kevin J. Harty, revised edition, McFarland, 2002 (pb. 2009), pp. 199-210. ISBN 978-0786413447 (hardcover); 978-0-7864-4683-4 (paperback).

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, the Medieval Studies on Screen blog (formerly Medieval Studies at the Movies) supplants an earlier discussion list and is intended as a gateway to representations of the medieval on film, television, computers, and portable electronic devices.

More Middle Ages on Screen? Reconsidering The Reel Middle Ages (A Roundtable)
Sponsored by the Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages
51st International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
12-15 May 2016
Proposals due by 15 September 2015