Beyond Arthurian Romances: The Reach of Victorian Medievalism

It has been said that Victorian artists and writers sought validation through derivation. In this collection of eleven interdisciplinary essays, contributors describe the traditional themes, forms and images the Victorians appropriated and the results, including Pugin's architecture, Browning's troubadour, Yonge's Normans, Arnold's Norse, Proctor's convent, Morris's northern warriors and bi-worldly women, and Swinburne's translations of Villon. Essays also address the Protestant re-writing of the medieval, Victorian medievalism as performance, and the refuting of the chivalric ideal near the close of the Victorian age. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR