Cluster on the Middle Ages in Contemporary Popular Culture: Introduction

The five essays here published were first given at a conference entitled The Middle Ages in Contemporary Popular Culture, conceived by Madeleine Jeay of the McMaster Working Group on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, organised by that group and held at McMaster University in the spring of 1996. The twenty-eight papers given at the conference explored various themes concerning the ways in which the middle ages are represented in contemporary popular culture. Among these were studies of the renewed interest in witchcraft and alchemy; organisations such as the Society for Creative Anachronism and feast-extravaganza Medieval Times, which engage in historical reconstruction; the popular interest in Gregorian chant and other medieval musics; and the "use" of the middle ages in contemporary film and other media. The aim was to give voice to this phenomenon in our culture in a manner that was sympathetic, not judgmental—a manner that took the appropriation of aspects of the middle ages in our popular culture seriously and that tried to theorise this appropriation in order that we can better understand it.