This volume maps the phenomenon of medievalism in Aotearoa, initially as an import by the early white settler society, and as a form of nation building that would reinforce Britishness and ancestral belonging. This colonial narrative underpins the volume’s focus on the imperial relationship in chapters on the academic study of the Middle Ages, on medievalism in film and music, in manuscript and book collections, and colonial stained glass and architecture. Through the alternative 21st-century frameworks of a global Middle Ages and Aotearoa’s bicultural nationalism, the volume also introduces Maori understandings of the ancestral past that parallel the European epoch and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the phenomenon of global right-wing medievalism, as evidenced in the Alt-right extremism underpinning the Christchurch mosque attack of 2019.
The 11 chapters trace the transcultural moves and networks that comprise the shift from the 20th-century study of the Middle Ages as an historical period to manifestations of medievalism as the reception and interpretation of the medieval past in postmedieval times. Collectively these are viewed as indications of the changing public perception about the meaning and practice of the European heritage from the colonial to contemporary era.
The volume will appeal to educationists, scholars, and students interested in the academic history of the Middle Ages in New Zealand; enthusiasts of film, music, and performance of the medieval; members of the public interested in Aotearoa’s history and popular culture; and all who enjoy the colourful reinventions of medievalism.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: New Zealand medievalism: reframing the medieval Part 1: Medieval studies: a foundation for medievalism 1. New Zealand medieval studies: an academy across the globe 2. Trans-Tasman medievalism: George Russell, Grahame Johnston, and Bernard Martin 3. There and back again: P.S. Ardern and J.A.W. Bennett as New Zealand medieval scholars 4. Place and space in te ao Māori and the medieval world Part 2: Medievalism in manuscript collections 5. Between worlds: the afterlife of medieval manuscripts in the Alfred and Isabel Reed collection 6. Integrating experiential learning to reinvigorate medieval studies in New Zealand Part 3: Medievalism in literature, music, film, and architecture 7. Music, medievalism, and the New Zealand early music revival 8. Tolkien’s primitivism and the myth of a pastoral paradise in Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations 9. Set in concrete: the stained glass of St Peter’s Cathedral, Hamilton, and the Anglo-Catholic menace Part 4: Political medievalism 10. Havelock North: embodied medievalism in an Aotearoa New Zealand Village 11. Aotearoa New Zealand and global right-wing medievalism
About the Author :
Anna Czarnowus is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Silesia, Katowice (Poland). She has published on Middle English literature and medievalisms, co-editing (with M.J.Toswell) Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood (2020), and (with Carolyne Larrington) Memory and Medievalism in George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones: The Keeper of All Our Memories (2022). She is also the co-editor (with Laurel Ryan) of Medievalism and Slavic Popular Culture (forthcoming).
Janet M. Wilson is Professor Emerita in English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Northampton, UK. She formerly taught medieval studies at universities in New Zealand and the UK. Her research now focuses on the postcolonial and diaspora writing of the white settler societies of Australia and New Zealand, as well as refugee writing, the global novel, transnationalism, and transculturalism. Katherine Mansfield is a special subject of interest. She is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing and the series Studies in World Literature.
Review :
‘This is an informative introduction to the little-explored medievalist past and present of New Zealand, expanding the innovative domain of global medievalism. Ranging from the contribution of New Zealand scholars to medieval literature and philology, via Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy to the Christchurch mosque shootings of 2019, these essays explore the interaction between ideas about the Middle Ages, colonialism, postcolonialism and national identity, strikingly illuminating New Zealand's cultural history’ - Carolyne Larrington, Emeritus Professor of Medieval European Literature, University of Oxford.
‘While the reception of Australian medievalisms has received ample scholarly attention in the last 30 years, work on the afterlife of the English and European Middle Ages in New Zealand has lagged behind. The essays in New Zealand Medievalism offer the first broad based panorama of the complex cultural process of reception, which manifests itself not only in how New Zealand academics created their own iteration of medieval studies, but also in how politics, religion, literature, film, architecture, and music reimagined the Middle Ages and participated in creating the global phenomenon of medievalism’ - Richard Utz, Professor of Medievalism Studies, Georgia Institute of Technology.
‘This insightful new volume examines Aotearoa’s disproportionately large influence on the discipline of medieval studies over the past 100 years. From the so-called Oxford NZ mafia and their influence at the cultural centre, to generations of NZ medievalists working around the world, to contemporary reimaginings of medieval and medievalist narratives such as the Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings, and to dark iterations of the medieval in the rhetoric of the global right-wing, these essays reflect the impact of the (post)colonial antipode on the formation and historical heart of the discipline of English Literature’ – Robert Rouse, Associate Professor of English Language and Literatures, University of British Columbia.
‘This unique and insightful book is a lovely survey of all things medievalistic to be found in New Zealand, a much-needed work that hopefully inspires more scholarly attention in the future’ - Parergon 42.1 (2025).
