New Medieval Books: Cinema Medievalia

Cinema Medievalia: New Essays on the Reel Middle Ages

Edited by Kevin J Harty and Scott Manning

McFarland & Company
ISBN: 978-1-4766-5361-7

This collection of twenty essays examine how the Middle Ages is portrayed in movies. From The Seventh Seal to the The Last Duel, these films reveal much about how today’s society tries to reimagine the medieval past.

Excerpt:

This collection of nineteen newly commissioned, original essays on medieval cinema is published coincidentally with the twenty-fifth anniversary of McFarland’s publication of Kevin J. Harty’s The Reel Middle Ages, which some critics have been kind enough to cite as the work in English that established the legitimacy of the academic study of this cinematic form of medievalism. The essays that follow offer in-depth studies of nearly three dozen films, along with shorter discussions of other examples of cinema medievalia. Their authors hail from Australia, Canada, England, France, Iceland, Scotland, and the United States, and these authors bring to their essays a variety of backgrounds and approaches to the films that they discuss. Those films include silent films, animated films, films in black and white, films in technicolor—in all, the essays discuss a century of cinema depictions of the Middle Ages from the 1920s to 2022.

Who is this book for?

While these articles are aimed at specialists in the field of medievalism and cinema, many other medievalists and movie fans will find the papers interesting, especially if they are already enjoy these films.

The Editors

Kevin Harty is a Professor at LaSalle University. Scott Manning is an independent scholar and historian.

Some of the contributors to Cinema Medievalia include @heyouonline.bsky.social @ricutz.bsky.social @lauraharrison.bsky.social to name a few. Here’s the full table of contents.

[image or embed]

— Scott Manning (@scottmanning.com) December 4, 2024 at 8:02 AM

You can learn more about this book from the publisher’s website.

You can buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk