Studies in Medievalism XXXV: Medievalism in Theory and Politics

Essays exploring the intersections of politics and theory through medievalism in film, literature, gaming, and political movements. Two vital, increasingly intertwined areas of interest are addressed by this collection: politics and theory. The volume begins with a general discussion of how the Middle Ages have been particularly mediated by subsequent artifacts. The essays then address: the motivations and machinations behind Joan of Arc AI in Gregory Benford's 1989 contribution to the Time Gate anthologies; medievalist historiography in Salman Rushdie's 1983 novel Shame; medievalist identity in Rome's contemporary far-right movement; Viking imagery in and around the Make America Great Again campaign; Robin Hood avatars in mid-twentieth-century B-westerns; medievalism by the Young German Order during the 1920s and 30s; the visibility of race in David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; Orientalism and race in the 1974 game Dungeons & Dragons; manifestations of Chaucer's Pardoner in Kim Zarins' 2016 novel Sometimes We Tell the Truth; gender performance and sexuality in Maria Dahvana Headley's 2020 translation of Beowulf; and the term "Anglo-Saxon," particularly relative to the Ansax-1 and ANSAXNET online communities. '"Donald the Orange": Vikings in and around the Maga Movement' is made Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND.