University of Mississippi University of Mississippi
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Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School
2012
Serializing the Middle Ages: Television and the (Re)Production of Serializing the Middle Ages: Television and the (Re)Production of
Pop Culture Medievalisms Pop Culture Medievalisms
Sara McClendon Knight
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SERIALIZING THE MIDDLE AGES: TELEVISION AND THE (RE)PRODUCTION OF POP
CULTURE MEDIEVALISMS
A Thesis
presented in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of Master of Arts
in the Department of English
The University of Mississippi
by
Sara McClendon Knight
May 2012
Copyright Sara McClendon Knight 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
ABSTRACT
Umberto Eco famously quipit
some twenty years after its publication; there is indeed something about the Middle Ages that
continues to fascinate our postmodern society. One of the most tangible ways this interest
manifests itself is through our media. This project explores some of the ways that representations
of the medieval past function within present-day reimaginings in the media. More specifically,
, and virtually untapped scholarly
potential offer an excellent medium through which to analyze pop culture medievalismsthe
creative tensions that exists between medieval culture and the way it is reimagined, recreated, or
reproduced in the present. By using medievalist studies of cinema as a model, I argue that many
of the medievalist representations on television are similar to those found in film. At the same
time, the serialized narrative structure of most television programs alters
of the past in a way that separates medievalist television from medievalist cinema. Incorporating
the evaluative tools of medievalism studies and television narratology, this project explores the
medievalisms of three narratively diverse television programsThe Pillars of the Earth
(medievalist miniseries), True Blood (series with medievalist storyline), and Game of Thrones
(fantastic neomedievalist series). Ultimately, these programs serve as case studies to demonstrate
how the varied visual and narrative treatment of the Middle Ages on television can reveal
cultural desires and anxieties about the medieval past and the postmodern present.
iii
DEDICATION
This work is dedicated to my familyMom, Dad, Matthew, and, of course, Joseph
whose love and support made this project possible.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Mary Hayes for her expert guidance, support, and
encouragement throughout this process. I would also like to thank Dr. Deborah Barker and Dr.
Gregory Heyworth for their insightful critiques of this work.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ii
.iii
ACKNOWLEDG..iv
L...vi
I. INTRODUCTION: MEDIEVALISM AND TELEVISION.1
II. THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF ICONIC MEDIVAL PIETY IN
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH ... 23
III. TDIEVAL ON TVVIKINGS, VAMPIRES, AND
QUEER VENGEANCE IN TRUE BLOOD
NARRATIVE 46
IV. ORLD WE HAVEN'T SEEN FANTASTIC NEOMEDIEVALISM
OF GAME OF THRONES 66
V. CONCLUSION: ENJOY YOUR MIDDLE AGES!... 95
BIBLIOGRAPHY.. 100
VITA 109
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
1. Opening credits for The Pillars of the Earth9
2. Wells Cathedral, Somerset, E9
3. Weeping Statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary from The Pillars of the Earth 35
4. Bishop Waleran Bigod from The Pillars of the Earth 43
5. Prior Phillip from The Pillars of the Earth..43
6. Eric Northman and the Viking Crown from True Blood50
7. True Blood50
8. True Blood7
9. True Blood65
10. Queen Cersei and Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones81
11. The Game of Chess from The Seventh Seal81
12. Daenerys Targaryen and Her Dragon Hatchling from Game of Thrones85
13. Sean Bean as Boromir from The Fellowship of the Ring 91
14. Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark from Game of Thrones91
15. The Simpsons Parody Game of Thrones. 94
1
I. INTRODUCTION: MEDIEVALISM AND TELEVSION
philosopher, philologist, medieval
studies scholar, and bestselling writer Umberto Eco delineates some of the ways that the Middle
Ages continue to exist within present-day cultural memory. Perhaps most famously he quips in
this chapter that ment still
strikes a resonant chord some twenty years after its publication; there is indeed something about
the Middle Ages that continues to fascinate our postmodern society. One of the most tangible
ways this interest manifests itself is through our media, particularly in the widespread visual
(re)productions of the medieval past. A causal Google search illustrates this point;
results.
1
The sheer quantity and variety of visually-based material on the Internet described as
medieval or as dealing with the Middle Ages suggests not only that people are actively
reimagining the Middle Ages online but also that people are actively searching for it. Probing
examples from present-day media like the Internet emphasizes the question at the heart of this
phenomenon: Why does such an interest in the Middle Ages persist? Furthermore, what can the
variety of present-day medieval appropriations and representations reveal about the relationship
between the past and the present? Even though such questions would be difficult to answer
definitively, this project will explore some of the ways that representations of the medieval past
1
Accessed 16 December 2011. This search tellingly reveals some of the numerous ways we have refashioned
the public encyclopedia Wikipedia, t
culture icon Michael Jackson yields roughly 380 million results.
2
function within present-
obvious visual textuality, widespread popularity, and influence on other media like the Internet
offers a complex medium that has not received much scholarly analysis, this project will
investigate the multifaceted relationship between television and medievalism, or representations
of the medieval past in the present.
Because this project focuses primarily on present-day representations of the medieval
past, it falls squarely within the recent surge of medievalism studies. Even though medievalism
is a slippery term that has been the source of much scholarly debate, one might say that
study of the many ways in which modern society and its popular culture
interacts with, interprets, and both influences and is influenced by the actual history of the
the fields of
medievalism studies and medieval studies differ. Rather than being concerned only with
actualities of the history, literature,
2
medievalism
studies instead attempts to understand the ways that these actualities have been remade over
time. In other words, the emphasis shifts from analyzing medieval culture in its historical context
(medieval studies) to analyzing how medieval culture influences or is used by the present.
The process of investigating medievalisms hinges upon the fundamental notion that the
past is never singular or stable, but is instead continuously recreated and reproduced during each
present moment. A multifaceted medieval past explodes into exponentially diverse medievalist
3
2
there is always an aspect of subjectivity
in scholarship, whether intentional or not. The crux, then, of medieval scholarship is that we must rely on and
interpret cultural artifacts to gain insight into the past. This very act of interpretation thus opens all medieval
scholarship up to skepticism regarding subjectivity. This is not to say that medieval scholarship should be
disregarded because it is inherently subjective, but rather that we must remember that academic inquiry into the
perspective regarding medieval artifacts.
3
to describe something that possesses attributes of medievalism. I refer to those who study the Middle Ages as
3
representations of it in each passing present, where the layers of medievalist reproductions
diverge, converge, and/or build on top of one another to create something that is paradoxically
both old and new. Speaking to this very notion, David Marshall in Mass Market Medieval:
Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture offers that scholars of medievalism should see the
e
generation continues to augment in hopes of paradoxically (re)creating something that is more
. Over time, these
constructions build on top of one another like thick layers of paint so much so that it seems
impossible to get back to the original shade. Consequently, medievalism studies interrogates
these complex, often sedimentary relationships between the actualities of medieval history or
contemporary medieval representations of the Middle Ages through its art, architecture and
literature, and the present-day (re)constructions of these fragmentary, plural pasts.
Of course, the past/present negotiations that drive the study of medievalism are nothing
new. The Romans looked back to the Greeks, medieval thinkers pondered the philosophical and
mythological writings of antiquity, and hosts of generations have combed the Middle Ages for
clues about their origins (Bull 101). Perhaps as medievalism scholar Angela Jane Weisl suggests,
separates itself from that past . . . [reveals a] desire to reinforce comforting, if problematic,
values of the past within the seemingly moder15). If people find
comfort and wisdom in examining the past, then surely this comfort is rooted in the perceived
medievalism studies scholars to maintain
clarity.
4
cyclical nature of history. The idea that historical patterns in culture repeat themselves enables
the present to be grounded in a sense of tradition, even if that tradition has become unpopular.
4
In a broad sense, medievalisms then incorporate both the ways that cultural patterns and
traditions are evoked in new contexts and the motives behind such evocations. Medievalism
studies thus not only questions temporal relationships but also interrogates the presentist
ideologies inborn in these relationships.
Interestingly, this question of the ideologies behind medievalist (re)creations has forced
some (at times uncomfortable) reconsiderations within the field of medieval studies. Works like
The Shock of Medievalism argue that the advent of medievalism scholarship
revealed conservative ideologies hidden within medieval studies dating back to its nascent years
in the nineteenth-century. In suggesting that some present-day medievalists are continuing to
ignore their own motivationsmainly avoiding engagement with critical theory
5
in favor of
romanticizing and thus alienating medieval cultureBiddick alleges that the promulgation of an
artificial temporal separation between the Middle Ages and the present inaccurately reinforces
the notion of a singular, constricting past:
4
racial purity to
Nazi attempts to legitimize their state-sponsored genocide by looking back to the medieval prowess of the Aryans
Medievalism in Europe). This is just one provocative and striking example
of how backwards-looking attempts to ground present-day ideologies in (re)created pasts often look very different
from historical actualities.
5
indictment, many scholarly works have attempted to breach the divide between theory and
medieval studies. In Lacan’s Medievalism, Erin Felicia Labbie explains how medievalism and an engagement with
critical theory (psychoanalysis in this case) can work together to create a larger picture
psychoanalytic developments attributed Lacan back to his personal exposure to medieval stories and scholarship.
Here, Labbie discusses the importance that temporality plays in subject formation:
The speaking subject is always materially bound by way of language to a given historical context.
This means that it cannot be ahistorical in any case; the subject is always situated historically and
culturally . . . The conscious understood as an abstract, conceptual entity, however, is precisely
transhistorical in that it exists in each speaking subject throughout time, whether here is a name for
it, the unconscious, or not. (9)
The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory also provides an extended and
well-researched discussion of the important relationships between medieval studies and theory.
5
-
Middle Ages is suspect. These images mark a desire rigidly to separate past and
present, history and theory, medieval studies and medievalism. They foreclose
exploration of how critical theories might historicize medieval studies, theories
Without taking the necessary step to historicize medieval studies by placing both the medieval
artifact and the present-day effort to interpret it within their respective contexts, medieval studies
would be doomed to continue to falsify or ignore the temporal relationships at the heart of our
cultural obsession with the Middle Ages. Because, as Eco argues,
through both scholarly
investigation and popular reimagining
understand our present state of health, asks us about our childhood, or in the same way that the
psychoanalyst, to understand our present neuroses, makes a careful investigation of the primal
65). The temporal pull between the past and the present is the very thing that continues
to draw our attention to the Middle Ages, and thus medievalist impulses within academia should
be recognized as an integral and unavoidable part of medieval studies. In other words, scholars
of medieval culture should recognize that they too are in the business of recreating, and to some
extent, reimagining the medieval past. Medievalism studies and medieval studies necessarily go
hand in hand.
As part of the effort to historicize the fields of medieval studies and medievalism studies,
scholars must ask themselves what they want from the past.
6
If one ignores her motivations, even
in academic inquiry, then she ignores a crucial component of her research that would effectively
6
Questions of ideology are especially important as medieval scholars continue to test conservative academic
boundaries by researching new areas like queer studies and disability studies
medieval queer studies have on presen
6
and appropriately acknowledge temporal tensions. Medieval studies, after all, deals with
fragments of the past that scholars revisit at different points in the present. Some of the most
effective medieval scholarship bridges the gap between past and present by being honest about
critical motives.
7
In exploring the temporal dialectic between cultural studies and what they term
medievalism scholars Eileen Joy and Myra Seaman rightly assert
that
overly contemporary sensibilities, but rather to bring the past and present into creative tension
aptly describes the temporal pull at the heart of
medievalism. Because, as Tison Pugh argues in Queer Movie Medievalisms,
other periods find cultural parallels in both the Middle Ages and medievalist reproductions from
the Renaissance onward (12). The study of medievalism, for example, should be not limited to
Victorian interpretations of Chaucer but should also explore how present-day interpretations of
Chauce
metaphor, it can often be difficult to differentiate one addition to the medieval edifice from
another when the architectural styles are so similar. However, in seeing the multitude of
medievalist productions as a whole of parts, rather than parts of a whole, we can begin to
understand how the steady recycling of medieval and medievalist elements within our cultural
memory work both to satiate and to stimulate our desires for more medievalist productions.
7
Carolyn comes to mind as an
exemplar. Dinshaw opens the article by recalling a provocative 1990s Vanity Fair magazine cover featuring Cindy
Crawford shaving k.d. lang. Dinshaw goes on to discuss how this present-day
of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner in
Canterbury Tales.
7
The study of medievalisms then has much to offer, but even amidst its growing
popularity within the last thirty years,
8
many scholars still seem to be arguing their case for
legitimacy. Bettina Bildhauer, who has written widely on both medieval studies and medievalism
studies, medievalism is unfairly seen as derivative and as less noteworthy than the
(14). reinforces canonical
assumptions in other areas of literary studies because, as some have argued, at least one facet of
a medievalist project is deemed One might see ClaWomen
Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism or Jennifer A. Palmgren and Loretta M.
Beyond Arthurian Romances: the Reach of Victorian Medievalism as underscoring a
distinct division between acceptable objects of academic interestthose objects that are of
interest in their own right to academics beyond any medievalist inclinationsand those
Projects examining medievalist undercurrents in the likes of
Tennyson or Scott allow for the analysis of these romanticizations of the past while researching
within the comfortable space of canonical tradition.
9
The fear of academic legitimacy (and
perhaps funding) seems to have hindered the growth and acceptance of medievalism studies. Yet
restricting the study of medievalism to a few highbrow authors would effectively ignore one of
the most exciting and illuminating area of study: popular culture medievalisms.
10
8
For example, The International Society for the Study of Medievalism, established by Leslie J. Workman in 1979,
publishes a journal (Studies in Medievalism) and an annual bibliography (The Year’s Work in Medievalism), holds
The International Conference on Medievalism, and sponsors sessions at both the International Congresses on
Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo) and the International Medieval Congress (Leeds).
9
These studies do, of course, have immense scholarly value in and of themselves because they analyze earlier forms
of medievalism. At the same time, they only emphasize the high culture-low culture divide.
10
The term popular culture is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary designating forms of art, music, or
culture with general appeal; intended primarily
include forms of culture that both incorporate medieval materials and appeal to general populations.
8
As Marshall explains in Mass Market Medieval, academia tends to look down its nose at
inquiry:
Under this stigma, examining pop cultural appropriations of the medieval is
reduced to analysis o
scholar studying a pastiche, a hodge-podge representation that has neither a real
connection to the past nor any clear bearing on the present. In this way, the high-
culture/low-culture divide becomes redefined in terms of chronology . . . the
Middle Ages stands in for high culture, while pop cultural uses of it are positioned
as low, and hence unworthy of serious examination on an academic level. (5)
Although many pop culture medievalisms could be accurately described as simulacra, this does
not mean they should be ignored as Marshall believes Jameson is suggesting; rather, the unique
position of pop culture medievalismsbeyond academic, highbrow appropriations of medieval
cultureallows for fresh investigations of past/present relationships. While conceding the
necessary separation from observing subject (scholar) and object of observation (cultural
artifact), medieval studies scholar -
statu
transmission and dissemination of the representations of history within the general population.
tive curiosity that
makes it is one of the ways in which we practice thinking about
, and other proponents of the
academic study of pop culture medievalisms, one of the most obvious reservoirs of medievalist
appropriations in present-day popular culture can be found in the study of media like cinema,
9
print media like magazines, the Internet, and television. Since scholars have been predominantly
preoccupied with cinematic iterations of pop culture medievalisms a brief discussion of it will
provide a foundation for the forthcoming explorations of medievalisms on television.
MEDIEVALISM AND CINEMA
y the heritage of the past
not through hibernation rather through a constant retranslation and reuse . . . balanced
pop culture productions available to scholarly inquiry outside of literature
retranslations and reuses of the Middle Ages have become a growing area of academic interest.
11
Because
recent medievalist cinema studies will provide a helpful theoretical framework for the
considerations of medievalist television to follow.
While studies of medievalist cinema have been cropping up since the 1970s, perhaps in
conjunction with the increasing interest in cinema in general, the last ten years have been a
particularly fruitful period. Of recent publications, most studies fall within two general
categories: those concerned with the historical accuracy of cinematic medievalisms and those
concerned with the relationship between cinema theory and medievalisms. This first area of
cinematic medievalist scholarship Middle Ages from
on how
can make us think long and hard about our lives in comparison to those of
, a specialist in medievalist cinema, suggests
11
-demic findings become repackaged for mainstream audiences,
interest in medievalist cinema has become so pervasive that Wikipedia even .
10
that cinematic medievalisms are
Ages as a temporal Other while compulsively retooling imagined continuities to fit the rapidly
changing priorities Movie Medievalism 5). In this sense, tracing the
historical accuracy of medievalist representations in cinema attempts to locate the medieval
edifice underneath the present-day cinematic embellishments to demonstrate how the present has
remade the pastThe Medieval Hero on Screen or John
A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film evaluate the relationships between
medieval culture and medievalist cinema in effort to theorize how popular culture has (often
badly) reinvented the past.
While this brand of medievalism scholarship certainly makes some exciting connections
between pop culture recreations and medieval culture, it typically treats the medieval past as
static while the emphasizing the transformative power of the modern (re)interpretations. But this
sort of scholarship often fails to recognize present shares with the
past; the Middle Ages should not be treated as decaying remnants of times gone by, but rather as
living history that continues to impact the present and the future. Indeed, as Bildhauer argues,
ely not to reduce it to an allegory for the present, as
either rather
than focusing on how the present uses the past for its own ends, we should also evaluate how
kernels of medievalness necessarily continue to affect the ways they are reimagined through
cultural memory. What is it, for example, about the medieval notion of a knight that continuously
draws presentist attention and catalyzes its recycling in medievalist reproductions?
11
more consistent use of the tools of film theory and formal fi,
into medieval studies can
reveal the presence of ideological undercurrents in scholarship, using the tools of film theory can
refocus the scholarly interest of cinematic medievalism onto the relationship between form and
function in these medievalist productions. A medievalist film, just like medieval scholarship,
(re)constructs the medieval past, but it does so in a uniquely audio-visual way. Medievalist
cinema
these audio-visual reconstructions expose the cultural value of medievalism and its
creative temporal tension:
Nothing medieval in a movie is an aesthetic given, passive, inert; everything is
constructed, if only by the decision to point the camera at it. Therefore everything
medieval about a movie can be useful in understanding how, through cultural
memory, we construct our view of the Middle Ages. It is not necessary to ferret
out particular anachronisms in a medieval movie in order to demonstrate that it is
not faultlessly authentic, because by definition the entire film is an anachronism.
(92)
Because medievalist cinema is necessarily anachronistic, authenticity should be of little
importance. The Middle Ages ended hundreds of years ago, so any (re)creation of them is
necessarily anachronistic. At the same time, this does not mean that the medieval sources that
perhaps inspired these audio-visual reimaginings should be ignored for, after all, these markers
are recreated by medievalist cinema. Instead, kernels of authentic
medievalness as well as anachronisms should both be evaluated within the cinematic context so
12
This second strain of medievalist cinema studies is perhaps best represented by Andrew
Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the
Medieval World. By applying some innovative ideas regarding cultural reproductions of the
Middle Ages put forth by François Amy de la Bretèque in L'Imaginaire médiéval dans le cinéma
occidental, Elliott presents some of the most refreshing scholarship regarding medievalist cinema
in recent memory
the present is bridged by two modes of representation: iconic and paradigmatic. Broadly, each
mode of representation looks to what a material
source of medieval culture (the kernel of medievalness) into which a film can tap to (re)create a
perspective on the Middle Ages.
12
sta
mode of representation, the audience viewing Brian HelgelandA Knight’s Tale understands
that William (Heath Ledger) is a knight because he wears armor, rides a horse, and competes in
jousting tournaments (just as knights depicted in other medieval settings).
horizontally, by assimilating its form to other, more recognizable and familiar mo(Elliott
3). Whereas iconic representations of the Middle Ages are necessarily conservative in nature
because they look back to older representations of medieval culture, paradigmatic representations
provide more leeway for new medievalist interpretations. They provide present-day audiences
with metaphoric connections between the past and the present. As Elliott puts it, paradigmatic
uivalent (or, at best, an
12
Medieval referents might include medieval literature, art, architecture, historical chronicles, or other remnants of
medieval culture. This notion does somewhat problematically collapse boundaries between the reality of the Middle
-
holistically, whether in words or images, this collapsing has little effect on the reimagining of medievalness in
medievalisms.
13
approximation) structural relationships of the Middle Ages are brought forward into
the present, and re--4). In A Knight’s Tale, for example,
paradigmatic representations of the Middle Ages reach their peak during the anachronistic
jousting tournament scenes. Although the tournaments in which William competes appear to be
more of a Renaissance festival/modern football game hybrid than an accurate representation of a
historical joust, present-day audiences can perhaps more easily understand what the atmosphere
of such a joust was like by including present-day attributes such as a jock jams soundtrack and
vendors hawking turkey legs in the jousting stadium than if the director had consulted a hoard of
of representation work toward bringing the past and present into creative tension with one
another, the examples from A Knight’s Tale underscore crucial differences. Ultimately, iconic
representations are concerned more with historical continuitycinematic elements that spark the
while paradigmatic representations allow for creative
anachronismcinematic elements that directly yet metaphorically link the past to the present
and vice versa.
cinema specifically, extending this taxonomy to other medievalist cultural productions proves
valuable in beginning to locate the ideological underpinnings that drive pop culture
medievalisms. In particular, I would like to use
as an evaluative tool for exploring the fertile yet heretofore unharvested medievalist territory of
television programming. Like medievalist cinema, medievalist television incorporates a host of
iconic and paradigmatic representations of the Middle Ages that suggest a cultural obsession
with the past and provide an audio-visual platform for a range of present-day ideological
14
negotiations. Unlike medievalist cinema, the prevalence and popularity of serialized television
programs offers a unique opportunity to evaluate how these audio-visual medievalisms play out
in different narrative forms.
MEDIEVALISM AND TELEVISION
Although many scholars have analyzed medievalism and cinema, medievalism and
television remains virtually untouched by academiaoreword to Cultural
Studies of the Modern Middle Ages is one of a rare few publications to focus on the academic
The deep connections between medieval cultur
reality are not so whimsical or overstrained as the idea may at first appear. All
technologies serve basic and permanent human needs, and technologies of
communication serve our needs for expression, connection, influence, and
meaning. From this perspective, TV stands in an intelligible sequence with
writing, visual iconography and public art, heraldry, printed books, and
regularized postal systems. The startling juxtaposition of televised narrative with
hand-copied and read aloud medieval narrative can direct our attention even more
sharply to the permanent needs and capacities of the human mind to channel its
desires by retaining and reassembling images and information. Technologies only
serve to play out, but never resolve, the tension between reality and desire. (xiii)
-copied and
aims to explore what happens when medievalisms
meet television. I will argue that medievalist television, like medievalist cinema, should be paid
15
more scholarly attention because it can reveal how cultural desires for the past are mapped onto
present-day media productions. Rather than present some all-encompassing (and unnecessarily
essentializing) theoretical framework onto which one could map all of various
medievalisms, I have chosen instead to provide three case studies of televisions programs to
narrative diversity within the serialized program format and the variety of
medievalisms these programs (re)construct.
Much like arguments made in favor of the value of studying medievalisms thirty years
ago, the potential fruitfulness in tracing interconnectivity between theory and medievalism
twenty years ago, or the seemingly endless possibilities in exploring medievalist cinema ten
years ago, the study of medievalism and television is a worthwhile endeavor because it can
further reveal present-day ideologies. In the present case, the longstanding belief that television
has relegated it, like cinema before it, to the realm of
part-time, armchair scholarship. Even today with the growth of cultural studies as a serious
academic discipline that has effectively widened the scope of scholarly interests, television has
yet to receive the serious scholarly explorations it deserves. As television critic Jason Mittell
suggests, unlike literature or film, television rarely has pretensions toward high aesthetic value,
[thus] making it problematic to consider television using the same aesthetic tools designed for
high literatuelevision, despite ,
be evaluated. In fact, Mimi White, a scholar interested in the ideological analysis of television,
suggests that because television occupies such a prominent position in contemporary social life
with its ever-present and far-reaching influence, scholars need to evaluate it:
It is thus clearly important to subject [television] to ideological investigation.
This is especially the case as the expansion of cable and other alternative choices
16
to network and broadcast programming proliferate and fragment the audience,
offering a wider range of programming but also reduplicating much of what
already exists. (196)
Like White, I am arguing for an ideological investigation of television, specifically how and why
as simulacra on television programs.
Yet, how does such an investigation differ from similar medievalist cinema projects? To answer
this question, one first needs to assess the major difference between cinema and television.
In Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Pop Culture is Making Us Smarter,
that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator
standards, . . . the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually
demonstrates
popularized by daytime soap opera programming actually requires progressively demanding
keeping often densely interwoven
plotlines distinct in [her] head as [she] watch[es] . . . [while] making sense of information that
has been either deliberately withheld or deliberately left obscur
progressively complex mode of narrative on television, Alan Kirby notes in Digimodernism:
How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture that TV
program formatting has increasingly become oriented toward serialization
13
nobody cares that the Canterbury Tales
13
Both Johnson and Kirby note that serialization, or the continuance of a narrative from one episode to the next, was
originally developed by the daytime soap opera. Serialization is a distinct mode of TV narrative different from the
popular sitcom format, which has historically been more popular during primetime programming. John and Kirby
also suggest that serialization has become more pop
influence.
17
programming is that the narrative continues into the next episode (163). metaphor is
most apropos for the present considerations of the relationships between medievalism and
television because just as readers of Canterbury Tales become absorbed in and somewhat
-within-frame narrative structure, so too do viewers of serialized
television. As the old saying goes, it is not the destination, but the journey that really matters.
Serialized television provides an extended journey more or less for the sake of simply taking a
trip (or pilgrimage).
14
Thus, the major difference in terms of format between cinema and most television
programming is the serialization of TV, and consequently, this serialization affects television
medievalisms.
narrative questions are answered by the resolution to provide a sense of closure for the audience,
the that populate television programming remain just that: open;
problems, mysteries might remain unsettled or resolutions might provoke still further questions,
lies in its possibilities (Allen 107). Similar to a serialized Victorian novel, serial television
programs face particular genre dilemmas. As television scholar Sarah Kozloff argues in
must bring up to date viewers who do not usually
watch the show or who have missed an episodeenough viewer interest
and involvement to survive their hiatu91). Serial television programs can
mediate these situations in a number ways, which include but are not limited to cliffhanger
endings, interconnected subplots, flashbacks, and dreams. In theory, the open narratives of serial
14
For the sake of simplicity, I have chosen to limit my inquiry of medievalist television to serialized television
programs. However, this does not mean that other forms of television do not exhibit medievalism. Joy, Seaman, Bell
Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages actually features two chapters that briefly explore
medievalism in reality TV shows like Survivor. Hopefully, more scholarship dealing with medievalist television will
appear within the next few years to continue to fill this gap.
18
television could continue infinitely, creating exponentially interwoven storylines and character
relationships. This potentiality for openness positions medievalist television in particular as a
unique cultural production within the field of medievalism because it inherently calls into
question the continuity, accuracy, ic and paradigmatic
representations in ways that the closed narratives of medievalist cinema cannot. A feature-length
medievalist film might provide audiences with two hours of iconic and paradigmatic
representations whereas one season of a serial medievalist television program might provide
twelve hours of such representations. The extended narrative format of serial television offers
those interested in the study of medievalism with an opportunity to investigate how
representations of the medieval past function over a period of time as these representations unfurl
over weeks, months and even years of programming.
Although the complexity and breadth of serial television narratives provides a wealth of
research possibilities for the field of medievalism studies, analyzing these narratives can become
complicated. TMichael Porter,
Deborah Larson, Allison Harthcock, and Kelly Berg Nellis in
offers an exciting opportunity for limiting the scope
of serial television narratives in a useable way so that the narrative function of a scene becomes
the unit of analysis applicable to the program as a whole. Porter, Larson, Harthcock and Berg
identifies specific, discrete narrative functions within a scene
that show how those scenes adv
function/purpose of this scene for the tell
function of a television major
event iinteresting but not
19
necessarily vital information for the story to move forwa(25). The primary distinction
between a kernel scene and a satellite scene lies in their respective importance to the logic of the
event would no longer bear weight on
the story; the removal of a satellite scene would not cause such a change because its functions on
the levels of background information and character development. Although it provides this
helpful distinction, the Scene Function Model also allows the exploration of multiple layers of
meaning in a single scenehow a scene can function as both a kernel and a satellite. Depending
on the characters within a given scene, their relationships to one another, and their relationships
to the story arc in general, the function of one scene can differ drastically from another in terms
of both character development and/or narrative development.
15
ene
representational schema, enable us to explore the complex relationships between the narrative
content and form, and the audio-edievalisms. Within
medievalist television programming, these narrative tools further accentuate medievalist
representations (iconic and/or paradigmatic) and their relationships with their medieval referents
and their presentist contexts because serialization requires a consistent recreation of the
medievalist representations over the course of the program. Further, because each serial
television program uses different narrative strategies to maintain an open, continuative narrative,
the continuity of the medievalist representations of each program fluctuate. Unlike most
medievalist cinema, the form of medievalist television greatly impacts its medievalisms and their
15
Indeed, Porter, Larson, Harthcock, and Berg Nellis outline six essential functions of a kernel scene and twelve
functions of a satellite scene. Using this model of scene functionality allows for greater flexibility when analyzing
relational patterns of representation, characterization, and plot.
20
functions within the narrative. Thus, the interplay between medievalist representations and
modes of serialization is the key toward theorizing television medievalisms.
In effort to consider these two important evaluative components of serialized television,
the following chapters examine three of the most recent popular medievalist television programs
in two distinct ways. First
elationship with the
Comparative analysis between these medievalist programs and medieval referents like medieval
literary and historical texts provide a more complex perspective on these representations.
Ultimately, questions of medievalist representations present in these television programs ask
Literary? Fantastical? Or something
different?
Second, by mapping the interplay between iconic and/or paradigmatic medievalist
or the ways
by using the Scene Function
Model, I hope to offer a more complex picture of medievalist
television and its purposes. Specifically, I am interested in how narrative strategies in a
miniseries, a serialized program with a limited medievalist storyline that waxes and wanes yet is
always present, and an entirely medievalist serialized program respectively affect representations
of the Middle Ages. I argue that the mode of serialization
directly bears on both the functionality of the scene and the medievalisms contained by it.
Chapter 1 focuses on the 2010 Starz eight-part miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, based
on the Ken Follett novel of the same name. I have decided to begin with this miniseries for two
21
reasons. First, The Pillars of the Earth is the most-historically rooted of the three television
programs that I evaluate; as such, the iconic medieval referents are easy to discern. Because the
miniseries plays with representations of the medieval church and clergy, chapter 1 will explore
Canterbury Tales to flesh out prominent
medieval referents like cathedrals, relics, and clerical garb. Second, because I am proposing a
theory of evaluative criteria that differs from medievalist cinema studies, I have chosen to begin
with a miniseries because it is the form of television most closely related to the closed narrative
structure of cinema. This medievalist miniseries will provide the point of differentiation between
medievalist cinema and medievalist television through its closed narrative structure from which
the remaining chapters will develop their explorations of serialized television narratives. In
ideological terms, the iconic medievalisms of The Pillars of the Earth suggests a cultural desire
for the (re)affirmation of Christian morality over canonical traditionalism.
True Blood. Even though the series, which deals primarily
with the relationships between supernatural beings like vampires, shape shifters, and werewolves
in present-day Louisiana, is not as overtly medievalist as The Pillars of the Earth, I have selected
this program for the very reason that its medievalisms are serialized in the form of a limited
medievalist narrative. Rather than presenting audiences with an entirely medievalist narrative, a
program with a limited medievalist narrative features concentrated pockets of medievalist
representations that then cause us to think of the past resurrected in the program as a whole.
Although True Blood does feature several medievalist storylines worth evaluating, chapter 2
explores the interplay between iconic and paradigmatic medieval representations in the form of
flashbacks that provide background for the suggestively named vampire Viking Eric Northman.
These flashbacks, which occur over several episodes, attempt to historicize Eric by obviously
22
and repeatedly rooting his character in the Norse tradition of the blood feud. At the same time,
homoerotic paradigmatic representations queer the traditional notion of the blood feud and reveal
True Blood-ideologies at work.
Lastly, chapter 3 provides an extension of the first two
Game of Thrones, a series that pushes medievalist television into new territory. Unlike The
Pillars of the Earth and True Blood, Game of Thrones reimagines a fantastical medieval world
full of ambiguously medieval characters. Because the entire series combines vague visual
references to other medievalisms with faintly recognizable medieval referents, chapter 3 explores
paradigmatic representations of medieval culture. Further, I argue that because
this parallel universe appears to be based on medieval culture yet does not showcase its medieval
referents as do The Pillars of the Earth or True Blood, Game of Thrones should be categorized as
a neomedievalist television series. I propose that because neomedievalism reinterprets other
medievalist interpretations of the past to create a new mythical Middle Ages, it belongs within
the postmodern notion of bricolage. This hodge-podge effect permeates many neomedievalist
productions, and thus represents a new and exciting area for scholarly investigation of pop
culture medievalisms.
efforts to explore the relationships between medievalism and television
represent one more attempt at trying to understand why people continue to return to and
(re)imagine the Middle Ages. As Eco wisely asserts, our reference point for the Middle Ages
reveals The serialized (re)production of pop culture
medievalisms on television reveals that we may just dream of a never-ending Middle Ages full
of narrative possibilities.
23
II. THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF ICONIC
REPRESENTATIONS OF MEDIVAL PIETY IN THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH
The tagline for the 2010 Starz medievalist miniseries The Pillars of the Earth
capitalizes on what StepMisconceptions about the
Middle Ages describes as one of the most popular misconceptions about medieval Christianity:
In the popular imagination, the medieval church was populated by fat monks
given to luxurious living, sinister popes who sought to control a superstitious laity
by keeping them ignorant of the true tenets of Christianity, and a corrupted
clergy who enriched themselves by exacting tithes from impoverished peasants
and extorting indulgence money from misguided believers. (31)
The persistent myth of medieval religion as is perhaps rooted in the
Protestant Reformation and the
Renaissance that figured medieval Christians (and the Catholic Church) as uneducated,
ingenuous, and ideologically suspect. Although numerous scholarly projects have successfully
argued that medieval piety and religious institutions cannot be described accurately in such
homogenous and stereotypical terms,
16
the popular stereotype of monolithic medieval religious
practice continues to be exploited by popular medievalisms like The Pillars of the Earth.
17
In
16
The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 or almost any
of the texts in Medieval Popular Religion: A Reader can attest to the heterodoxy of medieval
Christianity.
17
Misconception and skepticism exists within the academy as well. As medieval studies scholar Helen Cooper
-
of scholarly skepticism (xi). This skepticism appears to be aimed particularly pointedly at the less tangible aspects of
medieval pietymiracles, visions, saint cults, and mystics. For example, scholarly projects like Kroll and
24
particular, this miniseries focuses on the construction of the false monolithic icons of medieval
pietythe cathedral, the relic, and the symbolic vestments of the clergyso that it can
deconstruct them during the course of the narrative. While inaccurate in terms of historical
reality, the deconstruction of these iconic representations ironically mirrors the heterodoxy that
medieval religious scholarship has uncovered. The scenes featuring these iconic representations
of the cathedral, the relic, and the symbolism of clerical vestments notably serve singular
narrative functions as kernel scenes to reinscribe The Pillars of the Earth
own medievalisms. The of these scenes within the extended yet still
closed narrative form of the miniseries highlights the , by extension,
its dependence on iconic representations of medieval piety. Because the miniseries only has eight
episodes to develop this construction/deconstruction, it does not have the same narrative luxuries
as open-ended serial programs like True Blood and Game of Thrones to develop paradigmatic
representations over a longer story arc through the potentiality of satellite scenes becoming
kernel scenes over time. The miniseries demands that each scene further its narrative. Ultimately,
tdieval piety serve as straw men that it can knock
down both though representation and narrative in order to bring the past to bear on present-day
notions of religion.
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH: A MEDIEVALIST MINISERIES
By beginning with the miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, this project will continue to
discuss increasingly open, serialized narrative structures in two other medievalist television
programs, True Blood and Game of Thrones, to explore the ways that different modes of
The Mystic Mind: The Psychology of Medieval Mystics and Ascetics attempt to use rationality and
mental illness to explain such phenomena.
25
serialization impact medievalist representations on television. Within the context of the
open/closed narrative theory, the miniseries provides a bridge in form from a feature-length film,
which presumably presents a beginning, middle and end in traditional closed narrative style,
21
and the open narrative represented by the serial television program, which in theory, may never
end. Although medievalist television differs from medievalist film primarily because the
miniseries develops episodically, both medievalist films and miniseries are closed narratives by
nature. Accordingly, the miniseries
action and characterization of the narrative embodied in each scene must be contained within the
narrative and logically gesture toward closure. At the same time, as its name suggests, the
miniseries does have more narrative space to develop its story. Because each iconic scene serves
a narratively important role as a kernel scene from which some future narrative consequences
will develop, the narrative structure of the miniseries reinforces the notion that these icons
themselves are crucial to the story. Moreover, the predominance of the iconic representation-as-
kernel-scene model further (de)constructs
these icons of medieval piety. Within a closed narrative, each iconic representation must
construct the icons as static (orthodoxywhat the audience might expect to see, even if
anachronistic) while also planting the seeds of the icons deconstruction (heterodoxywhat the
audience wants to see) so that the narrative fully
develops within its given space and comes to a conclusion. By incorporating the Scene Function
The Pillars of the Earth
medievalisms, we can more easily locate the presentist religious ideological negotiations that
21
Obviously, not all films are closed narratives, but film narratology is beyond the scope of this project.
26
The following summary
of the miniseries, which this chapter will discuss in detail later, demonstrates how The Pillars of
the Earth functions as a closed narrative.
The Pillars of the Earth follows the story of Tom Builder, a master mason whose
ambition is to design and build a cathedral grander than any seen before. Unable to find work,
Tom moves his family to Kingsbridge
fortuitously) burns the night before they are to move on to the next town. Tom seizes the
opportunity to present his designs for a new cathedral to the newly appointed prior, Philip, who
also wishes to build a cathedral that will glorify God and bring more worshippers by creating a
new, grander shrine for the reliquary of St. Adolphus, their adopted local saint.
22
Tom, along
with his son Alfred and adopted son, Jack Jackson, begin work on the new cathedral. All of this
-twelfth
century.
23
force Empress Maud
24
and her supporters to France. Because Stephen has the support of the
Church, namely the Archbishop of Canterbury and the scheming, ambitious Archdeacon of
Shiring, Waleran Bigod,
25
he ultimately controls England as king. During the course of the story,
the political unrest combined with , and
Jack Jackson interfere with the construction of the new Kingsbridge Cathedral. Ultimately, Jack
22
No explanation is offered as to why St. Adolphus is the adopted local saint of Kingsbridge other than the fact that
23
The Anarchy (1135-1153) is a term commonly attributed to the period of civil war over the succession of Henry I.
only legitimate (male) heir died in a mysterious shipwreck (White Ship
was ousted by Stephen of Blois, a grandson of William I. The Anarchy ended when Stephen agreed to recognize
England under the Norman and Angevin
Kings, 1075-1225 provides a helpful timeline for this period.
24
25
While Waleran Bigod is a fictitious character, his name certainly recalls Hugh Bigod, an English nobleman of the
same period who continually changed allegiances over the course of the conflict between Stephen and Matilda. Marc
The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century
through later English history.
27
is able to bring back a miraculous relic from Francea statue of the Virgin Mary that weeps real
tearsso that the priory can raise enough money to pay for the remaining construction costs
through the offerings brought in by pilgrims. As Waleran tries one final time to halt the
construction of the cathedral with an erroneous heresy and murder trial of Jack, now master
builder, Waleran is exposed as the orchestrator of the White Ship disaster, which plunged
England into civil war. As the mob of angry citizens challenge Waleran, he desperately climbs
the near-complete Kingsbridge Cathedral, ultimately choosing to fall from the height of the
outstretched hand and the punishment that surely awaits him.
This brief synopsis suggests a wealth of possible points of inquiry, but an exhaustive
evaluation of all medieval referents and medievalist topi within the miniseries exceeds the
boundaries of this project. Thus, the following discussion focuses on
(de)construction of the three religious icons prominently positioned within the narrative of The
Pillars of the Earth: the cathedral itself and the economics surrounding cathedral building, the
role of saintly relics within the cathedral community, and the divergent characterization of the
clergy through their sartorial representations. These elements play important roles in the closed
narrative of the miniseries because they work to bring the programstory to a definitive
conclusion by functioning specifically a kernel scenes within the narrative. Each iconic-
representation-as-kernel-scene directly affects, or at least as the potential to affect, the broader
narrative. Furthermore, as the following discussion will demonstrate, these iconic representations
allow The Pillars of the Earth to tear down its own constructions of monolithic medieval piety
and questions distribution of power, spiritual practice, and sincerity of belief within present-day
religion.
28
CATHEDRALS, SAINTLY RELICS, AND CLERICAL COSTUMING: THE
(DE)CONSTRUCTION OF ICONIC REPRESENTATIONS OF MEDIVAL PIETY
The (de)construction of The Pillars of the Earth
pietythe cathedralappropriately centers on its literal construction. The material development
of Kingsbridge Cathedral drives much of the narrative, providing both the backdrop for many
scenes and the motivation for many of the characters. Even though it may be tempting to label
these construction scenes as satellites because they appear to function as setting, in reality their
importance to the narrative
secures them as kernel scenes. Thus, the scene functionality directly influences both the
medieval cathedral as superficially static in its meaning and
its attempts to reclaim the cathedral as a site of social conflict. But how does such
(de)construction actually work within the miniseries?
Once again, the narrative operationalizes the literal construction of the Kingsbridge
Cathedral in order to question distributions of power within the church community. First, The
Pillars of the Earth uses the iconic representations of the cathedral as a literal monolith to
suggest its symbolism of orthodox medieval piety that the narrative later works to undermine.
Specifically, The Pillars of the Earth presents the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral as
architecturally reminiscent of Salisbury Cathedral and Wells Cathedral, two of
famous great churches (see Figs. 1 and 2).
28
Importantly, Kingsbridge Cathedral architectural
reference to Salisbury and Wells reads as an attempt to historicize the fictional construction
because the miniseries sets its church building during the same period that witnessed the
overhaul of the both real cathedrals. The iconic representation of such architectural similarity
28
structure with larger windows. Like the architecture of the Salisbury Cathedral, such a construction would have
The Pillars of the
Earth
29
serves to legitimize the other historical details of the narrative like the advent of gargoyles,
flying buttresses, and stained glass windows wrapped up within the narrative.
29
By locating the
architectural facet of The Pillars of the Earth within real historical developments and authentic
medieval cathedrals, these medievalist representations align the fiction of the narrative with the
Just as one could go see Wells Cathedral or Salisbury Cathedral
today, The Pillars of the Earth seems to suggest that Kingsbridge Cathedral, if it were real,
would also remain standing as a testament of the structures durability and the lasting influence
of the Church.
Figures 1 and 2: Opening Credits for The Pillars of the Earth and Wells Cathedral, Somerset, England. A
comparison between the opening credits of The Pillars of the Earth featuring the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral
and Wells Cathedral reveals striking architectural similarities. Also, note the emphasis the credit-looking
perspective places on the magnitude of the Kingsbridge Cathedral.
In addition to the architectural references linking Kingsbridge to real cathedrals, the
frequent low camera angles used to depict the Kingsbridge Cathedral
, just as an observer of a real
cathedral would experience (see Fig. 1). These visual cues tap into the notion of cathedral-as-
29
The Pillars of the Earth does reimagine architectural hist
perhaps the two most prominent elements of Gothic cathedrals: the flying buttress and the gargoyle. Even though
this obvious falsification of history may remind viewers that the miniseries they are watch is fictional, it nonetheless
incorporates important developments in cathedral architecture during the Middle Ages. Toward the end of the
miniseries, Kingsbridge Cathedral also displays stained glass windows.
30
-day observer, the medieval cathedral
stands as a testament to perdurability. Not only do many of these structures provide Europe with
a physical reminder of its medieval past but they also stand as monuments of the medieval
architectural histori
restful view, disclosing the structure of the whole. On the contrary, it compels the spectator to be
constantly changing his viewpoint and permits him to gain a picture of the whole only through
the entire cathedral at once reveals how the cathedral can function
as an icon of monolithic medieval piety. Because cathedrals are so physically impressive, they
loom largely in the popular imagination as symbols of the unified authority of the Church that
cannot be overcome. By referencing the symbolic physicality and the lasting historical impact of
cathedrals, The Pillars of the Earth constructs the iconic cathedral as representative of a unified,
authoritarian medieval church that the rest of the narrative attempts to deconstruct.
The deconstruction of medieval church authority, like its symbolic construction, hinges
upon the building of the Kingsbridge Cathedral. Importantly, the fictional cathedral remains
unfinished until the end of the narrative, suggesting that it has yet to become an iconic symbol of
the authoritarian church. Essentially, by emphasizing the unfinished nature of the cathedral, the
narrative provides a liminal space in which it can disrupt the notion that all cathedrals stand as
monuments to some long-entrenched religious institution. Obviously, cathedrals have long
represented a variety of things to diverse communities of people beyond the power of the Church
prowess (or excess). According to historian Christopher Brooke, the majority of cathedral
31
twin symbols of Norman domination [were the] castle and cathedral; the castle to reveal the
the Norman conquest, the (re)construction of cathedrals not only represented glorifying God but
also was a constant reminder of who was in power and who contr
strings.
32
demonstrates that, contrary to the master narrative The Pillars of the
Earth constructs, the medieval cathedral building boom was more complex than just the Church
flexing its muscles.
The cathedral of Kingsbridge too evokes more complexity in The Pillars of the Earth
than the monolithic notion of Church authority the miniseries constructs through its visual
architectural references.
33
The ebbs and flows in the construction of the Kingsbridge cathedral
due to political intrusions of the civil war unite all of the different narrative threads and
effectively reinforce the notion that cathedral construction was a long and sometimes erratic
process. Most notably,
of an all-powerful medieval church because the narrative repeatedly develops scenes during
which the laity band together against stereotypical corrupt clergyman (Waleran) or evil nobility
(the Hamlieghs) to keep construction on the cathedral going.
34
The obstacles that stand in the
provide narrative interest, but more importantly, they allow
the resultant (successful) community involvement to deconstruct the notion of Church authority
32
This notion of cathedrals representing secular power sanctified by God takes on further significance during the
reign of Henry VIII, for in establishing the Church of England, he authorized the defacing and (in some cases)
destruction of a number of cathedrals across England.
33
-as-medievalism metaphor I
discussed in the introduction. Like the castle, cathedrals too represent the ways that culture augments the medieval
past often by significantly changing it or covering it up.
34
corrupt and self-serving. At first, he wants to keep Kingsbridge from being rebuilt so as to keep funds for a new
palace for his bishopric, but his personal vendettas against several characters involved in the construction of the
cathedral eventually becomes the sole reason for interloping.
32
by suggesting that cathedral construction was a (proto) grassroots movement that developed from
some community desire for a cathedral rather than from top-down clerical command. For
example, in episode 4, the townspeople of Kingsbridge and neighboring Shiring band together
because King Stephen is planning a visit, and based on the progress, he will decide whether to
give the priory access to the local quarry for the stones they will need to keep building. Hundreds
of people arrive at the construction site to make it look like the building is coming along faster
than anticipated. In another example from episode 7, the townspeople work together to construct
a wall to keep invading noblemen from attacking their market at the behest of Bishop Waleran.
The profits from the market feed the continual construction of the cathedral, so Waleran
figures a fire will halt construction. Instead, the townspeople repel the noblemen, allowing the
market to continue.
Even though modern audiences might find such solidarity to be quaint or fantastical and
certainly inspired by economic or security issues, historical evidence suggests that lay people
were occasionally and spontaneously inspired to arduous divine labor. In a letter dating from
1145, Haimon, the abbot of St. Pierre-sur-
movement of lay people hauling stones from the quarries of Bercheres--
site of Chartres
people where inspired to work by their extreme piety, or as in the case of The Pillars of the
Earth, lured by the promise of indulgences and monies from the market, stories like Haim
remind present-day observers that the cathedrals still standing today were not only built by the
laity but also desired by them. By using the cathedral as an iconic medievalist representation,
The Pillars of the Earth (de)constructs the notion of monolithic Church authority in the Middle
Ages. Somewhat ironically, this (de)construction connects The Pillars of the Earth more closely
33
with the actuality of the diverse distribution of power within medieval religious communities as
er above testifies, although most audiences might not recognize this connection.
Instead, present-day audiences might read the emphasis on community in opposition to clerical
divisions of authority as reclamation of the Middle Ages for post-Reformation, post-
Renaissance, post-Revolution religious democracy.
Like the complex iconic representations of the cathedral that position the Church against
the community, the ambiguous position of the saintly relic within the popular imagination makes
it another prominent element of medieval piety that The Pillars of the Earth attempts to
(de)construct during the course of the narrative to suit its presentist ideological negotiations.
Within the medievalist context, few other medieval religious icons evoke such a mixed response
for current-day observers as the saintly relic. As John Shinners, a scholar of medieval popular
piety, astutely reasons,
nature, wavers between the poles of doubt and certainty. But popular belief craves certainty. It
Perhaps because relics are so
often related to miracles allegedly performed by touching or simply being in the presence of the
body parts of saints, a long history of skepticism surrounds Even though he
writes in a medieval world saturated with relic worship, Guibert of Nogent describes in 1125
worship of God and border on idol worship (Whalen 95). Nonetheless, relics remained an
important component of medieval Christianity especially for both pilgrims seeking a greater
spiritual connection (among other things) as well as cathedrals and churches whose reliquaries
provided a source of income.
36
If the position of the relic in Middle Ages was ambiguous, why
36
y Cathedral provides a contemporary example regarding
both the habits of pilgrims and the revenue they could bring into a church like Kingsbridge. Because feast days were
34
does this icon continue to be represented in medievalist production as a site of uniform
superstitious belief? By once again (de)constructing the iconic representations of the relic and its
worshippers, The Pillars of the Earth reinforces the ambiguous role of the relic through visual
and narrative cues. In this case, the relicthe physical embodiment of miracle and belief in what
cannot be seenserves as a stand-in for questions about spiritual belief in general. Unlike the
ideologies behind the (de)construction of the cathedral, the ideologies behind the
(de)construction of the relic within the miniseries narrative are less pointed in their ambivalence
and ambiguous treatment.
The relics featured in The Pillars of the Earth
but relative medieval belief in them. In true iconic representational form, both relicsthe skull
of St. Adolphus and the weeping statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Fig. 3)demonstrate a
visual authenticity that immediately recalls for the present-day viewer the popular notion that
medieval piety was universally superstitious because they are featured prominently within kernel
scenes. Both are respectively positioned on the altar for all worshippers to revere. These relic
scenes construct what medieval studies scholar Steven Justice describes as
Catholic medievalism
building) and the narrative of the miniseries
miraculous that cannot be quantified by present-day people (9). These relics may represent the
relics popular during the Middle Ages, but they do not accurately portray them. Instead, the
representations of the skull and the statue transform the relic as medieval icon into a
paradigmatic medievalist representation because it exaggerates
a particular draw for pilgrims, the feast celebrating the martyrdom of Thomas Becket was actually moved from its
original date of December 29 to July 7 in hopes that better weather would draw more pilgrims; this move was so
successful that Canterbury authorities sought indulgences from the pope every fifty years to keep pilgrims coming
back to worship (Webb 66). Although this current discussion focuses on medieval relics and pilgrimages, many
cathedrals continue to draw pilgrims with their relics. Chartes, Salisbury, Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela
are just a few sites of medieval pilgrimage that continue to remain popular destinations today.
35
position within medieval piety.
37
Furthermore, the medievalist representations of these relics
extend into the narrative structure of the miniseries. Each relic plays an important role in the
-performing medieval relics.
Figure 3: Weeping Statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary from The Pillars of the Earth. Jack Jackson (Eddie
Kingsbridge Cathedral in hopes that it will bring pilgrims and their money to town.
During the first fire that destroyed the original Kingsbridge Cathedral, Prior Philip is
unable to rescue the skull of St. Adolphus; yet, because the relic means so much to the priory in
economic terms because it draws pilgrims, he secretly replaces the destroyed skull with another
skull (presumably from a deceased monk at the priory). This action, which representatively
reflects a popular strain of thought regarding relicsthat is, that they are not miraculous, and
therefore no one will know if also provides
one of the monks with information to blackmail Prior Philip out of his position as prior.
37
36
authenticity of relics.
44
Once the , Kingsbridge Cathedral
has no reliquary with which to attract pilgrims and their money because they decide it is better to
be poor than to be dishonest.
The
Pillars of the Earth, the role of the relic in
medieval piety is emphasized through unusual size yet at the same time the
motivations of relic worship (and ownership) are called into question .
Audiences might assume that Prior Phillip acts out of good intentions when he replaces the skull
because the narrative depicts him in all other scenes as an honest and trustworthy man, but he
ultimately replaces the skull so that the priory can continue to profit from the pilgrims attracted
by the relic. Although these scenes do leave space for a moral messagethe monks do decide to
reject the inauthentic relicthey nonetheless cast the familiar skeptical shadow onto the position
of relics within medieval piety.
The Pillars of the Earth’s second, perhaps more dubious relic builds on top of the
present-day skepticism established by the St. Adolphus skull storyline. After being exiled to
France for fathering a child out of marriage (and while a novice monk!), Jack Jackson seeks out
work as a stonemason at Chartes Cathedral. After encountering a strange stone that will produce
condensation once the sun sets, Jack comes up with the idea to create a statue of the Virgin Mary
act pilgrims.
Indeed, this is an effective strategy, at when viewed in light of the history of Marian
iconography, because, by the twelfth century, the cult of Mary universal saint,took away
44
The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 discusses this
pervasive notion in much detail.
37
from the importance of corporeal remains of local
saints were revered well into the later Middle Ages, this period marks a significant shift in the
saintly cults, during which the Virgin Mary became the preeminent, universally-known saint.
45
While the audience watches, Jack creates this statue. Clearly, it is not a relic in the traditional
sense, and, because of the economic imperative that encouraged its creation, one doubts that
The type of iconography implied in this scene, surprisingly or not, calls to mind Christian
doctrine about pagan worship alluded to in Second Nun’s Tale, in which the devout
Cecilia refuses to worship manmade
(lines 284-7).
saintly relics, because they are made by God, are living entities. Manmade
idols in the eyes of Christians therefore
lack the innate living spirit that only God can provide. As the sun slowly sets on the cathedral
praying because the statue appears to be living.
46
Even Jack, the creator of the statue appears
moved by the miraclemanmade or divinethat brought the pilgrims back to Kingsbridge.
whether a real miracle has actually transpired and reminds viewers of the important role that
relics played in medieval piety. This (de)construction of the relic as a uniform medieval icon
questions the belief in the miraculous through the destruction of St. Adolphuslso
suggests that belief in somethingeven a manmade statuecan result in palpable miracles.
45
This marks another connection between Salisbury Cathedral and Kingsbridge; Salisbury is known conventionally
as The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary locally.
46
In another sense, the parishioners are literally worshipping a rock. This recalls the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale when a
greedy priest falsely worships stones he believes an alchemist can turn into gold.
38
Like the (de)constructions of the cathedral and the relic that tap into popular
misconceptions about medieval piety in order to inject heterodoxy into the supposed monolithic
master narrative of western Christianity, the iconic representations of clerical morality via
sartorial characterizations also figure prominently in The Pillars of the Earths ideological
interrogations of spiritual sincerity. In particular, the miniseries pits its two iconic clergymen
scheming careerist Waleran and earnest pragmatist Phillipagainst one another in order
deconstruct the popular misconception that all medieval clergy were corrupt. Moreover, the
iconic representations of clerical vestments as indicators of piety
iconic representations in the miniseries because they directly recall the sartorial probing
operationalized by the Investiture Controversy and the Estate Satire genre epitomized by
ChaucerCanterbury Tales. The of Waleran and Phillip not only marks the
narratives progression toward closure but also suggests that a more complex reading of clerical
morality and careerism is necessary to represent the medieval church accurately.
Although the charge of clerical corruption has probably existed since the advent of
religion, the association between clerical corruption and careerism and outward appearance
demonstrates strong historical ties to the Investiture Controversy of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. To vastly oversimplify a complex conflict, the Investiture Controversy led to church
positioning him and his government squarely in secular territory. One of the primary points of
contention between royalty and the clergy was whether the king could appoint someone of
nobility to ecclesiastical office just as he would with a secular office. For the clergy, such
appointments undermined their religious authority and relegated them to pawns of the king. In
her study of the this period, medieval historian Uta-Renate Blumenthal describes the prolonged
39
conflict between church and state over the appointment of church officials, noting that
ostentatious clerical regalia was often a sign of a man appointed to the position by the king,
rather than a man devoted to God. After the Investiture Controversy, clerical vestments became
even more symbolic of spiritual and moral intentions of the person wearing them, rather than just
referents to religious ritual. Interestingly, The Pillars of the Earth takes place during this same
period, leading the informed viewer to connect the iconic representations of Waleran and
clerical costuming back to this obvious historical referent. Of course, not all viewers (or
perhaps even most) would make such a connection. More likely, the construction of the
moral/spiritual binary represented by Waleran and Phillip
recalls the sartorial coding of the vastly popular estate satire genre epitomized in popular
memory by ChaucerCanterbury Tales.
As perhaps the best-known portion of Canterbury Tales, the General Prologue, like The
Pillars of the Earth, uses costuming
47
to signify character.
especially his clerical pilgrimsexhibit some external symbol of their internal characters. Take,
description of the Prioress. As a nun, we might expect the Prioress to
exhibit her vow of poverty externally through plain clothing, yet she wears jewelrysmal coral
aboute hire arm she barFul fetys was hir
cloke (l. 157-9). well-dressed woman, who while ostensibly
pious, leads what appears to be a comfortable and stylish life. In her work on clerical clothing in
Canterbury Tales, Laura Hodges delineates a helpful
throughout the General Prologue that can be extended to the iconic representations of clerical
clothing used in The Pillars of the Earth. In particular, Hodges outlines the costume rhetoric
47
Indeed, costuming is perhaps the most obvious tool used by medievalist productions to signify that a person is a)
Middle Ages on television for the viewing public
40
r accessory functions in a symbolic capacity
The Romance of the Rose
False Seeming, as his name
obvious suggests, deceives others by appearing outwardly as a pious monk through his wearing
. Hodges further argues that the costume rhetoric of False Vestment is
ultimately employed to criticize those who only appear to be holy servants. No other character in
The Pillars of the Earth would fit this definition more appropriately than Bishop Waleran.
life.
He is always dressed appropriately for his station, be it that of archdeacon, cardinal, Archbishop
of Canterbury or even as the priest confessor depicted in the flashback that ultimately reveals his
involvement with the White Ship disaster that spurred the next twenty years of civil war.
Although is most certainly sumptuous throughout the miniseries, the frequent
jabs taken at himmost notably by his predecessor the Archbishop of Canterburyunderscore a
need to look the part of a priest who is comfortable within a royal circle.
48
Indeed, as the
miniseries progresses
different clerical position he holds requires different clothing. In order to carry out his plans, he,
like False Seeming, must always look the part. Waleran, with the help of the Hamleigh family, is
responsible for instigating the overthrow of Maud, the murders of countless innocents during
raids on Kingsbridge, and the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Perhaps most
egregiously, at least in terms of the political and personal ramifications within The Pillars of the
Earth, Waleran himself kills mns the only witness to his crime
48
Kingsbridge Cathedral to his palace so that he can better entertain important visitors and gain their favor (or
information to blackmail them).
41
to death by burning at the stake. Of course, Waleran plots and
kills all while appearing to be the good, pious priest by dressing appropriately for his position.
masks something truly
sinful underneath that suggests clerical criticism of hypocritical priests.
finery as a marker of his station and a nod to church ritual, but his lavish accoutrement also
imply his social climbing and thus his manipulation and dishonesty. The hypocrisy of his
clothingthat he appears to be a pious clergyman specifically to further his own megalomania
serves as an indictment of his ruthless ambition in the place of what should be his devotion to
God and church. Perhaps due in part to cultural memory of the rhetoric of the Investiture
Controversy, the estate satire genre, and the Protestant Reformation, audiences expect to find a
corrupt clergyman like Waleran with a medievalist narrative. This charge of clerical corruption
via False Vestment translates easily from the Middle Ages to the present-day perhaps because it
has always depended upon visual representation for its criticism. In this sense, The Pillars of the
Earth works within and ultimately upholds the notion of clerical corruption
costume rhetoric yet it also constructs the counterpart to False Vestmentwhat Hodges terms
habit to suggest a wider variety within the
medieval clergy than perhaps exists within the popular imagination.
The Pillars of the Earth, like Canterbury Tales, does not condemn all medieval clergy
through its clerical costume rhetoric.
out for attack clerics who abuse their offices and their ordersthe
clerical authority itselfpower to harm the community at large
(160). Indeed, while Waleran certainly threatens the community, The Pillars of the Earth does
not attack the earnest clerical authority of the Kingsbridge monks, most notably including Prior
42
Phillip. nging yet always appropriate False Vestment, Prior
that clothes him in
settings as diverse as Kingsbridge Priory and Empress Maud. Although both are
ambitious, the great difference between Waler
directed toward different ends; Waleran wants political power for himself, while Prior Philip
becomes a politician only to ensure that someone continues to fight for Kingsbridge priory and
her townspeople. As Henry Mayr-Harting, historian of western medieval religion, explains,
Pastoral Care of the
sake outstripped the love of prestige, with laudable lack of ambition or desire to lead a secluded
onk
his ambition for the good of the church.
In terms of iconic representations, Hodges describes costume rhetoric that reflects inward
.In clerical costuming
pirit and that
reflectsat times embarrassingly so
50
his inner core of honest
Christian virtue. The iconic representation of Prior P
was to seclude himself from the material world. By traveling around, his vows become
50
know what is expected of him in a royal court
stone for the cathedral.
43
cheapened and the impact of the poverty represented by the habit lessens. Of course, for the
narrative to work, viewers must see Phillip travel in order to have points of comparison between
Although this facet of the iconic representation of the pious monk marks itself as anachronistic, it
nonetheless works within the narrative to further distinguish Waleran from Phillip.
Figures 4 and 5: Bishop Waleran Bigod and Prior Phillip from The Pillars of the Earth. Bishop Waleran (Ian
utwardly represents a relationship to his inward
character. In this sense, they recall several infamous medieval characters, including The Romance of the Rose’s
False Seeming aParson, respectively.
During The Pillars of the Earth, the iconic representations of clerical costume rhetoric
distance the narrative from the prevalent assumption that all medieval clergy were corrupt. Even
though the narrative certainly does not deny this possibility by figuring clergyman Waleran as its
primary antagonist, the miniseries reaffirms the sincerity and earnestness of the clergy in general
through the characterization and costume rhetoric of Prior Phillip and his fellow monks. In terms
of present-day ideology, the iconic medievalist representations of clerical vestments as indicators
religious practice, both medieval and modern.
44
CONCLUSION
Within the closed narrative format of the miniseries, The Pillars of the Earth
(de)construction of icons of medieval piety, even when fictitious or inaccurate, recall the
heterodoxy of medieval Christianity. The Kingsbridge Cathedral, inspired by the likes of
Salisbury and Wells, represents the economic power that was both needed and created by the
construction of a medieval cathedral, not to mention the religious devotion it could inspire. The
relics of St. Adolphus and the Blessed Virgin Mary serve as reminders of relics throughout
medieval Christendom that inspired pilgrimagesdevout in intention or notand perpetuated
cathedral economics. Most prominently, the costume rhetoric of Bishop Waleran and Prior Philip
incorporate medieval notions of clerical ambivalence, as demonstrated by the costume rhetoric of
Canterbury Tales.
Perhaps most importantly within the context of the closed narrative of the miniseries, The
Pillars of the Earth ties together all of these convergent strands of medievalist representation in
construction, Archbishop Waleranin all his fineryholds a trial condemning Jack Jackson to
death. Prior Philip, in his habit, publicly demands proof of the murder. The community of
Kingsbridge comes together to challenge the Archbishop, who in turn flees to the top of the
chooses once again to act on his own accord and plummets to his death. Thus, each of the
medieval icons, the cathedral, the relic, and the clerical clothing, play an integral part in the
conclusion of this closed narrative and the (de)construction of the master narrative of orthodox
medieval piety. Of course, these icons were never stable to begin with. Indeed, the cathedral, the
45
relic, and clerical vestment invite yet resist translation because they are multivalent in their
originary nature. Like the modern-day cathedrals that have been added onto over the centuries,
the icons of medieval piety represented in The Pillars of the Earth may not look exactly as they
did once in the medieval past, yet they stand tall as reminders in modern cultural memory of the
reimagined and (de)constructed religious practices of the Middle Ages.
46
III. VIKINGS, VAMPIRES, AND
QUEER VENGEANCE IN TRUE BLOODTIVE
True Blood may not seem like an obvious choice for a project that
Southern Vampire Mysteries novels, True Blood follows telepath waitress Sookie Stackhouse as
she negotiates relationships with family, friends and, as the series continues, an increasingly
wider circle of supernatural beings like vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, and witches in the
backwoods of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Of course, as an HBO series, True Blood satisfies its
appetite for the show often has the
flavor of a pole-
the tame, bisexual S&M of Interview with the Vampire
51
Although provocative visual
unique narrative content and campy dialogue are what keep them coming back for more.
52
-again off-again vampire boyfriend Bill Compton may
drive the series, but fan favorites like Viking vampire Eric Northman occupy an increasingly
important position within True BloodEven though True Blood
focus lies beyond the Middle Ages, this ostensible distance from immediately recognizable
51
True BloodSix Feet Under
and American Beauty.
52
In regard to giving viewers what they want, Ball told Rolling Stone that True Blood
smart people9). Apparently, audiences like this formula because its second season regularly attracted 10-
12 million viewers a week (Hardy 12). While viewer rates for the last two seasons are as of yet unavailable, one
n in the coveted Sunday night lineup that it remains one of
True Blood
evaluations.
47
medievalist content like that found in The Pillars of the Earth makes it a perfect series to
demonstrate how these medievalisms become hybridizedcontaining both iconic and
paradigmatic representationsas the mode of serialization changes. In particular,
interwoven roles as historical Viking and fantastical vampire play an integral part not only in his
development as a more dynamic character, but also in the present-day extensions and
True
Blood iconic medievalist representations of the Old Norse feud prevalent in the Icelandic
family sagas become hybridized with its paradigmatic medievalist representations of the roles
sex and gender play creating a postmodern revenge narrative.
Because the narrative complexity of True Bloodextends beyond
the scope of The Pillars of the Earthe model discussed in chapter 1, a brief
discussion regarding the viewer experience of an open television narrative will be necessary.
Even though it may seem obvious that new or infrequent viewers tend to focus on the plot of a
television program whereas frequent viewers become more invested
the importance of such a notion with regard to theorizing representations of medievalist
television on a program like True Blood cannot be overstated. Essentially, the frequency of
viewing impacts how a viewer will receive and comprehend representations as they appear in
different scenes and on different narrative layers. Because True Blood is not obviously
medieval-the frequency of viewing dramatically
53
In other words,
the frequency of viewing and the knowledge of multiple narrative layers corresponds to a greater
53
Of course, the Scene Function Model has wider applications that just medievalist TV. In effect, it suggests that
frequency of viewing affects not only the comprehension of plot and the investment in characters but also the ways
in which a viewer perceives levels of continuity throughout the television narrative by way of each scene.
48
dievalist representations; those invested in a
narrative are more likely to work to make connections between multiple narrative layers and
medievalist representations (and their referents) within that narrative.
54
To provide an extended
example of how the ramifications of viewing frequency relate to the Scene Function Model, the
following discussion will explore how the transformation of an important medievalist scene
during season 3 of True Blood from a satellite scene into a kernel scene over the course of the
narrative corresponds to the transformation of its medievalist representations from iconic to
paradigmatic. Unlike the somewhat static narrative structure and corresponding iconic
representations of The Pillars of the Earth, this scene from True Blood provides a case study in
(iconic/paradigmatic) accentuate how the mode of serialization in an open narrative like True
Blood has varying effects on its medievalism.
TRUE BLOODTIVE
In episode 5 of the third season of True Blood
Northman remembers his past for the second time in the series, yet this medievalist scene in
particular provides a more complex mix of representations and narrative layers than his first
flashback because it revolve-hundred year thirst for vengeance.
55
The scene
begins with Eric being given a tour of the estate of Russell Edgington, the vampire king of
54
Perhaps this explains why so many medievalist media productions (film, television, games, etc.) have
corresponding fan fiction. Frequent consumers of medievalist narrative desire more complexity in these narratives,
so it makes sense that a market for character backstories or alternative endings would exist. See www.fanfiction.net
for numerous examples.
55
2, episode 5 ationship with
terms of character development, this scene is much briefer and has fewer narrative implications as a whole. As such,
I have chosen to focus the attentions of this chapter on the longer medievalist scene in season 3.
49
official occupation is an antique dealer, so one can imagine the kinds of antiques he has collected
waves his hand dismissively over the priceless antiques, saying
piece in particular: a gold crown with a distinctive filigree pattern (see Fig. 6
interest in the item and wanfers some made-
up origin for what he describes as some about the
Suddenly, the show suggests that the historical materiality of the crown causes an
involuntary reaction in Eric to impulsively remember a foregone moment. The viewer
experiences a flashback (from a third-person perspective) by following the camera first into and
then o superficially and stereotypically medieval; it
appears that a Nordic noble family (Viking as Eric has already informed the audience) is
enjoying a dinner inside a dark mead hall lit by torches. Eric, dressed in dark robes and furs with
longer blond hair, si
flashback, a woman, also wearing a crown, and her baby. After the group have a conversation
about marriage, responsibility,
56
56
Serial viewers of True Blood will recognize that Eric speaks the same language in this scene as he speaks with
hus further connecting the language in
familial past. The foreignness of the language, even though complaints regarding anachronism could be made, also
add to the sense that, at least for the average American viewer, that this flashback happened long ago (even though
informed viewers might expect an older language like Old Norse).
50
Figures 6 and 7: True Blood. Viking Eric
Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) mourns the loss of his human family at the hand (or paws) of werewolves in
medieval Scandinavia. After becoming vampire, he is able to enact vengeance and reclaim his father's honor (and
crown) nearly one thousand years after the murders took place.
Eric does not appear to be in the mood to discuss such things, so he excuses himself for a
screams are heard from the other room. The camera follows Eric as he discovers that a pack of
father, meanwhile, valiantly tries to fight off the wolves with a huge broadsword. Eric joins him
in the fight, managing to kill a wolf that shockingly transforms into a branded naked man before
his eyes. Distracted by this surprise, Eric is unable to save his father from the rest of the pack. As
one wolf rips out
his mouth and takes it to a mysterious figure cloaked in an ominous hooded robe standing just
her naming Eric king (see Fig. 7).
Tellingly, his last garbled
-walled, special
collections room, adding a startlingly
51
Viewers of this scene will notice several prominent features by using the Scene Function
seems at first to function as a satellite scene; t
flashback functions on a plot-driven level by providing background information regarding his
past and his motivations for what one might imagine to be some future act of vengeance;
however, viewers cannot know how vital the information is to True Blood
continue to watch the remainder of season 3 to see how this storyline plays out. The development
of True Blood
viewing because this transformation occurs in the secondary layer of narrative meaning. Even
though this scene only lasts a few minutes, kernel scene in
season 3 because it provides
strands.
57
Furthermore, relevant to a medievalist reading, the narrative function and effectiveness
of -
hundred year reserve of hate directed toward the murderers of his family afforded to him by
being a member of the living dead, this scene would lack its resonance of multiple narrative
layers. Thus, at the heart of this crucial scene is the interplay between iconic and paradigmatic
medievalisms. Iconically, there is no question that Eric as Viking must avenge his family and
take back their stolen crown and honor. This sort of revenge narrative, epitomized by the feud in
57
trying to capture Sookie at her house. Russell returns to his house in Mississippi immediately, leaving Sookie to
reunite with Bill.
Eric at the end of the season.
52
Norse law and literature, figures largely in the unfolding narrative of season 3. At the same time,
tion as a vampirefamous for their erotic (and eroticized) bloodlust
elationship to its medieval referents, taking True Blood
paradigmatic representation.
CONIC
MEDIEVALIST REPRESENTATION
True Blood regularly or are seeing the
program for the first time, no one doubts that he must avenge the death of his family. Indeed, the
average audience member might even predict the basic plot structure for this developing
storyline: Eric will first seek vengeance on Russell, and Russell will retaliate in a manner
involving the werewolves again. How can one make such a prediction without prior knowledge
regarding the narrative? In his introduction to Feud in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,
Netterstrøm offers one explanation by suggesting that the prevalence of the
True Blood became so pervasive during the
Middle Ages that it should be no surprise that it remains a part of the cultural memory of western
society (41). Netterstrøm argues that because medieval societies across Europe saw an increase
in the land grabbing, invasions, and political
unrest,
increased (54-5). In a society where desire necessitated force, the advent of physical violence
amongst competitors does not seem unbelievable. The feud begun by Russell wanting what he
wantsa Viking crownand taking itexaggerates
this medieval model and underscores (what modern audiences might see as) the senseless
53
violence associated with such competition.
58
Russell, an outsider, has transgressed the honor
code dictated by Norse culture.
Viking seeking vengeance is an example of an iconic medievalist
representation because Norse society, perhaps more so other medieval societies, demonstrates
what appears to be a cultural obsession with the feud in both law and literature.
59
Social
Institutions and Belief Systems of Medieval Iceland (c. 870-1400) and Their Relations to
Preben Meulengracht Sørensen describes how social conditions in
medieval Northern Europe, especially among settlers in Iceland who broke away from mainland
Scandinavian control during the thirteenth century, created a fertile atmosphere for feuds to
flourish:
Where there is no strong responsible power to enforce social norms, the peace of
society depends on free men and women behaving in accordance with them,
perspective, this is how a society functions in which honour is the dominant
ethical principle. (23)
Medieval Scandinavia and Iceland generally lacked centralized government unlike other areas of
Europe during the same period, instead being governed by councils of chieftains and localized
58
The notion of the feud also has resonances within the American South that figures so prominently in True Blood
narrative. As an honor-based society like the medieval North, the American South of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries witnessed violence as a result of both competition and insult. The dueling tradition serves as one such
example.
59
loosely include
medieval Scandinavia and Iceland because, as Meulengracht Sørensen explains, the similarities between the
-19). One should also note that much of the extant Norse literature comes to us through the
Icelanders, who were thought of as the historians of the North (Meulengracht Sørensen
54
representatives from family groups who met to make decisions regarding their communities.
60
As such, the corresponding notions of honor and disgrace, especially within the context of
community opinion of an individual or family, effectively regulated behavior. However, in such
an honor-breaks down and turns into conflict if the members
of society ignore the social contract, or if the individual is involved in a collision of duty
between conflicting bonds (Meulengracht Sørensen23).
Contingent upon the importance of honor, the feud filled a position within Norse culture that
acted as a social control in much the same fashion that law imposed by a government would. As
a form of conflict resolution that coexisted with the law, parties involved in a feud understood
that there would be ramifications from that feud that would affect their positions with society as
either honored or disgraced. an ordering principle around the
-backed centralized
thirteenth-eden provides one example suggesting the pervasiveness of
revenge killings and feuding (19). Indeed, the iconic Viking is often distilled into present-day
reimaginings as the embodiment of this lawlessness. However, little documentation regarding
actual feuds and feud practices in Norse society remains. Why, then, is the feud so strongly
connected to the medieval North?
An analysis of Norse mythologya popular export from its written transcription in the
thirteenth century onwardsreveals that feuding wa
creation of the world by the god-
60
This is not to say the lack or abbreviated reach of centralized governments in the medieval North corresponded to
to the community. These laws often included limitations on actions of revenge including honor killings, monetary
retributions (wergild) and the punishment of outlawry for an individual who acted against the good of the
community.
55
mythological battle between gods (æsir) and giants (jotnar), and about the end of the world in
62
Similarly in
-repeated
stand-offs between gods and giants and the behavior offending factions of chieftains and their
supporters in thirteenth-In addition to Norse mythology, the
Íslendingasögur, or the sagas of the Icelandic families, also provide readers with a canon of
feuding.
63
from the Íslendingasögur ve codes and illuminate the choices
-9). In
light of the prevalence of revenge tropes in a variety of texts from the mythological Edda to the
Íslendingasögur, vengeance does indeed play a crucial role in Norse literature, and by extension,
in (medieval and post-medieval) perceptions of Norse culture.
One can begin to see how True Blood
representation of vengeance.
family serves as a lynchpin for the unfolding storyline; it is no coincidence that this conversation
62
The Norse literary boom of the thirteenth century, which occurred in conjunction with the influences of
Christianity (the introduction of written literature), might be considered a medievalist institution because many of
the stories written down during the period were actually composed orally during earlier time. Many scholars have
noted romanticized flourishes in these narratives that idealize Norse forbearers.
63
Netterstrøm offers a helpful historical view of the Íslendingasögur from a post-medieval Scandinavian
perspective:
The famous family sagas written in the thirteenth century, which protagonise the
ancestors of the ninth-twelfth centuries, centre revenge killing and feuding as the most important
literary motifs. No one who reads the sagas doubts that they are all about feud. But for long,
Icelandic historians were generally reluctant to accept the sagas as reliable sources and therefore
distrusted or simply ignored the revenge narratives in them as valid evidence of the social
behavior of the Icelanders of the Land-Taking and Free State period (870-1262). (16)
56
death of his family at the hands of the mysterious hooded figure and his pack of werewolves,
Eric is bound by societal mores to avenge their deaths with a revenge killing of his own. Viewers
of this scene are led to believe that Eric has only just now (wi
room) realized who was responsible.
For this iconic feud to play out in True Bloodnarrative there is only one suitable
killing him would make Eric and Russell even. Once again, because even the casual viewer of
True Blood is more than likely to be familiar with how a revenge/feud narrative will play out,
especially one that demonstrates such premeditated ties to its medieval referent, the general
narrative structure of this storyline is perhaps unsurprising. Nonetheless, the actual moment of
E
regular viewer. Because Russell apparently does not remember or recognize Eric as one of the
many humans he has brutalized over the centuries
denouncing his loyalty to Louisiana and claiming fealty to Mississippi and Russell.
64
When
65
leaves Talbot
frustrated, Eric offers to keep him company. Throughout their interactions, Talbot has obviously
been sexually interested in Eric, and it appears that Eric uses this to his advantage to gain
revenge. After returning to the special collections room to play chess, Talbot declares that he is
64
The vampire hierarchy presented throughout True Blood is strikingly reminiscent of a medieval feudal system.
throughout the world, American vampires reside within territories (usually states) ruled by kings and queens. Each
king or queen has sheriffs that act as law enforcement in small areas within each territory. Eric, for example, has
held the position of vampire sheriff of Area 5, Louisana under Queen Sophie Ann. Unlike serfs, however, vampires
are more or less free to come and go as they please as long as they report their movement to The Authority.
65
part fairy at the end of season 3. According to legend, if a vampire drinks fairy blood, he can once again walk in the
sun. Consequently, Russell feels the need to investigate.
57
bored and demands that Eric take his clothes off. Until this point, Eric has been depicted as
Th
search for Sookie. Once the camera cuts back to Talbot and Eric, the two men are nude on the
floor of the special collections room and about to have sex. As Eric i
moment of visual double entendre, Eric penetrates Talbot in the back with a potent wooden stake
(see Fig. 8). Russell immediately feels th
house mid-abduction to return to bloody mess that was once his beloved partner. The feud has
Figure 8: True Blood.
by killing Talbot (Theo Alexander), Russell Edgington's long-time companion, in a moment of campy, vampy
double entendre.
appears to have a
medieval antecedent. Gísla Saga tells the story of Gísli, a man caught between brothers-in-law,
and highlights the importance placed upon the notion of vengeance and honor within Norse
58
culture. Gísli finds himself in the middle of a feud between his relatives. Þorgrímr, his bother-in-
law, has killed his other brother-in-law, Vestein. Even though Gísli does not like Þorgrímr, he
recognizes that another murder will not only cause further family turmoil but also make him a
wanted man. Nonetheless, Gísli is bound by honor
-analyzed passage, Gísli sneaks
into the bedroom of Þorgrímr and his sister, Þórdís, to enact his vengeance in a somewhat
surprising way:
He goes in there and gropes along and touches her breast, and she was sleeping
thought that he had laid his hand on her. Gísli waits then a while and warms the
hand in his shirt, and they both fall asleep. Now he touches Þorgrímr gently, so
that he awakened. He thought that Þórdís had roused him, and turned toward her.
Gísli then takes the bedclothes with one hand, and with the other he thrusts
through Þorgrímr with Grásíða [his sword]. So it stuck in the bed. Now Þórdís
Wake up, men in the hall!
Gísla Saga 504)
66
As in True Blood
trusty sword, Grásíða. Nonetheless, this passage does feature some unexpected details related to
66
Clark translates the passage below:
Gengur hann þangað og þreifast fyrir og tekur á brjósti henni og hvíldi hún nær stokki.Síðan mælti hún
þhöndina fyrir hana. Gísli bíður þá enn um stund og vermir höndina á serk
sér en þau sofna bæði. Nú tekur hann á Þorgrími kyrrt svo að hann vaknaði. Hann hugði að hún Þórdís
vekti hann og snerist þá að henni. Gísli tekur þá klæðin af þeim annarri hendi en með annarri leggur hann í
gegnum Þorgrím með Grásíðu svo að í beðnum nam stað. Nú kallar hú
skálanum, Þ
59
intimate moment between Þorgrímr and a hand that Þorgrímr assumes belongs to his wife. Like
t is at this moment of feigned intimacy that Gísli reclaims the
honor of his brother-in-law by penetrating Þorgrímr with his sword.
(homo)erotic behavior toward his enemy, in conjunction with the literal spearing of Þorgrímr,
am penetrating you, because I am a real man, and you are taking it from me like a woman, and
indeed you are enjoying to the Norse notion of the níð insult tradition, which paradoxically
positions itself between homophobia and homoeroticism. Like Gísli Þorgrímr
killing of Talbot can also be read within the context of the medieval níð because it hinges
between effective and affective homosexuality. At the same time, given the frequency and depth
of the explorations of homosexuality and bisexuality in True Bloodníð both recalls the
paradoxical sexuality of the níð tradition and takes on paradigmatic implications that effectively
queer his act of vengeance. If the feud reveals (de)constructions of power relationships, then the
níð is its sexualized and sexualizing counterpart.
QUEER VENEGENCE AS A PARADIGMATIC MEDIEVALIST REPRESENTATION
Like the feud, the Norse conception of níð and its actual/perceived position within Norse
culture has received much scholarly investigation within the past decade. Nonetheless, a
conclusive definition has proven elusive. In an example provided by Carol J. Clover in
60
Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, the Norwegian
Gulaþing Code offers a legal, if ambiguous discussion of níð and its various forms:
Nobody is to make tungu níð [verbal níð] about another person, nor a tréníð
[wooden níð]. no one is to make an ýki [exaggeration] about another or a libel. It
is called ýki if someone says something about another man which cannot be, nor
come to be, nor have been: declares he is a woman every ninth night or has born a
child or calls him gylfin [a werewolf or unnatural monster?]. He is outlawed if he
is found guilty of that. Let him deny it with a six-man oath. Outlawry is the
outcome if the oath fails. (373-4)
67
One can see from this excerpt that the níð níð
punishable by banishment or death.
68
Yet, the example above also indicates the unique sexual
politics behind the níð that have made it a prominent point of interest in recent Norse
scholarship. Perhaps the most obvious feature of the níð is that in the implication (verbal or
otherwise) that one man has been sexually penetrated by another man, yet only the one
penetrated is seen as shameful. Clark, in Between Medieval Men, argues that the stigma of the
níð
erg, verb ergjask, and the adjective argr and
its metathesized form ragr represent the ultimate insult to a man, implying that he is not merely
effeminate but the adjective sannjsordmn -2). In other words, when a
Norse man (active) acted as a woman (passive) during a sex act by receiving the penetration of
another man, it was seen as being shameful because the penetrator gave up his masculine power.
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Clover translations this excerpt from the passage below:
Engi maðr seal gera tungu nið um annan. ne trenið. . . . Engi seal gera yki um annan. Æða
fiolmæle. þat heiter yki ef maðr mælir um annan þat er eigi ma væra. ne verða oc eigi hever verit.
kveðr hann væra kono niundu nott hveria. oc hever barn boret. oc kallar gylvin. þa er hann utlagr.
ef han verðr at þvi sannr.
68
Clark discusses the ramifications for a níð in Between Medieval Men p. 41.
61
Furthermore, Clover points out that while these insults, whether verbal or physical,
69
are directly
linked with sexual practices deemed to be inappropriate for a
ultimately with powerlessness under threat of
níð, male same-sex relations
70
were not
shameful in and of themselves, but rather only when one gave up his sexual power as a man in
being the willing recipient of the sexual action, or was forced to give it up in an act of male rape.
Returning again to Gisla Saga, the homoerotics (and incestuous behavior) seem to stem
from the desire to both assert power over another man and to shame him. Clark contends that the
lipractice of
nity (and power) over another, lies in
a perception which, as feminists point out,
rests on the misogynistic assumption that the passive role is female and that the male-female
binary corresponds to the positive-
to avenge the honor of his fallen brother-in-law; Gísli must attempt to destroy his masculinity so
that he is shamed as powerless even in death. Thus, the iconic níð tradition represented by Gísli
symbolically sexualized murder of Þorgrímr conflates physical power and revenge with the most
literal act of phallic aggressionrape. The níð tradition
another through the assertion of both physical and sexual force.
69
The curious wooden níð (níðstang, tréníð ) appears most famously in Egil’s Saga when Egil takes a
to have a negative sexual
connotation, as the act of symbolically penetrating the horse with the wooden pole was thought to be reminiscent of
anally penetrating a man. See Meulengracht Sørensen’s The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early
Northern Society for a detailed discussion.
70
Perhaps this ambivalence regarding the penetrator of same-sex male relations derives from the long standing
homosocial bond between a chieftain and his men in both Germanic and Norse societies; it seems difficult to believe
388).
62
In the larger context of the níð
somewhat fitting yet also queer. Like Gísli, Eric is bound by the importance of the honor code
and enacts a revenge killing for the death of family. Furthermore, both Gisli and Eric take their
revenge through some incorporation of a sexual
symbolic phallic aggression, the scene during which Eric kills Talbot does not demonstrate the
same
imitation of sexual activity with Eric, one can find no evidence to suggest that Eric sees Talbot
the receiver of his penetrationas anything less than a man. Eric may use sex with Talbot to lure
him into the best position in which to dispatch him and get back at Russell. Instead of an iconic
translation of the medieval níð to True Blood
queer act both in terms of sexuality (same-sex) and
expectation (as a Viking, one would expect him to adopt similar attitudes toward same-sex
relations as those exhibited by Gísli or the níð literature) functions paradigmatically.
-
sex relations that ultimately begin the of counterrevenge (satellite scene).
Additionally, the mixture of narrative layers (depending on the frequency of viewing) positions
plot of the next two and
a half seasons
72
as well as the character development of Eric that carried over into season 4. Even
more prominently, as a regular viewer of True Blood would quickly recognize based on the
-sex relationships featured in several different
storylines, níð would greatly limit his ability to function
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Ultimately, Eric lures Russell into a cement tomb instead of killing him out at the end of season 3. At the end of
season 4, which concluded in September 2011, Russell reappears ready to continue his blood feud with Eric. Season
5 will begin in June 2012.
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widely with True Bloodt of diverse characters after such an incident.
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Further, the
the grain of True Blood-True Blood
world phallic aggression may remain as camp (gay vampire being penetrated by both stake
and penis) or even a nod to the níð tradition through sexual
meansust be removed
through the paradigmatic transformation of these iconic representations.
CONCLUSION
Although this chapter has argued that Norse culture is represented in both obvious and
True Blood really about vampires? In Vampire God: The
Allure of the Undead in Western Culture, Mary Y. Hallab explains why the answer to that
question is more complicated that it first appears. Citing the long tradition of vampire stories in
living embodiments of history, [they] can offer a sense of continuity with a very ancient past as
True
Blood are depicted as tangible representatives of the period in which they lived as human; often a
onality, appearance, and name indicate a tie to his or her past life.
74
role as vampire and Viking not only allows a unique narrative of queer vengeance to unfold via
73
In a DVD commentary for season 3 of True Blood, series creator Alan Ball celebrated the fact the several
publications cited True Blood While this chapter just skims the surface of the
s a rich and nuanced study of how and why medievalisms are
produced for a gay male audience.
74
For example, vampire Bill Compton was made just after the Civil War. To force his link to nineteenth-century
Southern-ness, Bill is depicted as exceedingly courteous in his initial courtship with Sookie during season 1; he
insists that he call on Sookie at her house where her grandmother and brother can chaperone the visit. This politesse
provides a striking contrast with his vampiric thirst for human blood, which is often fetishized throughout True
Blood in graphic detail.
64
actual queer sex
such a narrative possible. His temporal uncanniness as a vampire mirrors the queerness of his
sexualized revenge.
Yet vampires are not content to simply populate a long distant past. In this sense, the
figure of the vampire is always already queer because it represents a figure that occupies several
temporalities at oncesomething that humans obvious cannot do. As a human living in medieval
True
Blood with a window into both a real and imagined past that operates in a creative dialectic with
Hallab, in an argument that strikes remarkably resonant chords
within the world of medievalism, explains how the creative temporal function of vampires like
Eric provides a way to fulfill the desire of communing with the past:
As living dead, [vampires] stand for both the loss of all that is past and its
paradoxical aliveness in the present. As readers or viewers, we are free to identify
with their histories and take them up as our own. Through the living dead, we
acquire a sense of the past that we did not have before. (43)
Thus, it is the irrepressible figure of the vampire that unremittingly stands in as a representative
time that has both passed, yet continues to bear on the present. When
Russell, a vampire for more than three millennia, appears on the cable news station and proceeds
to rip out the heart of the anchor on live television (see Fig. 9), Bill describes his actions as
, Bill seems to mean
present-day parlance); on the other
metaphoric sense, to the ways that vampires embody a queer sense of history, not alive, yet still
65
undead? In True Blood
fl
narrative structure. mentary of True Blood
, and possibly sexualized
True Blood
watch and mesmerizing at the same time. With regard to True Blood
its popularity among viewers, one might that people seem to like the
Middle Ages and vampires getting medieval on TV.
Figure 9: True Blood. In an act of crazed despair in response to
66
IV. FANTASTIC NEOMEDIEVALISM
OF GAME OF THRONES
The previous two chapters have explored the uses and implications of medievalist
representations in a historically-minded miniseries and a series with a limited yet impactful
medievalist narrative respectively. This chapter uses Game of Thrones as an example to
show how medievalism can function within a series devoted entirely to the paradigmatic
representations of the Middle Ages. Because Game of Thrones depicts a nonhistorical yet
vaguely medieval world, this chapter will attempt to re(de)fine what Umberto Eco has called
universe. I will argue that neomedievalism, and fantastic neomedievalism in particular, is a
product of postmodern society because it reproduces other medievalisms and presents a bricolage
of medieval cultures that often lack wholly discernible referents. Ultimately, when seen as an
extension of medievalism studies that intersects with postmodern studies, the fantastic
neomedievalism represented by the following discussion of Game of Thrones will demonstrate
the possibilities of delineating the ways that the Middle Ages continue to serve as a reservoir for
present-day desires for recreating
NEOMEDIEVALISM, FANTASY, AND BRICOLAGE
Before examining the ways that fantasy and neomedievalism converge in the
representations of the Middle Ages in Game of Thrones, a theoretical framework will attempt to
define these often elusive but nonetheless important terms. As the previous two chapters have
67
demonstrated, the notion of medievalism is a complex one that depends on form, content, and
more so. Therefore, one should return to the first mentions of neomedievalism in order to
examine its use and relationship to medievalism.
75
We are at present witnessing, both in Europe and America, a period of renewed
interest in the Middle Ages, with a curious oscillation between fantastic
neomedievalism and responsible philological examination. Undoubtedly what
counts is the second aspect of the phenomenon, and one must wonder why
Americans are more or less experiencing the same obsession as Europeans. (63)
Eco, while failing to specify exactly what he means by fantastic neomedievalism, positions it
reinforcing) the notion that scholars of medieval studies should focus primarily on acceptable
medievalisms Eco mentions seems to advocate investigation of both popular manifestations and
scholarly practice in relation to one another. Eco positions fantastic neomedievalism as a
phenomenon experienced in both Europe and America (and by extension, other non-European
parts of the world); proximity to real medieval geography appears to have little effect on such
developments. Even though this definition by oppositionthat fantastic neomedievalism is
ions of medievalismcan
75
To avoid a confusion of terms, the neomedievalism discussed within this chapter is not the same neomedievalism
used by International Relations theorists to describe the ways that post-9/11 policy trends suggest a return to what is
seen as a return to the feudal system and state-building the occurred during the Middle Ages. Although the use of
such a term and the rhetoric associated with it does provide interest to medievalists as Bruce Holsinger expertly
argues in Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism and the War on Terror, the neomedievalism of International Relations
would only muddy the waters of current considerations regarding fantastic neomedievalism and representations of
the Middle Ages on television series.
68
illuminate some aspects of neomedievalism, the term remains ambiguous. Thus, one must turn to
the wider field of pop culture medievalisms
intriguing phrase.
-conscious, ahistorical . . . reuse of the historical Middle Ages
that selectively appropriates iconic images, often from other medievalisms, to construct a
Marshall argues, neomedievalism thus develops traditional iconography of the Middle Ages but
twists it back on itself to create something remotely medieval yet not wholly recognizable as the
original historical artifact.
One could argue that this is the process occurs during the (re)creation of all
medievalisms, so how then is neomedievalism distinct? In addition to incorporating icons of both
medieval culture and other medievalist (re)creations, neomedievalism is marked by images of the
24). In
other words, the iconic representations that derive from material artifacts of medieval culture
become wholly paradigmatic because they can only be understood as presentist metaphors that
attempt to describe relationships between other representations. The crux of neomedievalism
presented by Marshall resides in how far removed the (re)creation of medieval culture becomes
in the process of translation from past to present; whereas medievalism concerns itself with
history either through reimagining historical events, people or places, neomedievalism takes hold
of the medieval cultural capital and patches it together to create something new.
69
terminology of fantastic
neom-and-
-cen
(211).
76
Selling also aptly notes the consistent setting of fantasies within a vaguely Western
fight with swords, and live in hierarchical, vaguely feudal, semi-pastoral societies with low
77
Because, as Selling suggests, the study of fantastic
neomedievalism can reveal the ways that the Middle Ages and its medieval and medievalist
iconography are appropriated and reused over and over as a site for popular constructions of
fantasy, further questions Ages are reimagined in
fantastic neomedievalism require scholarly attention.
The Literature of Hope in the Middle Ages and Today:
Connections in Medieval Romance, Modern Fantasy, and Science Fiction, fantasy can generally
be defined as a narrative
in which a set of rules unlike the rules of the real world is established or in which
the rules of the real world are modified to allow for objects or actions impossible
76
fantastic neomedievalism. After all Eco did, write the wildly popular The Name of the Rose, which became an
equally popular film. -and-
77
I use vaguely here to reference the neomedievalist tendency of using various aspects of medieval iconography
or the elements of medieval piety I outlined in chapter 2in exotic or
means that we can recognize elements that appear to
be medieval(ist), but the whole image of disparate elements casts an uncanny shadow onto the scene.
70
in the world as we know it. Once these alternate rules are in place, however, the
writer [or creator] makes the action in the created world abide by those rules
throughout the rest of the novel, or series. (16)
is an
individual narratives within the genre depends on this epitomizing attribute.
78
One can simply
create a world where the existence of vampires may be unlikely, but not wholly unrealistic, or
some distant spatiotemporal universe where dragons flying overhead might be seen as distressing
by its inhabitants (or viewers), but normal nevertheless according to the reality established within
the fantasy world.
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Traditional fantasy depends entirely upon the reformation of and adherence
In cobbling together these discussions of neomedievalism and fantasy, one begins to get a
handle on this slippery term, fantastic neomedievalism. If medievalism depends on the
interpretation of medieval culture in a time and place beyond the period of the Middle Ages in,
for example, the flourish of Victorian and academic medievalisms of the nineteenth century, then
neomedievalism marks a return to or a reconsideration of such medievalisms and their
representations of medieval culture. In other words, in addition to engaging with aspects of
medieval culture directly, that is to say by secondarily reimaging medieval literature, history, and
78
n go into deciding if
asonable
indicator regarding world-wide popularity. Essentially, what are people willing to buy or spend money on? As one
of the most successful fantasy series of all time, the eight Harry Potter films have grossed to date $7.7 billion
worldwide (http://www.thenumbers.com/movies/series/HarryPotter.php). This figure does not include book sales or
merchandising. One might also think of other wildly successful fantasies like Star Wars
franchises, and, of course, The Lord of the Rings, which I will return to later in this chapter.
79
Within the context of the definition of fantasy, one might also see connections back to the discussion of True
Blood in chapter 2. It is my position that even though True Blood overall is certainly an example of fantasy
television, it is not an example of fantastic neomedievalism because its medievalist narrative, as I have argued, is
revenge on Russell add a edievalism, it nonetheless fits within the parameters
of medievalism because the medieval referents are still somewhat discernible and are not emptied of their signifiers.
71
iconography, neomedievalism primarily engages other forms of medievalism that already exist
within cultural memory. Neomedievalism thus serves as a metacommentary on medievalist
impulses because it borrows both medievalist representations and the functions of the
representations within the narrative. Fantastic neomedievalism, then, transports these
representations of representations and layers of medievalia to a world different from our own
with rules that establishes an alternate reality. These seemingly unfettered medieval simulacra
become even more exaggerated in fantasy worlds because the emphasis on reimagined reality is
doubled: the present, and especially the past, exist solely for the producer and the consumer.
80
Because neomedievalism knowingly interprets interpretations, essentially producing simulacra of
medieval culture, the iconic images often emptied of their original meanings places
neomedievalism, and fantastic neomedievalism by extension, within the postmodern tendency
toward bricolage.
As a notoriously abstruse term in and of itself, defining postmodernism deserves a much
larger platform than can be provided here. As such, this discussion will focus on a prominent
postmodern notion imbricated in the production of neomedievalisms. Bricolage, as Claude Levi-
Strauss defines this action of cobbling together materials through the organizer, the bricoleur,
deals specifically with creation from a sum of parts:
Consider at work and excited by his project. His first practical
step is retrospective. He has to turn back to an already existent set made up of
tools and materials, to consider or reconsider what it contains and, finally and
above all, to engage in a sort of dialogue with it and, before choosing between
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In one of the most provocative studies of fantastic neomedievalism, Medieval Fantasy as Performance The
Society for Creative Anachronism and the Current Middle Ages, Michael A. Cramer suggests that members of the
neomedievalist subculture movement known as the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) become at times
obsessed with (re)creating a fantastic New Middle Ages because they are dissatisfied with their current realities and
see the Middle Ages as a reservoir of iconography with which to reimagine the present as various forms of the past
(ix-xi). Cramer himself has been involved with the SCA for a number of years.
72
them, to index the possible answers which the whole set can offer to his problem.
He interrogates all the heterogeneous objects of which his treasury is composed to
discover what each of them could 'signify' and so contribute to the definition of a
set which has yet to materialize but which will ultimately differ from the
instrumental set only in the internal disposition of its parts. (18-19)
Even though Levi-The Savage Mind defines bricolage and the bricoleur in relation to
the creation of myth and legend from a variety of lived experiences, the notion of mythology
created from disparate parts also seems appropriate within the context of neomedievalism, for
what is neomedievalism but a compounding of multivalent medieval and medievalist pasts into a
mélange of myth?
In terms of postmodernism, the notion of pastiche is also alluring within the context of
neomedievalism. Even though pastiche might be defined somewhat similarly as a hodge-podge
of materials used to construct a new product, I have chosen to use the term bricolage in referring
to neomedievalism in this chapter because its association with the creation of mythology is more
suited to the discussion that follows. As I will argue, Game of Thrones uses some specific
aspects of fantastic neomedievalism that, through their prevalent use in other (neo)medievalisms,
have become a mythology of sorts for the genre. Indeed, neomedievalism, as Selling puts it,
neomedievalist myths created from the bricolage of medievalisms lose their referential bearings
to the medieval past by linking to one another as opposed to referring only to the medieval
cultures repeated therein. Ultimately, neomedievalisms reveal medievalist desires for bringing
disparate icons of medievalness into paradigmatic tension with one another through narrative.
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Because the process of bricolage that allows for the creation of fantastic neomedievalism
depends so heavily upon the appropriation and refashioning of medieval and medievalist iconic
and paradigmatic representations, fantastic neomedievalism on television provides an especially
pertinent subject because its medievalisms are obviously visual. In a fantastic neomedievalist
Game of Thrones, the visual (re)imaginings of some vague and distant
neomedievalist incarnations of iconic representations. Furthermore, within the open narrative
serial structure, an explosion of scene hybriditya scene that begins as a satellite but becomes a
kernel over the course of the narrativein Game of Thrones works with its bricolage of
neomedievalist myth-making by incorporating the medieval and the medievalist while also
cannibalizing its own narrative. In other words, the programs neomedievalist representations are
operationalized by so that narrative strands that originate in satellite
scenes become increasingly interwoven as the storylines stretch over episodes and even seasons.
The open narrative enhances the program
of infinite narrative leaves room for the possibility of ever-continual
neomedievalist reimaginings that become increasingly intertextual. An analysis of the visual and
narrative constructions of three popular fantastic neomedievalist tropespolitical strategy as a
chess match, the existence of dragons, and the reimagining of the Tolkienian universe
demonstrates a few of the ways that medieval and medievalist representations of the Middle
Ages are forced into contact with one another in the alternate reality of the fantasy television
series.
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GAME OF THRONES AND FANTASTIC NEOMEDIEVALIST BRICOLAGE
As this brief synopsis of the first season will attest, HBOGame of Thrones is a fantastic
neomedievalist television program par excellence. Set in the fictional realm of the Seven
Kingdoms of Westeros, Game of Thrones follows multiple interwoven narratives revolving
around the political wrangling of the leading noble families for the Iron Throne. Under the
distracted and detached rule of one-time warlord and usurper, now drunken womanizer King
Robert Baretheon (Mark Addy), the Seven Kingdoms have flourished. But with the sudden death
of the Hand of the King, the de facto ruler appointed by King Robert, threats to the throne and
the peace of the Kingdoms lurk in the shadows. Sensing the need for a fair and honest
replacement, King Robert appoints his long-
Warden of the North, as the new Hand. Although Ned does not wish to leave his family or land
the sense of
responsibility to both his king and his people forces him to reluctantly accept the position. Just
mysteriously falls from a high window. Unbeknownst to all but the three involved, Bran (Isaac
Hempstead Wright) is pushed from the window after seeing Queen Cersei (Lena Headey) having
sex with her twin brother, Ser Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Even though almost no
one knows exactly what happened, many suspect foul play at the hands of the richest and most
powerful family in Westeros: the Lannisters.
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War between the Starks and the Lannisters begins
after Lady Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) takes Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) prisoner
under the suspicion that he is directly involved in the attempted murder of her son. The bad
blood between the two houses escalates once King Robert mysteriously dies in a hunting
81
As an unofficial, yet oft-
, pardon or favor.
75
accident and Ned is imprisoned as a traitor at the behest of Queen Cersei via her son and new
king, Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson). The Seven Kingdoms plunges into civil war.
Meanwhile, threats to Westeros lie not only within its walls but also beyond them. Across
the Narrow Sea, the last remaining children of the Targaryen dynasty have lived in exile for the
past seventeen years after their father was deposed and killed by Robert. According to legend,
the Targaryens used tamed dragons to take control of Westeros some thousand years ago, but
once the dragons began dying out, so did the Targaryen power. Viserys (Harry Lloyd), the self-
Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) to the heathen warlord of the Dothraki Hoard, Khal Drogo (Jason
Moma), who has promised to lend Viserys his army. After a rocky period of assimilation into the
n
after the deaths of her brother, her husband, and her unborn son, Daenerys poses a great threat to
the powers that be in Westeros because she has in her command both a number of Dothraki
warriors and, as the season 1 finale reveals, creatures long thought to be extinct: dragons.
In the North, beyond the Stark stronghold of Winterfell, lies the Wall. The Wall was built
including Ned Stark
supernatural White Walkers at bay. Like dragons, the White Walkers and their winters that last
decades have become myth to most citizens of Westeros, but recent disquieting reports from
beyond the Wall suggest something dangerous is moving closer.
elements of fantasy and neomedievalism permeate the series through its visual and narrative
reimaginings of medievalisms. Game of Thrones obviously exemplifies fantasy because the
76
genre. According to creator/writer/producer George
a sense of magic, but there is very little on stage magic . . . I think too much magic can ruin a
Game of Thrones
1 begins with a su
Watch encounter ghostly, violent figures explained later to be the White Walkers, and episode 10
ends with the revelation that the Targaryen dragons have risen once more from the fires in the
East. The audience is reminded of magic and invited to watch Game of Thrones through these
initial instances. More importantloutstanding visual recycling of
medieval and medievalist representations plays directly into the narrative evolution of the series.
Because Game of Thrones is set entirely within an alternate fantasy reality, its neomedievalisms
exponentially
with Martin to buy the rights to his novel series, A Song of Fire and Ice, as he is still writing the
books. With no ostensible end in sight,
82
Game of Thronesneomedievalisms appear to have a
83
In the
discussion that follows, I will explore three important neomedievalist tropes featured in both
Game of Thrones and a number of other neomedievalist fantasies that demonstrate how the
process of bricolage paradoxically intensifies the intertextualities between these fantasies and
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In a recent interview, Martin revealed that he has planned at least two more novels in his series, putting the total at
seven novels (http://collider.com/george-r-r-martin-interview-game-of-thrones/86337/). With each novel weighing
in at over 750 pages, the series will not run out of material anytime soon.
83
as
both a producer and a screenwriter for the show, in addition to comments he has publically made about the
ative. Time will tell if this agreement lasts.
77
provide a source study of Game of Thrones but rather to investigate some of the ways that
medieval and medievalist representations meld together in a fantastic neomedievalist television
series.
THE GAME IN GAME OF THRONES
As perhaps the most obvious and narratively important trope, the notion of politics as a
chess match permeates Game of Thronesthe series even references it in its title. According to
Ian Riddler, a specialist in medieval games, even though a form of chess originated in India
during the sixth century A.D. and became very popular in the East almost immediately, chess did
not become popular in Western Europe until figure pieces tied to members of the medieval estate
system were introduced around the end of the twelfth century (10-11). Similarly, in her preface
-century edition of The Game and Playe of the Chesse, Jenny
Adams notes how important the symbolism of these pieces was to the medieval imagination by
84
One can see, for example, how
the queen piece transforms from a figure used in the game to a real medieval queen:
Thus ought the queue be maad. She ought to be a fayr lady sittyng in a chayer and
crowned with a corone on her heed and cladde with a cloth of geold and a mantel
above furrid wyth ermynes . . . In that she is sette on his lifi syde is by grace
gevyn to the kynge by nature and of right. For better is to have a kyng by
succession thenne by eleccion. For often tymes the electours and chosers cannot
84
Jacobus De Cessolis sometime during the
thirteenth century.
78
ne wylle not accorde, and so is the eleccion left. And otherwhyle they chese not
the beste and most able and convenient, but hym that they best love or is for them
most proffytable. But whan the kyng is by lignage and by trewe succession, he is
taught, enseygned, and norisshyd in hys yougth all good and virtuous thatches and
maners of his fader. And also, the prynces of the royame dar not so hardyly meve
warre against a kyng having a sone for to reigne after hym. (lines 123-35)
Clearly, the queen chess piece here functions as an inroad to a more important (and timely)
the complex state of royal authority and
other medieval thinkers, the game of chess provided an excellent allegory in the making because
its figure pieces and strategies already contained political overtones. In a time of national
together to reestablish order. This historical context for The Game and Playe of Chesse sounds
remarkably similar to the political strife bubbling up in Westeros. At the end of the first season,
war between no fewer than five noble families has overtaken the Seven Kingdoms when, upon
the sudden death of King Robert, incest rumors surround the queen, her brother, and the king
son and heir.
Moreover, as passage suggests, Queen Cersei not only looks the part of the fair
queen sitting next to the king but also holds perhaps the most political power in Game of Thrones
because she determines who will succeed King Robert by choosing to reproduce with her brother
rather than her husband. Yet, in neomedievalist style, the television series does not present a
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simple iconic representation
world of Westeros.
realm, Game of Thrones perversely
discovers that Prince Joffrey could only be the son of Queen Cersei and her twin brother, Ser
Jamie, because he has inherited the Lannister blond hair instead of the dark hair of his Baratheon
father Robert.
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Instead of producing a legitimate heir, Queen Cersei deceives the king and the
citizens of the realm by wanting to keep the political power within her family. Paradigmatically,
the Lannister incest grossly literalizes the importance placed on lineage in the Middle Ages as
the brother-sister relationship casts a larger and larger shadow over Westeros. As queen, like
illegitimating actions directly cause the outbreak of war in
no legitimate heir to the Iron Throne. Like the War of the Roses, the civil war surrounding the
succession of the throne in Westeros is sure to last years.
Of course, Game of Thrones uses the chess trope in a wider array of contexts than just to
reimagine the importance
neomedievalist television series, Game of Thrones also incorporates other medievalisms that use
the chess trope. As perhaps one of the best-known medievalist films dealing with the allegorical
The Seventh Seal follows the journey of a knight (Max von
Sydow) and a game of chess he plays with Death to delay his own mortality and to accomplish
. In The Seventh Seal, chess becomes the vehicle through which Antonius
Block rediscovers that life has purpose, and is epitomized during the scene when he knocks the
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In another common (neo)medievalist trope, Ned discovers the truth about Joff
ancient genealogy manuscript that details the appearances and personality of all the royal Westeros families. Bettina
Bildhauer argues in Filming the Middle Ages that handwriting and manuscripts often hold an authenticating and
authorizing power in films about the Middle Ages (101).
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chess pieces off the board to distract Death as his friends slip away. This use of chess is strategic,
but more importantly, it has moral implications for its characters and audience.
With the popularity and wide-reaching influence of The Seventh Seal and its historically-
minded allegorical medievalisinfluence
neomedievalist television. Yet unlike The Seventh Seal, which positions its story within the
context of the post-Crusade era Middle Ages, Game of Thrones lacks those historical referents
because it exGame of Thrones lacks the
post-apocalyptic atmosphere that The Seventh Seal exudes thanks to the historical ties to the
bloodshed of the Crusades and the threat of the plague. Further, while The Seventh Seal uses the
chess game between the knight and Death to symbolize more than just the mapping of the
or Game of
Thrones
Game of Thrones, the chess trope does not hold the same historical and moral significance it
carries in The Seventh SealQueen
paradigmatically underscore the political strategies and furtive
scheming that occupy much of the series but do not attempt to link the chess game trope back to
any specific medieval signifier.
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The queen chess piece may be translated, if somewhat
bizarrely, from medieval to medievalism to neomedievalism but the game itself and its
potentiality for allegory gets lost in the shuffle.
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Other connections could be made to films that represent the interplay between chess and political strategy.
Othello would be another potent example to
explore.
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Figures 10 and 11:Queen Cersei and Prince Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones and The Game of Chess from
The Seventh Seal. Queen Cersei understands the importance of family loyalty in Westeros as she advises her son
(and heir to the Iron Throne) Joffrey Baretheon in political strategy so that the Lannisters will always be the most
powerful gamily in the Seven Kingdoms. Game of Thrones, unlike The Seventh Seal The Game
and Playe of Chesse, lacks allegorical impact.
POSTMODERN DRAGONS AND THE MONSTROUS FEMININE
Another popular trope in Game of Thrones that reveals the mythmaking bricolage process
of neomedievalism is the existence of dragons. Like chess, the dragon
the cultural imagination makes it a difficult symbol to pin down because it has been and
continues to be reincarnated to suit a variety of purposes.
Medieval Saints and Dragons in Medieval Thought,
folklore like the battle between St. George and the dragon, exist in visual culture like sculpted
and painted art, and loom threateningly in heraldic devices and battle standards in a number of
medieval cultures including Anglo-Saxon and Viking (198).
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Obviously, the medieval dragon
itself is a complex conglomeration of myths, but it is such a common symbol that it has often
come to represent many different aspects of the Middle Ages to present-day viewers. In the
alternate rules; because the supernatural dragon is part of the f
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Riches also suggests that the cultural uses of the dragon of the medieval West reimagined the lore surrounding
Asiatic and Arab dragons.
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underscores the division between fantasy and non-fantasy. Thus, as an important component to
both medieval culture and the fantasy genre, the dragon provides an excellent vehicle through
which to trace simulacra in a fantastic neomedievalist text like Game of Thrones.
Noting this same intersection between medieval culture and fantasy represented by the
dragon that I have suggested above, Bettina Bildhauer argues in Filming the Middle Ages that
fantasies set within the Middle Ages have a higher tolerance for supernatural elements like
dragons for two primary reasons. First, Bildhauer contends that the Middle Ages are often
for exotic creatures and magic to exist in such a far off time (19). In this case, temporal distance
from medieval events allows both present-day creators of fantasy and its consumers to imagine a
time when a reality different from our own existed. Second, because the tradition of the medieval
fantasies appear to follow the suit, confusing and layering history with literature and myth (19).
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Mandeville’s Travels provides one example of medieval fantasy that epitomizes both the
monstrous alterity of the female body and, importantly, the ever-shifting function of the mythic
dragon.
Although it is more fantastic travel narrative than epic, the fourteenth-century text of
Mandeville’s Travels medieval Holy
Land and the East but augments this travel log with fantastic accounts of the marvelous peoples
and creatures Sir John meets along the way. Given the widespread presence of dragons in
surprising. The narrator recounts a second-hand story about the daughter of Hippocrates of
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One might think of the many cinematic attempts to expose the real/reel King Arthur, and compare them to
cinematic portrayals of a historical figure like Richard I.
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Lango who has been transformed into a dragon by the goddess Diana. In what sounds like the
e hire on þe
-15). In what present-day audiences might see as a gender
reversal of the beauty and the beast story, Sir John
centers on
however, once the dragon woman has been kissed by her charming knight, she
Essentially, the dragon woman can choose between remaining a dragon on
the outskirts of her community and dying by doing what is expected of her. The brief story of the
dragon woman ends after Sir John recounts the failed attempts by knights to transform her back
into her appropriate shape; the dragon woman is left waiting in her cave for the right man to
A medieval text like Mandeville’s Travels, which features elements of myth and fantasy
interwoven with geographical and historical fact, provides a complex medieval fantasy for
modern fantastical reimaginings especially within its constructions of the monstrous female.
More specifically to both Mandeville’s Travel and Game of Thrones, the tale of the dragon
woman of Lango reveals how the dragon of fantasy can function as a site for cultural anxieties,
both medieval and modern. As medieval studies scholar Dana Oswald aptly notes in Monsters,
Gender, and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature,
division between the monstrous form [the dragon] and the human
tion to produce
If she continues to exist as a dragon, she cannot reproduce
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heirs with a human man. As both human and dragon, her monstrous body
social role she ought to occupy
(Oswald 137).
lifted; if a return to humanity and the reproductive life that is expected of her requires her death,
why would the dragon woman want to be human at all? Perhaps Diana (the virgin goddess) has
not cursed this woman, but in actuality set her free from the societal constraints placed upon her.
provides Mandeville’s Travels with the Orientalist spectacle that one encounters throughout the
text but also hints at anxieties surrounding uncontrollable female sexuality. The dragon woman
can choose to scare off her suitors if she so desires, protecting her human body with the body of
the dragon. With a fantastical medieval antecedent like the dragon women of Lango that presents
the conflagration of the dragon as a threatening symbol of the East with the monstrous and
unreproductive feminine body.
Game of Thrones adds to the already complex myth of the dragon by paradigmatically
inverting the anxieties embodied by the dragon woman of Lango. Instead of functioning as a site
for anxieties about women refusing to reproduce and having the means to make their own sexual
decisions, the body of the dragon woman of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen, reveals
anxieties about overreproductive monstrous female body that begin as satellite scenes but
retroactively develop into kernel scenes to
The entire first season of Game of Thrones hints at the existence of dragons,
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but it is not
a fantastic reality (see Fig. 12). In this final scene, Daenerys Targaryen enters the flames of her
89
The series presents fossilized dragon eggs, tales of the Targaryen conquest of Westeros aided by dragons, and
dragons skulls as evidence to their once-prolific existence.
85
h
forcing the Dothraki people to recognize that she is the rightful heir to the distant Iron Throne
even though they have only traditionally recognized male leaders. As the flames engulf her body,
the camera cuts away to suggest the fading of night into morning. The camera then follows the
astonished eyes of the waking Dothraki to a startling sight. In the middle of the ashes from the
its a nude but completely unscathed Daenerys. Even more miraculously,
she holds three dragon hatchlingsmaterial proof the legends are true and that she literally been
proven by fire. The episode ends with this dramatic scene suggesting that these dragons will once
again aid in a Targaryen conquest of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
Figure 12: Daenerys Targaryen and Her Dragon Hatchling from Game of Thrones. After spending a night inside her
n eggs long thought to be petrified, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke)
n in the background of the shot.
Once again, Game of Thrones emphasizes the power that mothers have over inheritance
of the dragons. Having just lost her
unborn sonwho would have been a Dothraki Khal and was prophesied to be
in an accident, Daenerys becomes mother to the dragons that will aid her in
her quest to regain the Iron Throne when her son cannot. Ironically, even though
production of a human child, who would have been heir to both the Targaryens and Dothraki and
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who would have also had a claim to the Iron Throne, was a major source of concern to King
Robert and Ned Stark,
90
thought to be long extinctthat should be
the source of real concern in Westeros. At the same time, her literal self-imposed trial by fire has
revealed that it is she, not her weak, power hungry (and now dead) brother, Viserys, that should
be called the Dragon; after all, the legends hold that fire cannot kill the Dragon.
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Paradoxically,
the existence of real dragons legitimizes their claim to be a dragon herself. Even though
Game of Thrones reimagines the dragon women of Lango in Daenerys, paradigmatically
transforming a dragon-woman hybrid into a woman associated with the physical power and fire
of dragons, the series maintains the dragon woman-producing reproductive body.
Yet unlike the cultural anxieties one might see in the dragon woman of Mandeville’s
Travels, the dragon woman of Game of Thrones only proves anxious to other nobles in the Seven
Kingdoms. Importantly, the intertwining of the dragon with the female body becomes inverted as
it is reproduced within a neomedievalist text like Game of Thrones. Because she is portrayed as
one of the few wholly sympathetic characters in Game of Thronesdy
legitimate claim to the Iron Throne; indeed, at the end of season 1, Daenerys appears to be one of
the most, if not the most, suitable person to rule Westeros. I would like to argue that such a
portrayal depends on the unfettering of the dragon/female body from its (albeit complex)
medieval context; the transformation of the dragon into a positive and assertive portrayal of a
vaguely medieval woman could only occur within the postmodern context of fantastic
neomedievalism.
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have Daenerys and her unborn child killed even though Ned finds it to be a dishonorable act.
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To further emphasize that fact that Daenerys is the Dragon and Viserys is not, the series drops several clues
throughout the first season. Daenerys is unharmed by scalding bathwater and burning flames of a candle, while
ead after Viserys threatens to kills Daenerys.
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In her introduction to Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and
Fantasy Television, feminist television scholar Elyce Rae Helford argues that science fiction and
Game of Thrones is one of the
90s (7).
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As a fantasy, and a neomedievalist fantasy in particular, Game of
Thrones’ portrayal of Daenerys plays with the popular medievalist view that all medieval women
were second-class citizens and/or that female sexuality was seen as uniformly dangerous. One
adaptation of Beowulf as an example of the old-guard medievalist notion of the femme fatale.
Unlike Jolie-as--Mother,
cave, Daenerysnotably develops after her role as sexualized object has ended with the
death of her husband. The series begins with Daenerys acting as an object of exchange between
her brother and Khal Drogo, but by the end of season 1, she has lost all of the men in her life and
claimed her own agency.
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By becoming mother of the dragons, Daenerys transforms herself into
the Dragon and Game of Thrones uses its neomedievalisms to reinvent the fantasy dragon trope
not as a metaphor for the dangers of female sexuality but rather as paradoxically transgressive
yet traditional take on feminist agency.
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The Warrior Women of Television: a Feminist Cultural Analysis of the New
Female Body in Popular Media warns against assuming that the strong central female characters always demonstrate
pro-
Xena, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and La Femme Nikita
may be adoptgiving a nod to the many feminists in the
land
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wer does still position her agency within the
appropriate traditional role of mother. Essentially, she derives her agency from her children rather than from her
own body in and of itself like the dragon woman of Lango.
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REIMAGINING TOLKIENIAN FANTASY
As perhaps the most ubiquitous and postmodern trope prevalent among fantastic
neomedievalist productions like Game of Thrones, the reimagining and translation of J.R.R.
The Lord of the Rings has had a lasting influence on the
fantasy genre. As Brian Aldiss puts it, the 1956 publication of The Lord of the Rings
floodgates to a tidal wave of fantasy worlds, where a single idea could be stretched to six or
more or more novels of a s
cinematic adaptations by the same name.
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The following discussion will attempt to draw a few
The Fellowship of the Ring and the
postmodern blurring of that binary division in Game of Thrones by focusing what I shall call the
ffect, Interestingly, actor Sean
Bean provides a window into Game of Thrones postmodern take on Tolkienian morality
because he plays flawed yet honorable men in both film and TV series. Sorting out the visual
intertextuality provided by the Sean Bean Effect not only emphasizes the visual similarities
between these two texts but also demonstrates how the bricolage of fantastic neomedievalism
allows for the reimagining of perhaps the most popular medievalist productions of all time.
In The Rise of Tolkienian Fantasy, Jared Lobdell pinpoints one of the reasons why so
many (neo)medievalist fantasies resemble the world Tolkien created. By noting the way
-day creators of neomedievalist
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The three films grossed close to $3 billion dollars at box offices worldwide. This figure does not include
merchandizing, DVD sales or rentals (http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region=world-wide).
89
-
95
Yet, as Lobdell
claims, tering into his world, they have entered into the world of Celtic
mythology, or Celtic feigned history, or feigned Celtic feigned history. Or else sub-created their
ian
fantasy that is reincorporated into fantastic medievalisms most often is the definite binary
between good and evil. all are
delineates good characters from evil
ones (Haydock, Movie Medievalism 178).
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of the familiar medieval atmosphere fulfills the need to depart from the everyday world, and
contributes to the lure of fantasy through the creation of realms where good and evil are clearly
(Cramer 20). The viewers of The Lord of the Rings films know if a character is evil because he is
usually physically deformed (Orcs) or clothed in black (Sauron), just as they know a character is
good because he is attractive (Aragorn), good-spirited (Sam), or wears white (Gandalf).
At the same time, clear delineations between good and evil do not rule out the choice of
individuals, nor does this mean that good characters are infallible.
position as a medieval scholar bears prominently on his fiction, for his incorporation of this
obviously Boethian philosophic trope of free will recalls the philosopherity within the
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That Tolkien was a professional scholar of medieval philology and literature at Oxford has been a jumping off
Translating
Tolkien: Philological Elements in The Lord of the Rings or Tolkien the Medievalist edited by Jane Chance.
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Once again, this discussion of the Tolkienian medievalism imbricated in the neomedievalism of Game of Thrones
emphasize medievalism at work, it would also unnecessarily complicate things. Instead, the focus here is how the
visual intertextualities between B
Tolkien texts and Game of Thrones. Perhaps future works will extend my initial discussions here to include the way
adaptation affects neomedievalist bricolage and intertextuality.
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Middle Ages and lends his fantasy a distinct medieval morality. Indeed, i
and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in The Lord of the Rings
Boethian view of the universethat fate, chance and free will exist as part of the order and
harmony of the universepermeates The Lord of the Rings, particularly in several crucial events
in the narrative regarding choices made by the characters and their consequences (37). One such
Fig. 13). As the
oldest son of the Steward of Gondor, Boromir is instructed by his father to bring the One Ring
of Rivendell, however, it is decided that the One Ring is too powerful to be used for good and
must be destroyed by the fires of Mordor; Boromir instead joins the Fellowship of the Ring to
protect Frodo, the ring bearer, on his treacherous journey. Boromir proves himself several times
on the journey by honorably defending the hobbits from the harsh elements of the mountains and
from attack by the Orcs, but soon he succumbs to the power of the Ring. Boromir tries to take
the Ring from Frodo by force, but Frodo escapes by becoming invisible after putting on the Ring.
Realizing his mistake, Boromir dies trying to defend their camp and the hobbits from another
Orc attack. E
Ring, he is still motivated by good, and because of this he is allowed to regain his honor in dying
If The Lord of the Rings’s
before sensed dimly, to understand comprehensively and afresh what he thought he already
hen a postmodern interpretation of such a world blurs the lines between good and evil
while still emphasizing the individuality and agency of its characters (Crossley 287). Game of
Thrones provides one such example of a neomedievalist interpretation of Tol.
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Writer/executive producer D.B. Weiss a story where everybody is
following their own interests and everybody is following their own code [sic] and this provides a
much richer story than the guys in white beating the Game of
Thrones As if to emphasize the fact that Game of Thrones does not wholly incorporate The
Lord of the Rings, the fate of the most honorable character in Westeros, Sean
Stark, flies in the face of the Tolkienian model of moral certitude and repentance
(see Fig. 14). Narratively, this paradigmatic transformation of medieval morality into
neomedievalism has startling implications for Game of Thrones story trajectory and television
serials in general because it pushes screenwriting into new territory through its ability to create
new narrative possibilities.
Figures 13 and 14: Sean Bean as Boromir from The Fellowship of the Ring and Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark
from Game of Thrones. Actor Sean Bean as The Lord of the RingsThe
Fellowship of the Ring) while his Game of Thronesand of
cinematographic and narrative debt Game of Thrones The Lord of the Rings films.
After becoming the Hand of the King, Ned continuously battles corruption at court in
precisely
why King Robert selected him. Of course, this combination of honor and morality ultimately
death. After trying to do what is best for the Seven Kingdoms by
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-crossed
by several members of the court whom he believed were his friends and is thrown in jail for
treason. In a Tolkienian fantasy, order would eventually be restored, or, in the very least, as is
with the case of Boromir, a good man is allowed a chance to repent for his transgression by
dying honorably. In Middle Earth, characters have agency yet good routinely triumphs over evil.
Game of Thrones skews the delineation between good and evil by having King Joffrey publically
execute Ned even after Ned has formally ap
appear only to want to further their own ambitions. Instead of the optimistic (and perhaps naïve
or escapist) Tolkienian fantasy where good eventually conquers evil, Game of Thrones
it is
the desire for power, not morality, that motivates the citizens of Westeros and perhaps those of
us watching from home, too.
savvy and main
characters are not safe from death. WGame of Thrones rewrites
traditional narrative assumptions, even within the open narrative form of the serial. This
narrative intrigue turns audience expectations on their heads because, by extension, the
most medievalist fantasies have been thrown out the window. In particular, the
postmodern emphasis on the lack of goodness in Westeros directly affects the narrative and vice
versa; by creating a neomedievalist representation that reimagines the moral assumptions at the
very heart many medievalisms, Game of Thrones (re)creates fantasy, narrative, and our
imaginings of the Middle Ages with one swing of the executioner
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CONCLUSION
Game of Thrones curiously recounts how
the Art Department, under the leadership of Production Director Gemma Jackson, paid special
attention to imbuing the visual economy of the first season of Game of Thrones with, of all
things, authenticity:
Gemma was very clear that she wanted to give each world its own feel.
Something like Castle Black was very grim and very barea very rude
existenceand Himalayan and Eskimo influences come into play there.
Somewhere like Winterfell is very Presbyterian and very stoic, but there is some
beauty to it. As we get further south, we are definitely becoming more
cue from how to design it come from there. As you go east and you get over the
itinerate tribes and . . . the kind of tent structures they have.
Within the context of the preceding discussion regarding the bricolage of fantastic
the Art Department is
clear: beg, borrow, or steal from a wide array of cultures to create something that feels familiar,
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As I have argued, the same concept of bricolage applies to the series as a whole.
Although certainly not a comprehensive examination of Game of Thrones
bricolage, the previous discussions of chess, dragons, and The Lord of the Rings demonstrate
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ent is especially interesting given his work in The Lord of the Rings. Clearly, he too sees Middle
Earth and Westeros as being vastly different.
94
how complicated tropes and representations become when they are taken from their contexts and
placed within new ones. Instead of attempting to recreate the Middle Ages in a historically
responsible way, fantastic neomedievalism aims for the exact oppositethe visual referents
without context used to create a new mythic Middle Ages via bricolage. At the same time, it is
this postmodern reinvention of medieval and medievalist representations that allows fantastic
neomedievalism like Game of Thrones to reimagine the Middle Ages, no matter how distant they
may seem, for new generations.
Of course, this chapter represents just a small sampling of the ways neomedievalism
functions on television; hopefully future projects will tease out additional connections and
developed more nuanced theories detailing the ways that the past and representations of the past
function in the present. Consequently, making any grand statements here seem premature.
Instead, I would like to provide one final example that speaks not only to the ways that
neomedievalism can repeatedly reproduce images of the Middle Ages but also to the widespread
popularity of neomedievalism on television. What could be more fittingly postmodern than The
Simpsons reimaging Game of Thrones
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Figure 15: The Simpsons Parody Game of Thrones. Instead of Kings Landing, viewers are presented with Burns
Landingcomplete with Mr. Burns and Smithers reimagined as citizens of Westeros.
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I would like to thank Dr. Deborah Barker for bringing this pertinent example to my attention.
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V.
Even after three chapters devoted entirely to the images of the Middle Ages on TV, there
is still much work to be done in this emergent field. I have had to limit my explorations here,
focusing primarily on the relationships between these representations and the kernels of
medievalness they (re)create as well as the intertextuality between (neo)medievalisms on
television and in other media like cinema. To this end, I have used three narratively diverse
television programs as case studies to demonstrate the variety of medievalisms on TV and to
Further, I have
argued that these medievalisms underscore the ideological negotiations present in these pop
culture productions.
In chapter 1, I looked at the ways The Pillars of the Earth (de)constructs familiar icons of
medieval piety, namely the cathedral, saintly relics, and clerical vestments to position its
narrative within an authenticating medieval world. These iconic representations span all eight
episodes of the miniseries, occupying both background and foreground at various points during
the series, but they each ultimately function as kernel scenes in the narrative. Even though these
medievalist representations are not always historically accurate, their recognizably medieval
iconography rejects monolithic medieval piety, choosing instead to portray the variety of
heterodox religious practices.
True
Blood can incorporate medievalist elements into its narrative. I was specifically interested in the
way this program paradigmatically refigures the iconic blood feud and níð insult tradition of Old
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Norse culture. Drawing a comparison between what I see as a medieval antecedent of the
paradoxically homoerotic/homophobic treatment of vengeance in Gísla Saga, True Blood
appears iking
-charged scene
where he kills Talbot, the vampire lover of his enemy, creating a paradigmatic representation of
both the blood feud and the níðieval vampirea queer temporal
allows for such a paradigm shift. Moreover, even though
True Blood
argued
precursor, effectively and allows it to drives the
Game of Thrones and what I see as its fantastic
neomedievalisms. In the course of this chapter, I have argued that neomedievalism, though
perhaps an even more slippery term than medievalism, is the postmodern interpretation of
medievalist interpretations of medievalness. As such, neomedievalisms demonstrate a
bricolage of vaguely medieval icons within the paradigm of medievalist recreation that work to
create a fantastical or mythic Middle Ages. To illustrate this point, I draw parallels between three
neomedievalist tropes visualized in Game of Thrones that commonly appear in other fantastic
The
Game and Playe of Chesse and is symbolically revisited in Ingmar The Seventh Seal,
I have argued that Game of Thrones keeps the chess iconography but discards its potential for
allegorical moralizing. Secondly, I have suggested that Game of Thrones has transformed the
monstrous dragon woman found in medieval texts like of Mandeville’s Travels from an
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misogynistic Orientalism into an ambivalent, if not pro-feminist, character by refiguring
Game
of Thrones as it both connects and separates the series from perhaps the most successful
medievalist production, The Lord of the RingsLOTR) and Ned Stark
(GOT) resemble one another in both appearance and manner, these characters underscore the
Game of
Thrones
Even though these three chapters demonstrate the variety of (neo)medievalist narratives
and representations within television series, there remains much ground to cover. Future works
on television medievalisms might consider other obvious medievalist serials like Highlander,
Merlin, or Ivanhoe using models similar to the ones I have constructed here, but other projects
might also move beyond the serial program. A recent surge in medievalist reality shows like Full
Metal Jousting present new scholarly challenges for the field of television medievalism studies.
In thinking about the future of the field, we should now return to the difficult questions
that began this project because they will surely continue to drive medievalism scholarship. What
is it about the Middle Ages that makes it such a prevalent, and as the preceding chapters have
suggested, diverse feature of pop culture? Once again, I cannot provide a definitive answer, but
as Eco, along with others, have so wisely pointed out, our enjoyment of the Middle Ages appears
to play a central role.
Indeed, the title of this conclusion, borrowed from Laurie Finke and Martin B.
Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film, picks up on this same current of
enjoying the Middle Ages through our (re)productions of them.
Enjoy Your Symptom!, which
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(among his many other works) postulates the role that fantasy plays in existence. Finke and
erates within our
fantasies: notes, when we perceive of a historical moment as a moment at which some
quality is lost, that quality, in fact, is almost always a fantasy being created by the very act of
mourning(14the period only exists in
our interpretations of the material bits of it remainingwe create a fantasy Middle Ages to help
us mourn for the object that we will never be able to obtain again. We mourn the death of the
Middle Ages through our fantasies of them.
SimilarlyEnjoying the Middle
Ages suggests that the Middle Ages are (re)produced over and over again in hopes of
impossibly getting back to the original, which for present-day mourners, has always already been
lost to history:
The dead do not live on in us through our images of them, and yet they do,
because the form of their living on is the form of their very unrepeatability. They
live on, that is, only insofar as they are interiorized, in a mode that indicates their
being as something unrepeatable which will be subjected to endlessly inventive
technologies of repetition. (222)
Images then become the primary tool of the fantasy in bringing the Middle Ages back to life.
Because television is such a ubiquitous presence in present-day Western culture, it, like cinema,
takes up the role of creator and provider of fantasy images of our lost Middle Ages. But how
does one recreate or reimagine something that has always already been lost? By incorporating
the bits of extant material medieval culture like religious icons, literature or other artifacts, the
process of reimagining the Middle Ages through medievalist fiction and fantasy relies heavily on
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the iconic and paradigmatic representations I have discussed in this study. Ultimately, desire for
a real Middle Ages that cannot never be obtained drives the repeated medievalist representations
so prevalent in our media. These representations allow us to enjoy our process of mourning.
But this is just one response to the question at the heart of the (re)production of pop
cultural medievalisms. Perhaps with future investigations into the many medievalisms on
television and in other media like cinema and the Internet, better, more accurate answers will
make themselves known. Nevertheless, if we might say one thing conclusively, it is this: people
not only seem to like the Middle Ages but also enjoy and will enjoy watching their medievalist
fantasies play out on TV.
100
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109
VITA
Sara McClendon Knight was born in 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the
suburbs of Marietta. In 2004, Sara received a diploma with distinction from the Advanced
Academy of Mathematics, Science and Technology at Kennesaw Mountain High School in
Kennesaw, Georgia. Sara then attended the University of Georgia, where she was awarded a
student teaching scholarship by the College of Education and the Ploughcholarship,
which allowed her to spend a semester abroad in the United Kingdom at Keble College, Oxford.
After graduating cum laude from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Arts
degree in English and a Bachelor of Science degree in English Education in 2008, Sara moved
back to Marietta to teach high school English at Marietta High School. She also sponsored the
yearbook staff, coached the swim and dive teams, taught summer school, and earned her gifted
in-field certification during her two years at Marietta.
In 2010, Sara moved to Oxford, Mississippi to pursue a Master of Arts degree in English
from the University of Mississippi. Upon the completion of her degree, she plans to return to
teaching high school English in Georgia.
