Meriem Pagès - Böcker

The 21st century has seen a resurgence of popular interest in the Middle Ages. Television in particular has presented a wide and diverse array of "medieval" offerings. Yet there exists little scholarship on television medievalism.This collection fills the gap with 10 new essays focusing on the depiction of the Middle Ages in popular culture and questioning the role of television in shaping our ideas about past and present. The contributors emphasize the need for scholars of medievalism to pay attention to its manifestations on the small screen. The essays cover quite a range of topics, including genre, gender and sexuality. The series covered are Game of Thrones, Merlin, Full Metal Jousting, Joan of Arcadia, Tudors, Camelot and Mists of Avalon.Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Ever since the publication of Orientalism, medievalists have attempted to apply Said‘s theses on the Western European representation of the Muslim Other tothe Middle Ages. Pagès examines the sect of the Nizari Isma’ilis (known for its use of political assassination) and its complicated relationship with Western Europe, providing a fascinating case study of such an endeavor.The representation of the Nizaris, who came to be known in Europe as the Assassins, closely parallels that of Islam in the Middle Ages. However, how the sect was perceived in Latin Christendom is nuanced and complex, leading to divergent readings of the Assassins. These portrayals ranged from allies in the earliest texts to exotic “marvels of the world” in works of the thirteenth century and thereafter. By delineating how the sect’s representation developed in medieval historical and literary works, From Martyr to Murderer shows that the Assassins did not originally inspire alienation about them in medieval Europeansreading and writing. Pagès’s adroit exploration of the Assassins legend leads us to question our preconceived notions about the larger issue of the image of Islam in the Middle Ages.

Less than a hundred years after Thomas Becket’s martyrdom at the hands of four of Henry II’s knights, his Anglo-Norman mother was transformed into a pagan princess who abandoned faith and kin for Becket’s father and Christianity. Pagès uses this wholly fictional legend about the saint to examine the place and function of conversion and mission in The Man of Law’s Tale, juxtaposing the tale with the legend about Becket’s mother to assess the power (or lack thereof) of baptism in late medieval English works. This new comparative study thus provides productive insights into the complexity of the emergence of the concept of race in medieval English culture and literature.