Michael A. Cramer – författare
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2 produkter
2 produkter
Medieval Fantasy as Performance
The Society for Creative Anachronism and the Current Middle Ages
Häftad, Engelska, 2009
938 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
In this book, Michael Cramer views the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), an organization that studies and recreates the middle ages, as a case study for a growing fascination with medieval fantasy in popular culture. He explores the act of medieval re-creation as performance by focusing on the SCA, describing the group's activities, investigating its place in popular culture, and looking at the SCA not so much as a historical society but as an on-going work of performance art; a postmodern counter-culture riff on what it means to be "medieval."Cramer examines the group's activities, from persona and character development to theatrical performance and personal interaction; from the complex official ceremonies to full contact armored combat with mock broadswords. He explores the SCA in detail to discover how its members adapt and employ ideas about the Middle Ages in performance, ritual reenactment, living history, and re-creation, analyzing the performance of identity through ritual, sport, drama, and personal interaction, and he focuses on the reconstruction of the medieval "king game," a game in which a mock king is chosen to reign over a mock court. The book also studies various ideas about medievalism, including the contrast between reenactment and re-creation, and places these activities in the context of contemporary American society. With three appendixes, a bibliography, and a selection of photos, Cramer demonstrates how and why medieval fantasy is increasingly used in popular culture and analyzes the dissatisfaction with contemporary culture that leads people into these realms of fantasy.
448 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
Understanding the past takes more forms than historiography. Since 2005, professional and amateur scholars have come together at the annual International Medieval Congress in Western Michigan University to discuss the role re-construction, re-enactment and re-creation can play in 'breathing life into these dry bones' to deepen our knowledge of the past. Under the sponsorship of the Higgins Armory Museum and the Oakeshott Institute, presenters have looked at subjects ranging from ore smelting to equitation to the use of recreation and reenactment in the classroom.This volume brings together seven papers examining the depth and breadth in which experimental archaeology and textual analysis can come together to reveal the past. From glass beads to iron smelting, the profession of arms to the chivalric virtues of franchise and 'doing what one said they would do', this collection provides a unique insight into both the daily and intellectual life of medieval man. It will be of interest not only to professional historians, musicologists, literary scholars and art historians, but also to the vast army of impassioned and enthusiastic practitioners who endeavor, as a labor of love, to make the past come to life.