Medievalism

Medievalism is the study of the impact and legacy of the Middle Ages on modernity.

Black and white photograph of a train exiting a tunnel, courtesy Tameside Archives.
Photograph courtesy Tameside Archives.

The Medievalism research group at Manchester includes Prof. David Matthews, Prof. Daniela Caselli, Dr. Mike Sanders and Dr Ingrid Hanson.

We have a particular interest in the nineteenth-century refashioning of the Middle Ages, especially in the Manchester context.

David Matthews and Michael Sanders are currently working on an edited collection focusing on ‘subaltern’ medievalisms – the uncelebrated use of medieval imagery and the medieval legacy by rebels and workers in the nineteenth century.

Ongoing research

Illustration by Martin Crampin, Medievalism: A Critical History by David Matthews.
Illustration by Martin Crampin (left) | 'Medievalism: A Critical History' by David Matthews (right).

Daniela Caselli, author of Beckett's Dantes, works on the traces of medievalism in modernism and is currently engaged on a major project focusing on Dante's wider deployment by modernist authors.

Ingrid Hanson has published a book, William Morris and the Uses of Violence 1856-1890 (Anthem Press, 2013), and is at present working on medievalism in fin-de-siècle socialist journals.