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Clements, Pamela
Dr. Pamela Clements obtained her Ph.D in Old and Middle English Language and Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently a Professor of English at Siena College, New York.
2012 0-7734-2662-0This is a collection of essays that study the contemporary cultural depictions of medievalism. The book attempts to unravel distortions that tend to domesticate the era and represent it as an extension of modern life. Several authors claim that modernity is so radically different to medieval life that we can only view the past as an extension of the present, rather than as radically different. The present distorts, and often politicizes the past, and these essays explore how everything from commercials, and video games, to the war on terror can contain elements of neo-medieval revisionism. Some authors argue that even though nobody alive today has a lived experience of the period, and holding an authentic medieval experience is almost impossible, there seems to be a sort of nostalgia about medieval times that indicates dissatisfaction with contemporary life.