Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon my Darlings! For today’s post, I have decided to discuss the Allure of Medievalism. Medievalism is the Romanticism of the Medieval Period in history. It has long been a time period that has garnered admiration and Medievalism is something that gained huge notoriety during the Victorian times.
As technology advanced more and more quickly, thanks to the Industrial Revolutions, many people in the Victorian Era began to desire to look back to simpler times! That is when Medievalism really took hold in the Victorian consciousness. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood helped increase the Romanticization of the Medieval Era. The artists that made up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood often painted and wrote poems about Medieval topics. Arthurian figures, Shakespearean heroines, and Medieval figures became favorite subject matters amongst the Brotherhood!
That is why we see so many paintings depicting the Lady of Shalott coming out of the Victorian Era. That being said, the most famous painting of that Arthurian figure is likely from John William Waterhouse, who painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style but came decades later than the original Brotherhood, which shows that the Allure of Medievalism so prevalent in the Victorian Era did not end with that Era! Today, as technology is advancing even more rapidly than ever before, we see many people, just like their Victorian predecessors, desiring to return to Medieval simplicity. We see this in the popularity of Cottagecore as an aesthetic, which plays into this desire for simplicity, even sometimes recreating Medieval set artworks!
I would even state that before its Victorian heyday, Medievalism and the Romanticization of the Medieval Era were alive and well at the French court during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. After all, we know that Marie Antoinette loved her smaller home on the grounds of Versailles, La Petit Trianon. She even went so far as to have mock peasant villages built for herself and her favorite Ladies to play-act in! That is something that exemplifies Medievalism and Romanticizing the Past, as the peasant lifestyle recreated aesthetically seems more in line with the Medieval Era than with her own time period. We can see this from the style of dress she popularized amongst her Ladies at court, as it is viewable in paintings done by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun! In many ways, Marie Antoinette was doing Cottagecore-style play-acting centuries before we ever had the term Cottagecore today!
As someone who has long been a bit obsessed with the Medieval period (the magickal nature of the Arthurian Legends and Welsh Celtic myths, which were first written in the Medieval Era, and the actual history and literature of the time) I completely understand the Allure of Medievalism. I both get the desire to be in a simpler time, as well as to be in a fantasy-styled era, as almost every fairytale and fantasy story, seems to be set in a vaguely Medieval time frame. I also will thank my love of Royal History and Gothic Literature for really adding to this Allure of Medievalism for me. After all, Gothic Literature had long been set in a vaguely Medieval time frame, to play on the distance of the past, before it became more solely fixated on supernatural elements. Later Gothic Literature would have a more modern setting, like the Victorian Era, bringing the Allure of Medievalism full circle!
I hope that you have enjoyed this slightly rambling examination of the Allure of Medievalism that seems to have never left us. Do you enjoy Medievalism? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Tarot Note: I have a page offering tarot and oracle readings for those interested in these services! I am very happy to be offering these readings to my treasured readers at White Rose of Avalon! Link to page: https://whiteroseofavalon.life/tarot-and-oracle-readings/
Further Reading
- The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (A great example of a Medieval set Gothic Romance.)
- A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R.R. Martin (The Game of Thrones books are very much Medievalesque fantasy.)
- Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley (A biography of the most iconic muse turned artist of the Pre-Raphaelites.)
- Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber (An excellent biography that specifically looks at style in the life of the Queen.)