https://www.britannica.

com/art/ballad

https://www.jstor.org/stable/460070?seq=1

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/168076/summary
Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by
devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture,
literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture.[1] Since the
18th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for
creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the pre-Raphaelite and arts and
crafts movements, and neo-medievalism (a term often used interchangeably with medievalism).
The words medievalism and Medieval are both first recorded in the 19th century. Medieval is
derived from Latin medium aevum ("middle of the ages").

Romanticism was a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the
second half of the eighteenth century in Western Europe, and gained strength during and after
the Industrial and French Revolutions.[11] It was partly a revolt against the political norms of the
Age of Enlightenment which rationalised nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual
arts, music, and literature.[11] Romanticism has been seen as "the revival of the life and thought of
the Middle Ages",[12] reaching beyond rational and Classicist models to elevate medievalism and
elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the
confines of population growth, urban sprawl and industrialism, embracing the exotic, unfamiliar
and distant.[12][13]
The name "Romanticism" itself was derived from the medieval genre chivalric romance. This
movement contributed to the strong influence of such romances, disproportionate to their actual
showing among medieval literature, on the image of Middle Ages, such that a knight, a
distressed damsel, and a dragon is used to conjure up the time pictorially.[14] The Romantic
interest in the medieval can particularly be seen in the illustrations of English poet William
Blake and the Ossian cycle published by Scottish poet James Macpherson in 1762, which
inspired both Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1773), and the young Walter Scott. The
latter's Waverley Novels, including Ivanhoe (1819) and Quentin Durward (1823) helped
popularise, and shape views of, the medieval era.[15] The same impulse manifested itself in the
translation of medieval national epics into modern vernacular languages,
including Nibelungenlied (1782) in Germany,[16] The Lay of the Cid (1799) in Spain,
[17]
 Beowulf (1833) in England,[18] The Song of Roland (1837) in France,[19] which were widely read
and highly influential on subsequent literary and artistic work.[20]

The term medievalism was first used by……………………….It refers to something related to middle ages
although chronologically it is very difficult to define the historical period of middle ages; in different
cultural and continental context it denotes different time; in Indian context it denotes….and in
European context it denotes eleventh century to fourteenth century.
It was derived from Latin medium aevum ("middle of the ages").

Infact the origin of the term Romanticism was in medieval romances which connote chivalrous
culture of the medieval Europe.

However in literature and in culture medievalism is different ways of looking back to the culture and
traditions of that era .It should not be identified with the historical facts of culture and architecture
which actually prevailed during that era.
European romanticism has been often defined as an obsessipon with Medievalism with differnet out
looks. Especially the lyrics of Romantic genres display an affinity with medievalism . The mood and
atmosphere of the lyrics often depend upon the medieval allusions, setting, folkslores, medieval
cultures, religion, popular cuture and often medieval languages.

Publications of certain anthologies, collections like Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by Bishop
Percy, Rowley Poems by Thomas Chatterton and other Welsh poetry were intstrumental in reviving a
great interest in popular and folk songs and ballads during the Romantic revival in late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century Europe, claimed by the most critcs. In his address to Countess of
Northumberland , Percy claims the songs, lyrics, folk stories found in these ballads as ‘barbarous’,
not artistic but ‘effusions of nature’ , having ‘artless graces’, ‘ a pleasing simplicity’ which were sure
to attract the imaginations of Wordsworth and Coleridge.( Percy, Bishop Thomas. Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry,edited J.V. Prichard, London , 1908) What Wordsworth in his Preface declares
was almost referring to Percy’s finding ; he too wanted to revive this popular simplicity of the heart
through a language and diction which would establish a direct consonance with Nature and
imagination in his lyrics.

Illustrations

To analyse the facts we must iluustrate few of the renowned Romantic lyrics of the time . Some well
known lyrics of the great Romantic era have been selected for this purpose.

Coleridge

Kubla Khan by Coleridge was inspired Coleridge’s reading of Purcha’s Pilgrimage from where he
extensively reads about the Mongolian ruler Kublai Khan , the famous grandson of Chengis Khan; the
landscape is not merely Oriental but also English ; the capital of Xanadu where Kubla Khan did builr a
stately pleasure dome’ may also refer to Culbone Hill, East Lyn River valley of Somerset ,according to
researchers; Culbone Hill is the site of England’s smallest medieval Church build to St. Bruno.( Edited
by Ben P. Robertson, Romantic Sustainability: Endurance and the Natural World, 1780–1830, page 9)
. The river East Lyn is also sacred like Alph since it was rumoured to be visited by Christ himself.
Coleridge was also using a unique medieval cultural trend of gardening around the castles,
monasteries ; until 11th century these organised gardens were absent, or rare around castles but by
the 12th century these became extremely popular. Whatever the historical facts might be , Coleridge
found a perfect medieval capital with a perfect patron of art in Kubla Khan who was called Sesten
Khan or the Wise Khan; he blends the past with the lyrical vision:

‘ And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!’

Coleridge finds a symbolic representation of journey of human civilizations and art in Xanadu of
Kubla Khan ; he does not escape into the thirteenth century Monglolian Yuan Dynasty as an escape
from eighteenth century rationalism; the rhyming verse of the text never forgets to utilise the
sonorous consonants in English language; the consonants like /n/, /s/,/l/, /m/ ,/r/ create
phonetically smooth glide among stop consonants ; phrases like ‘caverns measureless to man’,
‘cedarn cover’, ‘ As e’er beneath a waning moon’, miracle of rare device’, ‘caves of ice’, ‘mingled
measure’, ‘damsel with dulcimer’ create perfect harmony of music. The narrative expectation is
overwhelmed with the descriptive lines interspersed with emotional outbursts like ‘A savage place!’,
‘those caves of ice!’, ‘Beware! Beware!’. This subtle balance between emotional out bursts and
simple visionary, descriptive lines sustains the musicality of the lyric.
‘Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song ,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would buil that dome in air,’

This song of the Abyssinian maid initially may surprise us but what it does is to connect Mount Abora
with the medieval Xanadu; the vision of the maid , perhaps, comes from Kubla Khan listening to the
‘mingled measure/From the fountain and the caves.’

Keats

Le Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats apparently derives its title from the fifteenth century courtly
love poem by French poet Alainn Chartier . Yet Earl R. Wasserman feels( The Finer Tone: Keats’
Major Poems , 2006, The Johns Hopkins Press, New Delhi) the medieval ballad called Thomas Rymer’
to be the source of the story and setting ; Keats must have read it in Popular Ballads by Robert
Jamieson .The medieval folk legend provides the central narratives to the poem according to
Wasserman: Thomas met ‘the queen of fair Elfland’ or ‘the Queen of Heaven’; they rode upon her
white-steed for forty days and nights; he was not allowed to touch the forbidden fruit of the strange
land; Thomas was to ride for seven years towards fair Elfland, rejecting the roads to righteousness
and to wickedness; after this Thomas was never seen on earth; however Keats adds his aesthetic
design to achieve a literary perfection through this poem; the additional details of the lady and the
knight enrich the aura of medieval Romances dealing with knights and ladies of the time. Keats
never fails to add the sense of wonder and mystery around the lady and the knight. The poem starts
with this wonder-

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The very description of the frightened knight with the images of lily, ‘fever dew’, ‘fading rose’ creates
a delicate tension. The tension is relieved by the direct narration by the knight; he is still under the
spell of the seductive beauty of the lady-

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

The wonderful music of the poem comes from the dominance of long vowels and dipthongs loke
/u:/, /i:/, /ai/, /ae/. Further the lyrical consonants like /s/, /l/, /f/, /z/, /h/ and frictionless continuant
like /r/,/w/ supply the delicate sweetness of the music of the text in spite of the deadly vision which
the knight saw. Here the medieval folk legend found in the ballad provides a setting where reality
and vision merge into a single sensation of the seductive beauty which established a femme fatle
tradition which inspired nineteenth century artists.

Shelley

Goethe

German romantics

French romantics

Why did the poets refer back to medieval cultue?

Comparative Analysis