{"id":1282,"date":"2010-01-09T20:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2010-01-09T20:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T20:42:00","slug":"its-cool-to-be-medieval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1282","title":{"rendered":"It’s Cool to be Medieval"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least according to critic Philip Hensher, writing in a British newspaper, who says that medieval is the new black<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s never easy to account for fashion, but perhaps some real factors have contributed to the reading matter of 2010. This last year has seen a world-wide fear of a destructive plague, in the shape of swine flu. The court of our leader has grown increasingly suspicious, withdrawn and riddled with the sort of plots usually termed Byzantine. The coffers are empty, and an expensive foreign war against parts of the Muslim world has to be paid for somehow. It all sounds a little bit medieval, and that is what we\u2019ve been reading about.<\/p>\n

Other disasters have been weighing heavily on our minds, and refer back directly to the Middle Ages. In the climate change debate, both sceptics and proponents have spent a lot of time debating the significance for our own times of two parts of the period. The first is what has been termed the Medieval Warm Period<\/a>, from between 800 to 1300, the second the Little Ice Age that followed it. Those in the Christopher Booker<\/a> and George Monbiot<\/a> camp, one which blames humans for climate change, have spent a lot of heated discussion dwelling on these facts, and the debate has found its way into creative works in surprising ways. We think about future catastrophe as a consequence of our past sins in very medieval ways. <\/em><\/p>\n

There is more, largely about novels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least according to critic Philip Hensher, writing in a British newspaper, who says that medieval is the new black: It\u2019s never easy to account for fashion, but perhaps some real factors have contributed to the reading matter of 2010. This last year has seen a world-wide fear of a destructive plague, in the shape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[88,100],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-britain","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1706,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1706","url_meta":{"origin":1282,"position":0},"title":"Medieval Castle, Medieval Methods","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The BBC describes an ongoing project in France to build a 13th-century castle using local materials and the tools and techniques of that era. I am always fascinated by what people learn by building old things in old ways, be they ships (like Tim Severin's \"Brendan boat\") or buildings or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"13th-century-style castle under construction in France","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/48215000\/jpg\/_48215173_48215174.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1315,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1315","url_meta":{"origin":1282,"position":1},"title":"Slavery, Vikings, and Charlemagne","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a little bit of synchronicity in my historical reading. I am not sure if it \"proves\" anything, other than the fact that it is difficult to sort people into \"good guys\" and \"bad guys.\" 1. At the library, I recently picked up The Long Morning of Medieval Europe:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"France\"","block_context":{"text":"France","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=france"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0754662543","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5001,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5001","url_meta":{"origin":1282,"position":2},"title":"Critiquing “Double Belief” in Russian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Consider this a follow-up to yesterday's post on Russian dream rituals, which linked to an article whose author totally accepted the idea of spiritual practices with\u00a0 \"very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\" I had not realized this, but Routledge published a book critiquing the idea of \"double belief\"\u00a0 (dvoeverie) three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3999,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3999","url_meta":{"origin":1282,"position":3},"title":"Ring-Dancing Monkeys and Black Death Rubbish","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"At Got Medieval, Carl Pyrdrum re-debunks the persistent, authentic-sounding story that the nursery rhyme \"Ring around the Rosies\" has anything whatsoever to do with the Black Death of the 1340s. It does not. As any good English plague survivor********** could tell you, the plague was caused by sin and best\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druids\"","block_context":{"text":"Druids","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druids"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11657,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11657","url_meta":{"origin":1282,"position":4},"title":"Northern Wolves: Garb and Shiny Boots in a Polish Pagan Order","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In his article \"Wolves among the Sheep: Looking Beyond the Aesthetics of Polish National Socialism,\" Polish cultural anthropologist Mariusz Filip examines the symbolic meanings of tattoos, re-created medieval garb, and modern paramilitary uniforms in the Polish Pagan group Zakon Zadrugi \u201cPolnocny Wilk,\" (the Order of Zadruga \"Northern Wolf\"). The artiicle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fashion\"","block_context":{"text":"fashion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fashion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Tattooed man holding medieval sword","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/FIg-4-tattoos-Igor.png?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1036,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1036","url_meta":{"origin":1282,"position":5},"title":"Good Meat, Good Spice","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I have just started reading The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice by Michael Krondl.And I am so happy that in the first pages he destroys the persistent myth that people in the Middle Ages ate heavily spiced food to disguise its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}