Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism, new medievalism) is a term with a long history that has acquired specific technical senses in two branches of scholarship. In
political theory
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, l ...
about modern
international relations, where the term is originally associated with
Hedley Bull, it sees the
political order of a
globalized world as analogous to
high-medieval Europe, where neither
states nor the Church, nor other territorial powers, exercised full
sovereignty, but instead participated in complex, overlapping and incomplete sovereignties.
[Stephen J. Kobrin]
"Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy"
In
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...
regarding the use and abuse of texts and
tropes
Trope or tropes may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept
* Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device
* Trope (music), any of a variety of different things ...
from the
Middle Ages in
postmodernity, the term ''neomedieval'' was popularized by the Italian medievalist
Umberto Eco in his 1986 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages".
[ Umberto Eco, "Dreaming of the Middle Ages," in ''Travels in Hyperreality'', transl. by W. Weaver, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1986, pp. 61–72.]
Political theory
The idea of neomedievalism in political theory was first discussed in 1977 by theorist
Hedley Bull in ''
The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics'' to describe the erosion of state
sovereignty in the contemporary globalized world:
It is also conceivable that sovereign states might disappear and be replaced not by a world government but by a modern and secular equivalent of the kind of universal political organisation that existed in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages. In that system no ruler or state was sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given territory and a given segment of the Christian population; each had to share authority with vassals beneath, and with the Pope and (in Germany and Italy) the Holy Roman Emperor above. The universal political order of Western Christendom represents an alternative to the system of states which does not yet embody universal government.
Thus Bull suggested society might move towards "a new mediaevalism" or a "neo-mediaeval form of universal political order", in which individual notions of rights and a growing sense of a "world common good" were undermining
national sovereignty. He proposed that such a system might help "avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states by a structure of overlapping structures and cross-cutting loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society while at the same time avoiding the concentration inherent in a world government", though "if it were anything like the precedent of Western Christendom, it would contain more ubiquitous and continuous violence and insecurity than does the modern states system".
In this reading,
globalization has resulted in an international system which resembles the medieval one, where political authority was exercised by a range of non-territorial and overlapping agents, such as religious bodies,
principalities,
empires and
city-states, instead of by a single political authority in the form of a state which has complete sovereignty over its territory. Comparable processes characterising Bull's "new medievalism" include the increasing powers held by regional organisations such as the
European Union, as well as the spread of sub-national and devolved governments, such as those of
Scotland and
Catalonia. These challenge the exclusive authority of the state.
Private military companies,
multinational corporations and the resurgence of worldwide religious movements (e.g.
political Islam) similarly indicate a reduction in the role of the state and a decentralisation of power and authority.
Stephen J. Kobrin
Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; h ...
in 1998 added the forces of the digital world economy to the picture of neomedievalism. In an article entitled "Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy" in the ''Journal of International Affairs'',
he argued that the sovereign state as we know itdefined within certain territorial bordersis about to change profoundly, if not to wither away, due in part to the digital world economy created by the Internet, suggesting that cyberspace is a trans-territorial domain operating outside of the jurisdiction of national law.
Anthony Clark Arend also argued in his 1999 book ''Legal Rules and International Society'' that the international system is moving toward a "neo-medieval" system. He claimed that the trends that Bull noted in 1977 had become even more pronounced by the end of the twentieth century. Arend argues that the emergence of a "neo-medieval" system would have profound implications for the creation and operation of international law.
Although Bull originally envisioned neomedievalism as a positive trend, it has its critics.
Bruce Holsinger in ''Neomedievalism,
Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror'' argues that
neoconservatives "have exploited neomedievalism's conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends." Similarly, Philip G. Cerny's "Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma" (1998) also sees neomedievalism as a negative development and claims that the forces of globalization increasingly undermine nation-states and interstate forms of governance "by cross-cutting linkages among different economic sectors and social bonds," calling globalization a "durable disorder" which eventually leads to the emergence of the new security dilemmas that had analogies in the Middle Ages. Cerny identifies six characteristics of a neomedieval world that contribute to this disorder: multiple competing institutions; lack of exogenous territorializing pressures both on sub-national and international levels; uneven consolidation of new spaces, cleavages, conflicts and inequalities; fragmented loyalties and identities; extensive entrenchment of property rights; and spread of the "grey zones" outside the law as well as black economy.
Medieval studies
An early use of the term ''neo-medievalism'' in a sense like Umberto Eco's was in
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...
's 1953 "
The Hedgehog and the Fox
''The Hedgehog and the Fox'' is an essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin that was published as a book in 1953. It was one of his most popular essays with the general public. However, Berlin said, "I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual gam ...
":
There is no kinship between him Joseph de Maistre and those who really did believe in the possibility of some kind of return neo-medievalists from Wackenroder and Görres and Cobbett to G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, ''Time'' observed: "Wh ...
, and Slavophils and Distributists
Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated.
Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching princ ...
and Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...
and other nostalgic romantics; for he believed, as Tolstoy also did, in the exact opposite: in the "inexorable" power of the present moment: in our inability to do away with the sum of conditions which cumulatively determine our basic categories, an order which we can never fully describe or, otherwise than by some immediate awareness of it, come to know.
Then, in 1986, Umberto Eco said "we are at present witnessing, both in Europe and America, a period of renewed interest in the Middle Ages, with a curious oscillation between fantastic neomedievalism and responsible philological examination".
Recently, the term has been used by various writers such as
medieval historians who see it as the intersection between popular fantasy and
medieval history as a term describing the
post-modern study of medieval history.
The widespread interest in medieval themes in
popular culture, especially
computer games
A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-deter ...
such as
MMORPG
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game.
As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...
s,
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
s and
television,
neo-medieval music, and popular
literature, has been called ''neomedieval''. Critics have discussed why medieval themes continue to fascinate audiences in a modern, heavily technological world. A possible explanation is the need for a
romanticized historical narrative to clarify the confusing panorama of current political and cultural events.
Intersection of neomedievalism in political theory and medieval studies
Some commentators have used the terminological overlap between Hedley Bull's political theory of 'neomedievalism' and Umberto Eco's postmodernist theory of 'neomedievalism' to discuss how cultural discourses about the Middle Ages are used to political ends in the changing international order of the twenty-first century. A key proponent of this argument was Bruce Holsinger, who studied the use of
orientalist and medievalist language in the discourse of the post-
9/11
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
'war on terror', arguing that American neoconservatives had harnessed medievalism to win popular support for foreign policy and military actions that undermined state sovereignty and the international rule of law.
[Victoria Elizabeth Cooper,]
Fantasies of the North: Medievalism and Identity in ''The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim''
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 2016).
Working in Holsinger's wake, others have argued that neomedievalist popular culture, such as the video game ''
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim'', represents and so in turn helps to normalise a neomedievalist political order,
and that states other than the US, for example Iceland, have also used medievalism as a source of
soft power
In politics (and particularly in international politics), soft power is the ability to co-opt rather than coerce (contrast hard power). In other words, soft power involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defin ...
to help secure their place in the shifting post-9/11 world order.
[ Alaric Hall, ]
Útrásarvíkingar! The Literature of the Icelandic Financial Crisis (2008–2014)
' (Earth, Milky Way: punctum, 2020), , .
Studies
* ''Defining Neomedievalism(s) I'', ed. by K. Fugelso, Studies in Medievalism, 19 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010),
* ''Defining Neomedievalism(s) II'', ed. by K. Fugelso, Studies in Medievalism, 20 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011),
* ''Neo-Medievalism in the Media: Essays on Film, Television, and Electronic Games'', ed. by Carol L. Robinson (Mellen, 2012),
* ''Comparative Neomedievalisms'', ed. by Daniel Lukes, special issue of ''Postmedieval'', 5.1 (Spring 2014)
* ''Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy: From Tolkien to Game of Thrones'', by KellyAnn Fitzpatrick (Cambridge: Brewer, 2019),
See also
*
Westphalian sovereignty
*
Neo-feudalism
*
Neoliberalism
*
English school of international relations theory
The English School of international relations theory (sometimes also referred to as liberal realism, the International Society school or the British institutionalists) maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despit ...
*
Refeudalization
In political theory, refeudalization is the process of recovering the political mechanisms and relationships that used to define feudalism. Because the term "feudalism" is slightly ambiguous, "refeudalization" is ambiguous, too.
In the modern e ...
Notes
External links
''NeoMedievalism'', a collection of links and a general evaluation''Pulling Back from Neo-Medievalism'' a discussion of neo-medievalism in relation to the
Hungarian Status Law Hungarian may refer to:
* Hungary, a country in Central Europe
* Kingdom of Hungary, state of Hungary, existing between 1000 and 1946
* Hungarians, ethnic groups in Hungary
* Hungarian algorithm, a polynomial time algorithm for solving the assig ...
''NeoMedievalism'', academic look at the study of medievalism through a literary criticism lensWhy history matters - and why medieval history also matters* Sutch, P and J Elias, ''International Relations: The Basics'', Routledge, New York, 2007, pp. 102–104
Towards a new Middle Ages?by Roberto Rotondo
Legal Rules and International Societyby Anthony Clark Arend
{{Middle Ages
Political theories
Philosophical theories
Middle Ages in popular culture
International relations theory
Sovereignty
Power (social and political) concepts