The Middle Ages in pop culture

Emerging from a castle prison in stylized medieval armour at the2024 Video Music Awards, Chappell Roan (of Arc) electrified the stage with her performance of “Good Luck, Babe!”, consciously channeling the Maid of Orléans. Roan’s performance is only one of several recent examples that point to the persistent popularity of the medieval in pop culture. Take, for example, films likeThe Uprising(2026) or Baz Luhrmann’s upcomingJehanne d’Arc; television series, such asA Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the prequel toGame of Thrones,Elden Ring; or video games and even musical groups likeThe Mediaeval BaebesandCorvus Corax. The Middle Ages are all around us. But why?

Medievalism — the creative reimagining of the Middle Ages — has existed since the sixteenth century and has come in and out of fashion ever since. 

Contemporary representations of the Middle Ages, however, often reduce this period — one which covered approximately 1,000 years of history — into black and white categories, a reflection of a strong tendency in our own culture towards binary thinking. In this light, the Middle Ages, to use one common stereotype of the period, are depicted as either an age of belief or a time of superstition and credulity. 

Joan of Arc is the perfect emblem for this type of double vision of the Middle Ages. In the twenty-first century, she is at once a feminist icon and a figure of xenophobic nationalism. The example of Joan makes clear just how much the Middle Ages can serve as a creative landscape for us to project our desires or nostalgia onto a past that never existed. 

Perhaps this period is so beguiling, because it’s just beyond an easy imagining of the everyday. It’s familiar: by the end of the Middle Ages, countries that today dot the map of Europe existed or were being conceived of. But it’s also weird and uncanny: the scientific revolution that completely transformed the West’s relationship with nature had not happened, and the workings of the universe were still a mystery thought to be knowable only by God. 

A result of this period being just out of focus means that so much of the complexity about medieval lives and attitudes are either smoothed over or completely effaced. Again, Joan of Arc’s life bears witness to this complexity. Joan was a fervent Catholic, and her devotion even as an adolescent was considered unusually pious by her contemporaries. Although burned as a heretic for dressing as a man, she was then canonized and is now a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. As for Joan’s controversial crossdressing — which fascinates many of us today —  when she cut her hair and dressed in men’s clothing, she did so according to instructions she received in a vision: she believed she was following God’s wishes. In other words, devotion, even more than political or military priorities, motivated her crossdressing. 

It’s no accident that medievalism became so popular in Europe during the nineteenth century, when people began to reflect on how the Industrial Revolution and the rapid pace of subsequent scientific advances were changing society, culture and the natural world around them. 

Renewed interest in the Arthur legend, most famously explored in the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and in the art of the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers, furnished Victorians with opportunities to rethink diverse topics ranging from constructions of gender and the place of women in society to progress and the benefits of technology to people’s lives. 

In the same period, neo-Gothic architecture, especially the craze for medieval church architecture heralded by the Oxford Movement, mirrored a desire among many for a return to ceremony and a religious faith that was able to make room for mystery or the unknowable. 

Like the Victorians, we still use the Middle Ages as a field for debating ideas and rethinking our world. And, like other instances of medievalism from earlier periods, our re-creation of the Middle Ages reflects above all our own concerns, preoccupations and anxieties. Consider the protagonist of the filmThe Uprising, where an everyperson struggling to make ends meet played by Andrew Garfield challenges tax collectors exploiting him, because he cannot produce the correct document exempting him from a payment. Any audience member who has had to resolve a clerical issue with Revenue Canada might see their own frustration mirrored in Garfield’s performance.  

Is medievalism productive, though? Against those who might say that our depictions of the Middle Ages or use of medieval as décor can only distort the past, I would say that this in no way invalidates such recreations. Historians know all too well the impossibility of accessing the past; this should not prevent us from looking back to earlier periods to tell stories we believe are valuable. 

Medievalism done well can also contribute against presentism. Such creative work helps us to trace the genealogy of ideas, values or beliefs of today while recognizing that people in other periods thought differently or saw the world in ways we might find puzzling. Such creative work also encourages us to investigate the past, which is often more fascinating and multidimensional than we thought.

About Brandon

Brandon Alakasis a professor of English in the Department of Fine Arts & Humanities at Augustana Campus. He has edited Richard Whitford’sDyuers Holy Instrucyons and Teachynges Very Necessary for the Helth of Mannes Soule(2020) andThe Pipe or Tun of the Life of Perfection(2026) for the Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies series. He has also written several articles and book chapters on topics ranging from Birgittine spirituality and monastic reading culture to drama and animal studies in medieval hagiography.