Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This part of the course will cover how the Middle Ages and medievalism have
interacted and been portrayed in film. We will ask the question whether and how
these films might influence our views of the past and just how much we know or
think we know about the Middle Ages from the movies and popular culture. We will
view as many as five films in class and discuss them. Remember you are required
to write an essay of 12-15 pages with scholarly apparatus by the end of this
quarter of the course. They can be on any aspect of our topics and discussions
but you let the instructor know of your choice. If you choose to do the film quarter,
you will have a choice of a movie and its topic. It could be one we view in class or
not.
The films we will study may include: The Advocate, The Sorceress, The
Messenger, El Cid, The Decameron, The Kingdom of Heaven, The Seventh
Seal, The Anchoress, and The Return of Martin Guerre. This will be decided at
the first meeting on 2 April 2015.
We will watch one film in each of our five meetings and discuss it the next time we
meet. There will be a list of three or four readings for each film and often a
supplementary one posted on my web site.
Additional readings will be posted on my web site on the history department site
and are marked in the syllabus by PDF:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/courses/course.php?course_id=1582. If you find an
article marked by you would like to read on the supplementary lists and those
below and marked by PDF, please let me know and I can forward you a copy.
Some Recommended Text Books
John Aberth. A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film. New York:
Routledge, 2003.
Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages
on Film. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Nickolas Haydock. Movie Medievalism: The Imaginary Middle Ages. London:
McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008.
General and Supplementary Readings
John H. Arnold. What is Medieval History? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.
Marcus Bull. Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Nickolas Haydock and E. L Risden, eds. Hollywood in the Holy Land: essays on Film
Depictions of the Crusades and Christian-Muslim Clashes. London: McFarland
& Company, Inc., 2009; note especially the introduction by Haydock and the
epilogue by Risden PDF.
Medievalism and Film
Stuart Airlie, Strange Eventful Histories: The Middle Ages in the Cinema in The
Medieval World. Eds. Peter Linehan and Janet L Nelson. New York: Routledge,
2001, pp. 163-83. PDF
Greta Austin, Were the Peasants Really So Clean? The Middle Ages in Film, Film
History, 14:2 (2002), 136-41. PDF
Anke Bernau and Bettina Bildhauer, eds. Medieval Film. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2009.
Kathleen Biddick. The Shock of Medievalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Richard Burt. Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008.
Richard Burt, Getting Schmedieval: Of Manuscript and Film Prologues, Paratext,
and Paradies, Exemplaria, 19:2 (Summer, 2007), 217-42. PDF
Richard Burt, Re-Embroidering the Bayeux Tapestry in Film and Media: The Flip
Side of History in Opening and End Title Sequences, Exemplaria, 19:2
(Summer, 2007), 327-50. PDF
Martha Driver and Sid Ray, eds. The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations
from Beowulf to Buffy. London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004.
Martha Driver, Writing about Medieval Movies: Authenticity and History, Film and
History, 29:1/2 (1999), 5-7. PDF
Martha Driver, Teaching the Middle Ages on Film: Visual Narrative and the
Historical Record, History Compass, 5:1 (2007), 259-74. PDF
Martha Driver, Teaching and Learning Guide for: Teaching the Middle Ages on
Film: Visual Narrative and the Historical Record, History Compass, 6:3
(2008), 1000-1009. PDF
Andrew B. R. Elliott, Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and
History in Portraying the Medieval World. London: McFarland & Company,
Inc., 2011.
Alison Ganze, ed. Postscript to the Middle Ages: Teaching Medieval Studies through
The Name of the Rose. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009.
John M. Ganim, Framing the West, Staging the East: Set Design, Location and
Landscape in Movie Medievalism in Haydock and Risden, eds. Hollywood in
the Holy Land, pp. 31-46. PDF
Kevin J. Hardy. The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western and Eastern European,
Middle Eastern and Asian Films about Medieval Europe. London: McFarland &
Company, Inc., 1999.
Kevin J. Hardy, ed. The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle
Ages. London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011.
Nickolas Haydock, Introduction: The Unseen Cross upon the Breast:
Medievalism, Orientalism and Discontent in Haydock and Risden, eds.
Hollywood in the Holy Land, pp. 1-30. PDF
David Herlihy. Am I a Camera? Other Reflections on Films and History, The
American Historical Review, 93:5 (December, 1988), 1186-92. PDF
Marnie Hughes-Warrington. History Goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film.
New York: Routledge, 2007.
Scott Alan Metzger, Pedagogy and the Historical Feature Film: Toward Historical
Literacy, Film & History, 37:2 (2008), 67-75. PDF
John OConnor, history in Images/Images in History: Reflections on the
Importance of Film and Television Study for an Understanding of the Past,
The American Historical Review, 93:5 (December, 1988), 1200-1209. PDF
William D. Paden, I Learned at the Movies: Teaching Medieval Film, Studies in
Medievalisms, 13 (2004), 79-98. PDF
Tison Pugh and Angela Jane Weisl, eds. Medivalisms: Making the Past in the
Present. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Lynn T. Ramey and Tison Pugh, eds. Race, Class, and Gender in Medieval Cinema.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; especially Introduction: Filming the
Other Middle Ages, pp. 1-12. PDF
Robert A. Rosenstone, History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the
Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film, The American Historical
Review, 93:5 (December, 1988), 1173-85. PDF
Tom Shippey with Martin Arnold, eds. Film and Fiction: Reviewing the Middle Ages.
Studies in Medievalism, 12. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002.
Note also Professor Teo Ruiz of UCLA on movies and history:
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2008/0812/0812fil2.cfm
Robert Brent Toplin, The Filmmaker as Historian, The American Historical
Review, 93:5 (December, 1988), 1210-27. PDF
David Williams, Medieval Movies, Yearbook of English Studies, 20 (1990), 1-33.
PDF
David John Williams, Looking at the Middle Ages in the Cinema: An Overview,
Film and History, 29:1/2 (1999), 8-19. PDF
Recommended Medieval Films:
Some more than others.
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
Alexander Nevsky (1937).
The Anchoress (1993).
Andrei Rublev (1966).
The Black Death (2010).
The Black Rose (1950).
Paul Friedland, Beyond Deterrence: Cadavers, Effigies, Animals and the Logic of
Executions in Premodern France, Historical Reflections/Reflexions historiques,
29:2 (2003), 295-317. PDF
Jen Girgen, The Historical and Contemporary Prosecution and Punishment of
Animals, Animal Law, (May, 2003), 97-133. PDF
Nicholas Humphrey, Bugs and Beasts before the Law in The Mind Made Flesh:
Essays from the Frontiers of Psychology and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002, pp. 235-54. PDF
Matthieu Chan Tsin, Teaching Knighthood and the Late Medieval Battlefield using
the Knights of The Messenger, The Once and Future Classroom, 7:1 (Spring,
2009): http://www.teamsmedieval.org/ofc/F09/messenger.php
Marina Warner. Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1981, especially Saint or Patriot?, pp. 255-75, 326-33. PDF
Bonnie Wheeler and Charles T. Wood, eds. Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc. New
York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996.
You might find a link to Salladin the Victorious, directed by Youssef Chahine
(1963), but most versions seem blocked for copyright.
You should watch the directors cut version of The Kingdom of Heaven!
Basic Readings:
Aberth, God (and the Studio) Wills It in Knight at the Movies, pp. 63-146.
Finke and Shichtman, War of the Cross or Gods Own Bloodbath? in Cinematic
Illuminations, pp. 195-241, 389-95. PDF
Amin Maalouf. The Crusades through Arab Eyes. Transl. Jon Rothschild. New York:
Schocken Books, 1984.
See the articles published in the National Review On Line by Thomas F. Madden at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/author/211192 but especially On Ward PC
Soldiers at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/214554/onward-pcsoldiers/thomas-f-madden. He has more articles referenced at
http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/thomasmadden.html. He has also
published general works on the Crusades and particular studies on the Fourth
Crusade.
Hannes Mhring. Saladin: The Sultan and His Times, 1138-1193. Transl. David S.
Bachrach. Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 [2005].
Helen J. Nicholson. The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: The Itinerarium
peregrinorum et gesta Regis Ricardi. Crusade Texts in Translation, 3.
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1997.
Jonathan Riley-Smith. The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2008; among several other standard works on the Crusades
by this author.
See Jonathan Riley-Smiths comments on the Kingdom of Heaven at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1452000/Ridle
y-Scotts-new-Crusades-film-panders-to-Osama-bin-Laden.html.
See the Wikipedia article on Kingdom of Heaven for more references to reviews in
the notes at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Heaven_(film)#Extended_directo
r.27s_cut.
D. S. Richards, transl. The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawdir alSultniyya wa`l-Mahsin al-Ysufiyya by Bah al-Din Ibn Shaddd. Crusade
Texts in Translation, 7. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002.
Sylvia Schein, `The Terrible News: The Reaction of Christendom to the Fall of
Jerusalem (1187) in Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and
the Catholic West (1099-1187). Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005,
pp. 159-87. PDF
Christopher Tyerman. The Debate on the Crusades. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2011.
William of Tyre, Archbishop of Tyre, ca. 1130-ca. 1190.
A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea. 2 vols. Transl. Emily Atwater
Babcock and A. C. Krey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943;
especially II.397-509.