a weird girl's guide to medieval revival

how do we interact with the past, present, and future in our own dark ages?

photo by Claira Tokarz

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though i’ve been trying to limit my screentime lately, i do often find myself sucked in by the endless cacophony that is tiktok. in the past few weeks particularly, my algorithm has fed me many posts proclaiming the return of the medieval revival, a movement circulated from Victorian times to the counterculture movement of the mid 20th century.

and as a medieval studies enthusiast i have a lot to say about the prospects of this revival. but first— what exactly is a medieval revival?

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Industrialism in England utterly transformed the country. It completely reformed both cities and natural landscapes. The forests of Arthurian legends were decimated, replaced by towering smokestacks and cholera infected streams of waste.

A common tendency befalls us, however, when we start to look back upon the past through rose colored glasses. Just as we, in the 21st century, look back at the Summer of Love and see it for the burgeoning subcultures rather than the circumstances which led to a need for alternative forms of expression, the Victorian people looked back upon the medieval age with a somewhat misguided nostalgia. While class consciousness was reaching new heights in the industrial hellscape of Victorian England, an escapist fantasy was taking hold: the medieval period became a time of whimsy and freedom in the eyes of the Victorian lower class. While medieval feudalism relied upon the exploitation of the lower class in exactly the same way industrialism did, it was not a lived experience among Victorian nostalgics, and was thus easy to escape into the medieval fantasy of simple rural living, or even courtly Arthurian romance and adventure.

𓇼 Land of Maidens by Edwin Austin Abbey, 1890 𓇼

Though class strife and poverty predate capitalism, capitalism was borne from these institutions and is reliant upon them. Thus, with the capitalistic catalyst that was the industrial era, poverty and cultural discontent were exacerbated. Along with the fall of many cultural institutions like monasticism, almsgiving, and the commons system, the advent of capitalistic industrialism strengthened the maw of poverty upon the working class. Not only was the physical landscape of Britain completely remolded to fit the country’s capitalistic and imperial goals, but the relationships among people within Britain were reworked entirely. The working class was so far alienated from their employers that they were altogether disillusioned from the belief that people came before money. It was clear that the world was changing in a way it would never come back from… but one reprieve punctuated the British landscape— the looming reminders of its medieval past.

𓇼 Lincoln Cathedral 𓇼

Gothic cathedrals towered between scaffolding and smokestacks. Though it felt like the British past had been abandoned for the gloom of industrialism, these keystones English heritage stood as reminders of a communal cultural memory.

Side-tangent: writing this, it is clear that it was intentional that the very same culture who strove to preserve its own past amidst great cultural change refused to let other cultures do the same. My moment of sympathy for the British is over.

A myriad of artistic and cultural movements brought the medieval past to the Victorian present. One keystone of this was the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Frankly, I have rather scathing opinions of many of the men involved in this brotherhood, as their romantic ideals of the medieval past often served as an excuse for their exploitation of women as “muses” for their craft… but by god those guys could paint!

Drawing upon both paganism and Christianity, medieval literature, fairytales and legends, the Pre-Raphaelites brought us an image of the medieval world that we really hadn’t seen before. Most actual medieval art was heavily religious and didn’t depict everyday life or realism. But just as impressionists and realists strove to depict everyday life, the Pre-Raphaelites strove to paint to life images of the medieval past, albeit romanticized, Christianized, and modernized ones.

Pre-Raphaelite paintings artistic conventions unique to the medieval period with distinctly contemporary art-making technology. This will be a common theme: medieval revival hinges on the meshing of the present and past to deal with an uncertain or turbulent future.

𓇼 The Lady of Shallot, John William Waterhouse, 1833

Pre-Raphaelite art captured serene and melancholic moments of a medieval fantasy world. Pictured above is the Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse, a subject taken from a contemporary poem written about an Arthurian legend of a woman cursed to weave alone in a tower. Sir Lancelot attempted to save her, but she was cursed to die in the boat on the way to Camelot. The tragic damsel is a common subject of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, which delves into an entirely different conversation regarding female suffering and the ideal of the muse, but I digress. For the Pre-Raphaelites, the fantastical medieval past was a place to escape to. A place where men were heroes who confronted their ills and where tragedy was idyllic and picturesque. Waterhouse’s painting embodies this idea: we see the Lady, distressed but beautiful in her suffering. She is settled into an alluringly mysterious stream, a sprawling pastoral landscape peaking out from the background. The Pre-Raphaelites and their viewers dreamed of a land uninterrupted by industrialism, where men traversed the land and encountered strange, fantastical, and seductive beings like the lady pictured here. Again, the Pre-Raphaelites were rather pre-occupied with images of female suffering, and their female contemporaries such as Lizzie Siddal suffered greatly for it. But, as most things tend to be, later manifestations of medieval revival would be most heavily female pioneered.

𓇼 La Belle Dame sans Merci, John William Waterhouse, 1893 𓇼

Other artistic movements sprouted from the newfound obsession with the medieval; the Arts and Crafts movement saw a rebirth of attention paid to artisanship and handiwork, in the face of mass production and lifeless manufactured goods.

The later art nouveau movement would draw from ancient Celtic imagery, with attention paid to druidic whimsical shapes and colors.

Gustav Klimt’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1901

So it seems that out of great socioeconomic and political turmoil (with the clashing of capitalistic industrial imperialism and burgeoning Marxism) came medieval revival.

Medieval revival never officially died, per say. Its influence is clear in the art and culture of the gilded age, and I would even argue that the party culture of the 1920s is reflective of ideas of grand medieval balls, festivals, and carnivals, but its influence certainly waned.

The second medieval revival took place in America during the 1960s-70s. Its not the least bit surprising that the psychedelic-dropping hippies of the American west coast took inspiration from medieval troubadours. This second medieval revival revolved around music, fashion, lifestyle, and ideology. Politically, America was torn in several directions. On the one hand, the reaction to the red scares and McCarthyism subjected Americans to a kind of surveillance and intellectual prison unlike anything before. The US’s involvement in Vietnam saw the first time the American public was outspokenly un-patriotic as waves of pacifism swept the nation. All the while, American culture was oriented towards the future: leisure, mass production and consumption, and advents in technology spurred a movement in futurism.

The turbulence of American culture spurred a crusade of sorts— one for peace.

Medieval revival took the form of what we would now call hippy/bohemian fashion. This was an era of subcultures. Mod, bohemian, punk. Fashion was a vessel by which one’s character was conveyed. There was a newfound focus on personal expression through the unique, the odd, the innovative. Just as the Victorians looked to the pastoralist past of their processors, the hippies of the American west coast romanticized the one-with-nature prairie lifestyle of the medieval peasantry, inspiring a movement in folk arts and music. Simon and Garfunkle, Vashti Bunyan, Nico. Even more mainstream bands like Jefferson Airplane and Fleetwood Mac were drawing inspiration from the folksy troubadour sound. A rise in spiritualism drew upon pre-Christian paganistic practices, as personal witchcraft practices would later give rise to the 90s whimsigoth look.

𓇼Shelly Duval. Colorful tights and bold patterns drew upon the imagery of jesters.

𓇼 Pattie and Jenny Boyd, 1967

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When I think of the 60s and 70s, festivals usually come to mind. Woodstock, Burning Man, etc. But out of the 60s came a different kind of festival: Ren Faires.

The story of the first ever Ren Faire is one that effectively embodies the sociopolitical circumstances that birthed the medieval revival movement.

During the era of McCarthyism, Phyllis Patterson was a public school teacher in California. She refused to sign the unconstitutional “loyalty oath” demanded of California schools, as it was a tool of anti-communist compliance. Because of this, she lost her job, but turned to working as a community theater teacher. Drawing from Shakespeare, she noted the popularity of medieval imagery and plays and was inspired to put together a medieval style “commedia wagon,” — a traveling theater troupe device.

Many other Hollywood creatives who had been effectively blacklisted for being communists or sympathizers came together to put together elaborate costumes and stages.

Patterson decided to turn the traveling troupe into a festival. She raised money through local radio. Volunteers came together to put together crafts and build stages and booths. The entire construction of the fair was a community effort, and embodied the spirit of medieval revival: a rejection of mass production, a reliance on grassroots organizing and mutuality, and an enthusiasm for the arts and traditions of the past.

The first day of the faire was May 11, 1963. It was so successful that it ran a second weekend, and Patterson continued organizing and being involved in Ren Faires for years following.

Ren Faires offer a range of medieval and Renaissance practices, crafts, and events. Jousting, drinking tournaments, food, arts, etc. They can also be associated with debauchery and wild times, which harkens back to the original medieval festivals.

𓇼 Phyllis Patterson (in orange on the balcony) at a 1967 fair

In the actual medieval era, time as a concept was oriented in the mind around holy versus “normal” time. Holy days where devoted to a variety of saints, and permitted from a break from work and a feast celebrating the saint. Lent, in the Catholic practice, was a period of solemnity and devotion. But the period leading up to Lent…that was something else entirely: Carnival.

Medieval Carnival was a means by which the peasant class were kept subservient by being awarded a short period of time wherein they were able to rebel. Landlords and clergymen turned a blind eye to the bawdiness of Carnival. It was a means by which the peasant class were disciplined into obedience— they were permitted a short period of liberation, time to party and let loose. It was an illusion put up by the aristocrats to guarantee the loyalty of their workers.

The Fight between Carnival and Lent, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559

During Carnival, all sorts of debauchery went down. Peasants paraded down the streets donning the costumes of aristocrats, making fun of their landlords, setting fire to effigies, putting on elaborate theatrics including sexual innuendos. It was a time of complete freedom from all that was oppressive, both worldly and spiritually.

So it stands to say, Ren Faires live on as a performative rejection of cultural norms— a liberation through an invocation of a time past.

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The birth of subcultures in the mid 20th century brought a wave of creative and ideological movements. Today, we see ourselves in somewhat of a standstill. Trends tend to be cyclical, short-lived, and wasteful. Its easy to fall into the trap of overconsumption and fast-fashion. But I have also noticed an increased interest, once again, in the slow-living and anti-consumerist ideologies of the medieval revival movement.

Bearing in mind that the past medieval revivals were born out of a rejection of turbulent social conditions such as poverty, industrialism, war, and rising conservatism, it would make sense that now, in this, our own burgeoning dark age, a renewed interest in the slow, “simple” life would return to the forefront of our social consciousness.

In 1476, a peasant named Hans Behem turned from a peasant to a prophet overnight. He claimed the Virgin Mary spoke to him, told him to gather the peasants in masses and to take down the brutal regime that was the clergy and aristocrats. And he was largely successful in rallying the working class, at first. Once the clergy and aristocracy caught wind of the power his words had over the people they oppressed and exploited, they took it upon themselves to make a spectacle of Hans Behem’s disobedience. He was brutally tortured and executed in the public eye— a Foucauldian display of power.

Would it be a stretch to suggest that we are seeing a very similar phenomenon unfold before our eyes? Luigi Mangione has become, in the public eye, a martyr of the working class. While the right has deemed him a terrorist, I am surprised by the otherwise vast public consensus of support for him. All the while, NYPD pushes photography of him in an attempt to display his subjugation, a display of what happens to the criminal body as a warning against disobedience.

The collusion of American government officials with corrupt billionaire imperialists amidst is something I could only compare to the greed and corruption of medieval lords; it is Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona unfolding before our eyes.

The American reality is a dark age: inaccessible healthcare, a housing crisis, inflation, exploitation of the working class, control and surveillance of non-normative bodies, etc. It is becoming clear to average Americans how little the American government (especially the empowered American right), cares about people. In tandem with the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people being accomplished through American tax dollars, disillusionment with American values is peaking in much the same way Americans felt during Vietnam. Our modern day is paralleling the circumstances that birthed the medieval revival of the 60s and 70s.

The concept of a medieval revival is interesting because it encompasses a surface level increased interest in folk arts, fashion, and medieval aesthetics, but more than that— it stems from class consciousness, a deep seated desire for a return to a pre-capitalistic way of life, and an emphasis on the importance of communal mutuality.

While the medieval revival of the 60s and 70s was centered in the West Coast, and specifically in the Los Angeles area, a great cultural shift has taken place that has transformed LA from a haven for creatives to a centerpiece for capitalistic displays. I think that, in the next four years, the strength of American resistance will be found in areas long neglected and exploited: Appalachia, the American South, etc.

Its a silver lining we must make the best of. Regions such as Appalachia feel environmental exploitation the hardest. Poverty is inescapable, community is necessary for survival. It is regions like this where community mutual nurturance thrives. I believe that out of these regions, we will see means of resistance through survival, creativity, and a renewed interest in people— that is to say, empathy. These were the values that shaped medieval revival movements like the first renaissance faire, counterculture movements, and civil disobedience.

When I started writing this, I wanted to do a fun introspective on fashion and trend cycles. I wasn’t surprised, however, to find that the root of this trend in particular is cultural upheaval. As we spiral headfirst into an American dark age, we look back to the actual dark ages. And while it is depressing to reflect on the fall of American democracy, I’ll end this essay with the light-heartedness I intended to carry through this essay— that is, an envisioning of what a modern medieval revival would look like.

For starters, I think a capsule wardrobe is key. Medieval peasants did not have the means to cycle through hundreds of outfits. Rewearing clothes and getting the most out of them is in! Not just from a medieval purist perspective, but I truly think that sticking to a set of clothes that you feel best in is the way to go… and it is a sustainable means to avoid overconsumption.

While the medieval revival of the 60s-70s was all about hippy fashion— flowy dresses and skirts, colorful psychedelic patterns and long flowing hair, I think a 21st century medieval revival will be more oriented towards adapting the funky shapes of medieval bodices to 21st century fashion— unique sleeve shapes and necklines, for instance.

Hand mending is in. Getting the most out of your clothes and proudly wearing patches and stitches is a fun way of keeping your clothes alive and sustainable.

I think wearing charms is equitable to carrying around a talisman, brooch, or family crest. In the Viking ages, women wore brooches and amulets for guidance or divine protection. Scandinavian women and men alike wore keys as visible indicators of their positions as head of households. Carabiners have historically been a huge way to visually indicate one’s status in the queer community, and I think the adornment of one’s outfit with that hint of silver can be a fun way to harken back to medieval jewelry such as those Viking keys.

Medieval dressing does not have to be high fashion— in fact, the ideology of medieval revival hinges upon the authenticity of homemade crafts and fashions, class consciousness, and expression through everyday clothes.

And lastly, I put together a little vision board as to how I could integrate a medieval revival look into my own personal style:

if you’re feeling inspired, i’d love to see your take!!

𓇼 thank you for reading!! 𓇼

References:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-surprisingly-radical-roots-of-the-renaissance-fair-180982918/

https://retrospectjournal.com/2022/11/20/a-brief-history-of-the-medieval-revival/

https://heritagesquarephx.org/news/victorian-medievalism/#:~:text=Just%20as%20we%20look%20back,strike%20one%20another%20with%20lances.

https://imfirenzedigest.com/2024/09/27/why-medieval-fashion-is-the-new-cool/

https://smokynow.com/the-modern-medieval-fantastical-fashion-and-cultural-immortality/

https://renfestival.com/royal-fashion-bringing-medieval-renaissance-core-into-your-daily-life/