Recently published in The Year's Work in Medievalism: Medievalism is a Global Phenomenon: Including Russia
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. [?] @realDonaldTrump, 11 November, 2017 Once upon a time, as part of the political unrest on the European continent following the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the failed 1848 revolution in Germany, a large number of progressive or even revolutionary –ism terms invaded the British Isles and the English language. Among these words were “republicanism,” “democratism,” “liberalism,” “feminism,” “socialism,” and “communism.”1 Soon thereafter, the English language responded to these continental coinages with words that can be seen as protective counter measures against these continental aggressors: Among these counter-revolutionary terms are “conservatism” and “medievalism,” two words that protect the strong umbilical cord between the premodern and the early nineteenth-century, preserve the “unique continuity” Britain felt it had (for its political, social, and cultural heritage) between its medieval and early modern past on the one hand and its contemporaneity on the other.... READ THE FULL ESSAY HERE