Medievalist Comics and the American Century

Abstract

The principal purpose of the following chapters is to survey the history of the medievalist comic from its genesis in the 1930s through to the present, and to contextualize that survey within a broader American narrative. I will be arguing that these comics are not merely happenchance artifacts, but that each individual success or failure was both a result and an indicator of the centrality of certain American preoccupations within a broader cultural context. Moreover, I will be arguing that medievalist resonances, like those found in these comics, rather than generating cultural anomalies, work instead to integrate transnational and transtemporal realities into our contemporary experience, while challenging the inherent limitations of problematic schema such as “the medieval” and “the Middle Ages.” Show more