Middle Ages on Film

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course will explore cinematic representations of the European middle ages. Ranging from the silent era to the present day, from arthouse pictures to swashbuckling epics, we will consider the uses of medievalism in the modern imagination. Where do these cultural fantasies come from? How do they change over time? How do they relate to the academic disciplines of history and medieval studies? And what role does cinema play in these questions? Screenings will be complemented with readings both from medieval source documents and from contemporary film and cultural theory. Works discussed will include "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1929), "The Flowers of Saint Francis" (Roberto Rossellini, 1950), "The Seventh Seal" (Ingmar Bergman, 1957), "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975), "Braveheart" (Mel Gibson, 1995), and "Hard to be a God" (Aleksei German, 2014), among others.