so now the frickin' Mounties are involved
- Dr. Bob Kelso, Scrubs S05E23
To study history requires the study of how history is being used in our own time. The basic principles of either the use of history or its reception - two similar yet distinct concepts - are largely the same independent of the period that is being used or received. However, distinct periods - as defined by later generations of scholars - require distinct parameters for researching and understanding how a given period has been represented, misrepresented, used, abused, received, or been conceptualised in later eras. For me, as a medievalist, I am naturally most interested in the reception of the Middle Ages, namely in medievalism. Within medieval studies, medievalism has emerged as a broad and rich subfield, and the last ten years have especially produced a number of important and interesting studies.
As with all scholarly terms, its definitions are constantly under calibration, and it is necessary that we continue to discuss how to define or delinate the terms we use. The term 'medievalism' itself has been interpreted in different ways, and various sub-subfields have emerged along types of sources, along different postmedieval periods, and different applications. Some particularly valuable resources are the essay collections Medievalisms in a postcolonial world, edited by Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul (2010), and Medievalism: Key Critical terms, edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz (2014), and the series 'Studies in Medievalism', currently in its 34th issue.
My first published foray into medievalism was an article on the concept of 'urban medievalism'. Part of my argument is that we can talk about primary and secondary forms of medievalism, and perhaps also tertiary forms and so on. The difference is that primary medievalism is intentional, and those who use the past are aware that they use a medieval past instead of confusing it with, say, the seventeenth century. Secondary medievalism is incidental and unintentional. It is still the medieval past that is being used or received, but those who do so might not be aware of it. In these cases, the link to the medieval past usually comes through the use of the primary medievalism rather than the Middle Ages. Defining the border between primary and secondary medievalism might not always be straightforward, and discussions might have to be done on a case-by-case basis. In the present blogpost, I want to highlight how tricky it can be to spot secondary medievalisms because sometimes there is nothing medieval about it.
My case study is the 600th issue of the Italian Western comic Tex, which was published in October 2010. Tex was created by Gianluigi Bonelli and Aurelio Galeppini in 1948, and is currently one of Italy's most popular comics, or 'fumetti', with one monthly issue and various specials and spin-offs. The series features the eponymous Tex Willer, a Texas ranger and a Navaho chieftain, his son Kit, the ranger Kit Carson (inspired by but not identical with the historical figure), and Tiger Jack, a Navaho. Most of the stories run across two issues, and they are written in different genres, ranging from classic Westerns to the odd science fiction story. The comic is also big in Norway, and I have been collecting the monthly issues since 1998. The Norwegian publication schedule is a bit behind the Italian one, meaning that what was meant to be a special story marking the important milestone of 600 issues, was published as issue 548 in my home country.
From here on, there will be spoilers.
The story, 'I demoni del Nord', The Demons from the North, is written by Mauro Boselli and veteran artist Giovanni Ticci. The plot concerns a mysterious cannibalistic attack on a fort in the Northwest Territories in Canada, which turns out to be part of a series of raids targeting various First Nation villages. The perpetrators are the so-called demons of the mist, a tribe described as having retained cannibalistic practices from the Siberian tundra, who dwell in mist-covered mountains and have cannibalistic rites in a cave in a dormant volcano. Since it is a single-issue story, the plot is fast-paced and little time is spent on describing the tribe itself, but some attention has been made to mark the distinction between some of the First Nations that appear in the story, especially the Cree and the Dogrib peoples.
What, then, does this have to do with the Middle Ages and its reception? The story operates outside the medieval timeframe, and arguably outside of the medieval geographical remit. It is an action story featuring rifles, dynamite, Mounties, and Canadian First Nations, and the desperate defence scenes are more reminiscent of Western films such as The Magnificent Seven. There is nothing medieval to be found.
Except that the story is an adaptation of The Eaters of the Dead, the 1976 novel by Michael Crichton, which was adapted into the film The Thirteenth Warrior in 1999. Crichton's novel draws on both Ibn Fadlan's travelogue from his mission to the Volga Bulgars in 921, and on the poem Beowulf. The plot concerns thirteen warriors who fight to protect a Norwegian village against attackers that turn out to be relics Neanderthals living in caves in the mountains. The novel is a clear-cut case of medievalism, seeing as it uses several elements from the Middle Ages - a tenth-century Arabic travelogue and a poem in Old English at least two centuries older - but also incorporating distinctly modern elements such as the idea of relict Neanderthals that reveal that this is medievalism and not medieval cultural product.
I demoni del Nord is an adaptation of Crichton's novel, and although it is evident that the novel is set in a twentieth-century idea of the Middle Ages, the comic book writer, Mauro Boselli, has sought to adapt it to a Western setting in which the basic plot points are embedded within a different narrative universe. Such adaptations are common in both literature and cinema, and they showcase why genres are defined not just by periods or countries but by narratological features. I demoni del Nord is a Western based on a suspense story set in the Middle Ages, but a story that might also be said to contain features from twentieth-century cinema, where the Western has been one of the defining genres. Mauro Boselli's adaptation of the novel makes the comic book story into a case of secondary medievalism because it is incidental. The medieval setting of The Eaters of the Dead is of no consequence for the comic book, because the story could have been adapted in the same way had the novel been set on Mars or sometime in the deep future. And even though the medieval features of the original novel are completely removed, the story itself is recognisable, and it is possible to see that we are dealing with a work of art set in nineteenth-century Canada based on a work of art set in tenth-century Norway. Consequently, in order to use Crichton's novel to understand how the Middle Ages have been used and received in our own times, we also need to follow the trace onwards to both the film adaptation from 1999 and the comic book adaptation from 2010. Researching history means to understand how historical periods have been used and received in later centuries, and to fully understand this use and this reception, we also need to follow whatever echoes and reverberations that the primary medievalism creates further down the line.
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