Author Archive for: ‘Louise D’Arcens’
Feeling Medieval: Mood and Transhistorical Empathy in Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth
Abstract: Analysing the 2015 Justin Kurzel film Macbeth, this essay develops a critical frame from phenomenology and romantic hermeneutics to illuminate the affective experience of viewing films set in the Middle Ages, exploring in particular the diffuse emotional registers that it calls medievalist moods. It argues that the historical moods evoked in and by films such as Macbeth are central …
Read MoreScreening Early Europe: Premodern Projections
The study of screen representations of early Europe is a growing area that has come in recent years to occupy a vital place within the various disciplines of early European studies, especially in medieval studies and, to a lesser degree, in Classics and early modern studies. From encyclopaedias of medievalist films such as Kevin J. Harty’s The Reel Middle Ages (1999) and …
Read MoreIraq, the Prequel(s): Historicising Military Occupation and Withdrawal in Kingdom of Heaven and 300
Abstract As well as being historical films, Zack Snyder’s 300 and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven both reflect on the value and the danger of historical commemoration and amnesia. The films’ opposing stances on the ‘righteous’ use of history directly link to their differing uses of historical East-West clashes (Thermopylae and the Crusades) as allegorical commentaries on current East-West tensions, specifically the Western occupation …
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