Medieval Literature on Display

Two German museums serve as case studies to show how the medieval world has been reconstructed for a contemporary audience.

How is the medieval world depicted today? Two German museums serve as case studies for a vibrant, imaginative, and provocative enactment of twenty-first century medievalism: the Museum Wolfram von Eschenbach in Wolframs Eschenbach (1995) and the Nibelung Museum in Worms (2001). Emerging around the turn of the 20th century, the museums explore medieval German literature, cultural memory and local history. As the museums reconstruct and transform medieval narratives for the contemporary audience, they enact the process of medievalism: they reveal how memory, through the lens of the middle ages, shapes modern cultural identity and heritage.

Medieval Literature on Display thereby contributes to important conversations about medievalism’s role in constructing and affirming cultural identity, in conceptualizing and finding places for the future of the past.

This unique book is vital reading for scholars of medieval literature and historians of medieval Europe, as well as scholars of visual culture and museum studies.