IMC 2018: Sessions

The focus of the session is a special sequence of creative work of Medievalism. The papers do not deal with the great medieval literary topics and their retelling in modern times. The speakers look(ed) for works of literature or of other media of the present which pick up literary (or historical) figure, motif, requisite or other object of the Middle Ages and put it in a total new modern context. That might be another geographic area, another time in the which the story is situated. The question of research might be what Impacts those elements of the past have for a modern plot. One paper will focus on the fantasy series Game of Thrones. It's interesting to have a look at the kind of references from the TV series which are taken up by different types of media. The analysis concentrates on a classification in categories and thereby tries to get to the medieval roots of the success of Game of Thrones. Bringing a historical figure and plot onto the screen does not only mean that the actors have to be put in suitable costumes and an adequate surrounding has to be found. Such frames that seem historical can easily been (ab-)used for political or ideological statements. That will be shown with a Russian example. Even a single name of figure opens on the one hand a great tradition of cultural transformations of medieval phenonema and on the other hand it asks what does it mean to have a particular name in a certain historical moment and what has it to do with its medieval prototype?