1 (Heroic) Fantasy and the Middle Ages – Strange Bedfellows or an Ideal Cast? Thomas Honegger (Published in Vincent Ferré (ed.). 2010. Médiévalisme. Modernité du Moyen Âge. Paris: L’Harmattan, 61-71.) Abstract The (popularly conceived) Middle Ages and (heroic) fantasy share a number of characteristics, such as settings in pre-technological and pre-bureaucratic worlds where men were not yet alienated from their fellow human beings and where things were more ‘authentic’. However, next to these ‘surface parallels’, we can identify a deeper underlying reason for the close affinity between the Middle Ages and (heroic) fantasy, which is due to the identification of medieval romance as the medieval literary genre per se, and the participation of (heroic) fantasy in this tradition. I ‘The Middle Ages’ Strugnell has pointed out that “[…] Western European history, particularly its medieval phase, is one of the sources of heroic fantasy.” 1 It is so indeed, though why, how and to what degree is not so easy to determine. In the following discussion I will therefore try and explore the different ways in which the Middle Ages and (heroic) fantasy literature interact. Due to limitations of space, I have decided to develop and test my ideas against some of the ‘core’ works of early modern fantasy written in or shortly after the first half of the 20 th century – works that have proven influential for later writers. These are Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian series (1932-; sword and sorcery heroic fantasy), Clive Staples Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56; Christian heroic fantasy), and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (published 1954-55, but written 1937-1949; epic fantasy) – all of which may be subsumed under the heading ‘(heroic) fantasy’. The starting point for our investigation is the contemporary popular conception of ‘the Middle Ages’. First of all, it is (I would argue) possible to talk about ‘the Middle Ages’ in a popular context – something that would be quite out of question within a scholarly context. These ‘Middle Ages of the Others’ (meaning the non-medievalists) are a conglomerate of sometimes contradictory common places, clichés and (very important!) images that need not add up to a unified picture of the period in question, yet which prove enduring and resistant to attempts at corrections from the scholarly community. 2 The ‘prototypical’ popular conception of the Middle Ages is largely one based on elements from the High and Late Middle Ages, i.e. the time-span stretching from the 13 th to the 15 th centuries, with the addition of some elements (witches, inquisitorial persecution of heretics) that belong to the Early Modern period rather than to the Middle Ages proper. By now, it should have become clear that we are not dealing with a historical period (in the scholarly meaning of the word), but with a ‘temporal fantasy’, i.e. a place in time that offers something to modern readers – and this ‘something’ seems to be of use for a number of writers of modern (20 th century) fantasy. I will therefore take a closer look at some of these shared core-elements. II The Knight in Shining (or not-so-shining) Armour Geoffrey Chaucer, in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, begins the list of his pilgrims with the knight. He does so not only for reasons of precedence – the knight is arguably the highest-ranking pilgrim – but also because he is the most typical and perfect embodiment of the secular Middle Ages. The members of the clergy, by contrast, are part of a continuum that extends from late antiquity to the High 1 John Strugnell, “Hammering the Demons: Sword, Sorcery and Contemporary Society”, quote p. 175. 2 See Valentin Groebner, Das Mittelalter hört nicht auf, for an informed and knowledgeable study of this phenomenon. See also Richard Utz, “‘Mes souvenirs sont peut-être reconstruits’: Medieval Studies, Medievalism, and the Scholarly and Popular Memories of the Right of the Lord’s First Night”.