Abstract
Medievalists have, albeit reluctantly, learnt to accept that literary and cinematic depictions of the Middle Ages frequently take liberties with historical accuracy. There seems to be a consensus that such liberties do little to refine our understanding of the Middle Ages, but mirror modern concerns and desires, instead.1 Three clichés, in particular, serve modern-day agendas: the Middle Ages as “lost ideal,” as “barbaric past,” and as “the site of timeless romantic values.”2 Some theorists suggest that medievalists should embrace inaccuracies, anachronisms, and clichés precisely because these “indicate the ways in which contemporary filmmakers infuse their work with modern concerns.”3
I thank Alistair Hogg for many conversations about Timeline; his commentary on earlier drafts of this chapter, too, has been immensely helpful for the coherence of my argument. I am indebted also to Andrew James Johnston for his valuable comments.
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Notes
Tison Pugh and Lynn T. Ramey, eds., Race, Class, and Gender in “Medieval” Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 6.
Kathleen C. Kelly and Tison Pugh, “Introduction,” in Queer Movie Medievalisms, ed. Kathleen C. Kelly and Tison Pugh (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 4 [1–18].
Michael Crichton, Timeline (New York: Knopf, 1999).
Timeline, dir. Richard Donner (US: Paramount Pictures, 2003).
For a discussion of the scientific background of the novel, see Joel N. Shurkin, “Crichton Travels in Time,” in The Science of Michael Crichton: An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science behind the Fictional Worlds of Michael Crichton, ed. Kevin Robert Grazier (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2008), pp. 85–105.
John Gribbin, In Search of the Multiverse: Parallel Worlds, Hidden Dimensions, and the Ultimate Quest for the Frontiers of Reality (Hoboken, NY: Wiley, 2009), p. xii.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard university Press, 1993), p. 11.
Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 8.
Apart from Shurkin’s contribution there is only one in-depth study of the book, Jenny Adam’s “Marketing the Medieval: The Quest for Authentic History,” The Journal of Popular Culture 36.4 (2003): 704–23.
Valentin Groebner, Das Mittelalter hört nicht auf (Munich: Beck, 2008), p. 145.
Nickolas A. Haydock, “Homeland Security. Northern Crusades through the East-European Eyes of Alexander Nevsky and the Nevsky Tradition,” in Hollywood in the Holy Land: The Fearful Symmetries of Movie Medievalism, ed. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), p. 48 [47–96].
Margreta de Grazia, “Anachronism,” in Cultural Refor mations: Medie val and Renaissance in Literary History, ed. Brian Cummings and James Simpson (Oxford: Oxford university Press, 2010), p. 13 [13–32].
Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascenses in Western Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 202–5.
Rita Felski, Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture (New York: New York university Press, 2000), p. 3.
Andrew James Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages from Beowulf to Othello (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 1–22, 312–17.
Carolyn Dinshaw, “Temporalities,” in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford university Press, 2007), p. 107 [107–23].
Aranye Fradenburg, “(Dis)continuity: A History of Dreaming,” in The Post-Historical Middle Ages, eds. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Frederico (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 87 [87–115].
See, for example, Richard Burt in his Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010),
or Nickolas A. Haydock in “Arthurian Melodrama, Chaucerian Spectacle, and the Waywardness of Cinematic Pastiche in First Knight and A Knight’s Tale,” in Film and Fiction: Reviewing the Middle Ages, ed. Tom A. Shippey (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 5–38.
György Lukács introduces the concept of “Necessary Anachronism” on the basis of Hegel’s use of the term in The Historical Novel (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 61–63.
William D. Paden, “I Learnt It at the Movies: Teaching Medieval Film,” in Postmodern Medievalisms, ed. Richardutz and Jeese G. Swan (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2005), p. 92 [79–98].
Andrew B. R. Elliott, Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), p. 206.
Stephanie Trigg, “Medievalism and Convergence Culture: Researching the Middle Ages for Fiction and Film,” Parergon 25.2 (2008): 100 [99–118].
Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray, The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), pp. 20–21.
Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, Cinematic Illuminations. The Middle Ages on Film (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins university Press, 2010), p. 6.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, dir. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (UK: Columbia Pictures, 1974).
On military technology in the medieval period see for example Jim Bradbury’s The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), p. 9, or more recently,
Helen J. Nicholson’s Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe, 300–1500 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 96. Crichton cites several works on this subject in his bibliography.
All quotations from the film are my transcriptions from the DVD release of Timeline, dir. Richard Donner (US: Paramount Pictures, 2003d).
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© 2014 Andrew James Johnston, Margitta Rouse, and Philipp Hinz
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Rouse, M. (2014). Rethinking Anachronism for Medieval Film in Richard Donner’s Timeline. In: Johnston, A.J., Rouse, M., Hinz, P. (eds) The Medieval Motion Picture. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137074249_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137074249_4
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