Medieval echoes of ‘war to end all wars’
Posted on 21 February 2008
Professor Carol Symes, a medieval expert at the University of Illinois who is a Distinguished Research Visitor to the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies, argues that medieval imagery loomed large in ‘the war to end all wars’, defining how it was conceived, fought, and interpreted.
Medieval imagery was implicated in virtually every aspect of the First World War
Professor Carol Symes
She believes that romanticised concepts of chivalry, heroism and nostalgia were used to ‘sell’ the concept of the war to the public. Her research draws on wartime propaganda images of French soldiers depicted as knights in shining armour, and ghostly vistas of medieval cathedrals hovering over the battlefields of Europe.
In a public lecture at the University of York next week, Professor Symes will argue that soldiers including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were profoundly affected by these interpretations, shaping their writings including The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.
During her six-week stay in the UK, Professor Symes will deliver the free public lecture entitled ‘Modern war and the medieval past’ in the King’s Manor in York city centre, on 28 February at 5:30pm.
"Medieval imagery was implicated in virtually every aspect of the First World War," she explains. "For instance, both sides bombed medieval monuments in an attempt to demoralise the population - and when the war was over, devastated towns like Ypres were resurrected as spookily identical visions of their former selves. It was a deliberate attempt to recreate a medieval history that had been all but obliterated."
Professor Symes is also investigating the way the Allies redrew Europe’s national boundaries after the war, deliberately replicating the territorial monarchies of the Middle Ages. She argues that this disastrous policy contributed directly to the outbreak of the Second World War 20 years later.
ENDS
Notes to editors:
- The Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS) at the University of York was founded in 1968 in order to promote interdisciplinary research into the Middle Ages, and it is now one of the most successful teaching institutions in this field anywhere in the world. More information at: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/cms/about.html.