In Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Celebrating the Calendar Year, Clare Simmons explores attempts to find connections between the present and a medieval past through an awareness of time and calendar. She focuses on texts by nineteenth-century British writers, and considers the ways in which they detected, interpreted, created, and enjoyed what they believed to be medieval survivals, especially in the form of seasonal celebrations.
Simmons posits how such activities influenced an emerging idea of the Middle Ages in nineteenth-century Britain. The focus here is not on the accuracy of ideas about the Middle Ages, but on the ways in which medievalists created a convincing cultural idea of the period. Simmons demonstrates the all-pervading use of medievalism in the culture and that access to medievalist texts was available to a wide range of readers: while only the wealthy could afford subscriptions to antiquarian clubs, medievalist settings, images, figures, and ideas are open to all readers since they permeate many forms of literature. As in her previous books, Simmons illuminates an often-overlooked aspect of nineteenth-century medievalism—its adoption and articulation by less privileged classes of society. Simmons considers the ways in which many texts present the Middle Ages as offering an ideal of community and celebration that could be revived in a fractured nineteenth-century present by society as a whole, not just the upper classes: medievalism thus becomes a particularly useful tool for social critique.
Simmons opens the book with the idea of the medieval cultural “ghosts” (xi) that haunted the nineteenth century. She moves from Christmas through the spring rites of Saint Valentine's Day and Easter, the summer festivals with their religious plays, autumn's harvest and Hallowe'en celebrations, and comes back full cycle to Christmas in the epilogue, which she focuses on Christmas ghosts and how the medieval past continues to haunt the present. The Christmas ghost story, which seems steeped in history, is of course a nineteenth-century invention, and fairly new when Dickens makes use of it for A Christmas Carol.
Simmons offers a detailed exploration of changes to the calendar that emerged during the nineteenth century, noticing in particular the impact of anti-Roman Catholic trends, and the significance of texts that map the passing of time, such as the importance and popularity of Almanacks. In the opening chapter she considers the lasting influence of Keble's The Christian Year (1827), its inspiration for work by John Henry Newman and Christina Rossetti, and the ways in which Robert Browning also uses yearly cycles in Sordello. In chapter 2, Simmons continues this exploration of texts that focus on a yearly cycle with an incisive discussion of Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Morris's The Earthly Paradise, the richness of both these texts elucidated by this approach. The use of medievalism to restore a rather inauthentic idea of an “old-fashioned Christmas” (62) that seemed on the wane in the late nineteenth century is the focus of the third chapter: for example how carols, especially the nineteenth-century “Good King Wenceslas” with its medieval setting, and Christina Rossetti's carols, give a medieval context to the season; and how customs still popular in Britain today, such as the pantomimes The Babes in the Wood, offered a magical and picturesque version of the medieval to audiences throughout society.
One of the striking qualities of Simmons's book is the fresh perspectives she offers to well-known works. Her focus on Keats's “The Eve of St Agnes” in chapter 4 is an excellent example of this as Simmons contextualizes the popular poem in its contemporary medievalist contexts. Similarly, her astute comparison between Tennyson's “St Agnes” and “Sir Galahad” prompts a reassessment of both poems.
Simmons also highlights works that have received less critical attention, such as Letitia Landon's early attempt to commercialize Easter and to cash in on the success of Christmas and New Year gift books and annuals, with the publication of The Easter Gift: A Religious Offering in 1832. Simmons offers rich contextual detail of medieval source texts and traditions, and her exploration of the availability and access to the source texts by the writers in the long nineteenth century is particularly useful.
As with her previous publications, Simmons marries scholarly erudition with an admirable readability. Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture is an intricate and absorbing study, densely packed with facts and readings, but presented with elegant accessibility. My one criticism is that the book's title does not really do justice to the expansive nature of the study within: what Simmons achieves is a clear demonstration of the cultural dominance of medievalism throughout the long nineteenth century in Britain, how it crossed all classes and all literary forms, and how it is situated in the need for the security and familiarity that was produced by adopting and creating medievalist traditions in a regular cycle. Simmons has contributed a valuable resource for all scholars of nineteenth century literature, history, and society.
