Laughing in the face of the past: Satire and nostalgia in medieval heritage tourism

Authors

Louise D'Arcens, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

49730

Publication Details

D'Arcens, L. 2011, 'Laughing in the face of the past: Satire and nostalgia in medieval heritage tourism', Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 155-170.

Abstract

Emerging out of the development of local and national `heritage,¿medieval heritage tourism is imbricated with modern nostalgia. Yet its relationshipwith nostalgic paradigms is unstable ¿ skeptical about the possibility of representingthe past yet striving to deliver `living history.¿ Comic medievalist tourist attractionshave attempted to manage this instability by operating in a paradoxical registercombining ironic edutainment with a phenomenological evocation of the past.This industry¿s use of `medieval¿ odor is vital to achieving this register, reinforcing theboundaries between the pungent Middle Ages and `inodorate modernity¿ whilesimultaneously offering an experience of abject premodernity. Its satiric critique ismore frequently anti-modern, aimed at the anxieties and hypocrisies of contemporarysociety rather than at the Middle Ages.