Houghton, The Middle Ages in Computer Games

 

Houghton, Robert. The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism. (Medievalism vol. 28) Boydell & Brewer, 2024. 327pp. £115.00. ISBN: 9781843847298 

Reviewed by Chris Herde (cherde@wisc.edu) 

Robert Houghton’s The Middle Ages in Computer Games lays out an incredibly thorough groundwork for future studies on the specific intersections of medievalism, ludic interactivity, and the commercial and cultural pressures present in the modern videogame industry[1]. At every turn, Houghton clearly reiterates the ways in which “ludic medievalism” aligns with and diverges from the traditional incarnations of medievalism (particularly those presented in films and television shows) as well as the presentation of other historical periods in videogame form. In so doing, he not only highlights the ways in which these mediums reinforce and contradict one another but also lays out a coherent argument for the existence of a ‘ludic medievalism’ that is informed (but by no means fully defined) by its medium, its subject matter, or the interactions between the two. 

Houghton insists that his object of study is not any specific game or even any individual genre of games but rather the shape of the emergent worlds created by the conscious and unconscious decisions and presuppositions of the people who make and play videogames. I say ‘worlds’ in the plural because one of Houghton’s key points is that supernatural elements and full-blown fantasy cannot and should not be separated from the analysis of ludic medievalism. At no point have the two ever been totally disconnected, but in Houghton’s view fantasy has been so central to the history and development of videogames as a medium that even games purporting to depict ‘accurate’ history cannot be understood without the context of the medium’s fantastic conventions. 

With that in mind, the book is organized into thematic chapters, consciously eschewing the presentation of individual case studies. The first two chapters lay out the unique elements of videogames as a medium for encountering the past by focusing on its essential interactivity. More so than any other medium, videogames must take the audience into account, as their active participation is required not just to ensure commercial success, but also to render the experience “complete.” In particular, Houghton emphasizes the power players have on an individual level to alter the fundamental text of a game in the form of counterplay and emergent narratives. Houghton therefore chooses to expand Alan Chapman’s division of historical game genres with recourse to the still-maturing genre conventions used within the medium itself. In addition to Chapman’s “realist” games—which one might call “narrative” or “immersive”—and “conceptual” games—mostly aligning with the “strategy” genre—Houghton adds “Role-playing” games and the more recently-identified “hardcore” genre. In so doing, he shifts the focus of his analysis toward the active agency of the players: not simply acknowledging their interactions within the game, but also their decisions about what games to pick up in the first place. These four genres provide a solid groundwork for Houghton’s later analysis and furthermore take the necessary step away from considering historical videogames as mechanisms to access an author’s idea of the past and toward conceiving of them as complex objects in their own right that interface simultaneously and dynamically with designers, players, histories and cultures past, present, and imagined. 

Each subsequent chapter presents an exhaustive and self-contained argument about the way in which a given theme (violence, political authority, faith, scientific advancement, morality, race, gender and sexuality) is presented in medievalist games as opposed to its presence in games set in other historical periods or in noninteractive forms of medievalism. The Middle Ages in Computer Games will therefore be a useful reference work for more focused studies, but the chapters are also organized such that a reader engaging with the book cover-to-cover will begin to see the consequences of a relatively complex web of interacting concepts well before Houghton fully elaborates them (for example, the teleological role of science in strategic videogames vs in traditional medievalism and the impact that contradiction has for the presentation of organized religion in medievalist RPGs). 

The question of historical accuracy is present throughout the book, though it is not one on which Houghton particularly focuses. This decision is largely to the book’s benefit. Houghton demonstrates early on that, if a game prioritizes it at all, historical accuracy is almost exclusively confined within the domains of aesthetics and marketing. Given that the unique appeal and power of the medium is in its mechanical interactivity, the aesthetics of accuracy[2]  therefore necessarily always give way to the requirements of a smooth, functional, fun play experience. Thus, rather than focusing overmuch on litigating the accuracy of those aesthetic elements, Houghton explores the implications of the interactive experience: the intended and unintended narratives produced by systems interacting as well as the power of players to exploit and overwrite those systems to produce their own narratives. 

This book succeeds convincingly at Houghton’s stated goal of defining “ludic medievalism” as a distinct category of engagement with the medieval past, governed by its own tropes and pressures and worthy of study. While not every chapter presents equally groundbreaking or unique observations about medievalist videogames as separate from their companions in other medievalist media and digital game studies, they all do important ground-laying work in support of future research. Each chapter concludes with a number of more speculative claims to demonstrate the field’s openness and potential for further debate. For example, Houghton posits that the “hardcore” genre of souls- and rogue-likes might present a divergence from the paradigm of traditional masculine power fantasy, heretofore ubiquitous within the medium, by forcing the player to accept the inevitability of failure and thus their weakness relative to their opposition. This claim seems to me fruitful ground for discussions of differing expressions of masculinity and the power of game audiences to redefine the medium through paratext. “Hardcore” is the game genre which brought us the colloquial phrase “git gud,” after all. 

Ultimately, I believe that the utility of this book as a fundamental reference work within its academic niche is such that it will likely only be superseded in the face of significant shifts in the culture of videogames or popular medievalism.

1. The fact that I will predominately be discussing  “videogames” while Houghton describes “computer games” is exclusively an artifact of American and British vernaculars referring to the same medium.

2. Or perhaps “authenticity,” as Houghton shows that appeals to historical accuracy within aesthetics and marketing are much more concerned with conforming to the expectations of the audience and designers rather than any significant engagement with modern historiography. 

 

Chris Herde

University of Wisconsin-Madison 

Poland: Millennium of the First Coronation

 A Voice from Poland: Missed Opportunities for the Millennium of the First Coronation (1025-2025)

Piotr Toczyski, Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, Poland

ptoczyski@aps.edu.pl 

Abstract: This brief article examines the cultural and political significance of the millennium of Bolesław the Brave’s coronation in 1025, set against a backdrop of Poland’s semi-peripheral position in European history and the enduring global fascination with the Middle Ages. The analysis explores how foundational dates - especially 966 (Christianization) and 1025 (Coronation) - have been remembered, mythologized, and instrumentalized across Polish history. It revisits the 1966 millennium of Mieszko I’s baptism and the simultaneously ongoing film response to the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald to highlight tensions between narratives in state commemoration. The text critiques the lack of contemporary cultural production around the Piast dynasty and the missed opportunity to engage with medieval symbolism in inclusive and reflective ways. By tracing how symbols like the royal sword have shifted from unifying icons to contested emblems, the essay calls for renewed engagement with Poland’s medieval and medievalism heritage - one that acknowledges its ambivalence, narrative gaps, and potential for public dialogue. 

The Piast dynasty (966-1370) ruled Poland from approximately 960, though they gained recognition on the international stage only after Mieszko I’s baptism in 966, and remained in power until 1370, with a brief five-year interruption. The millennium of Mieszko’s son’s coronation hits at a time of enduring fascination in the Western world with the Middle Ages, especially the quasi-Middle Ages. The proof is provided by cinema, including series such as Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, The Witcher - and their numerous prologues and epilogues. These are business decisions of American corporations (HBO, Amazon, Netflix), as are the lightsaber duels of Disney’s recent neo-medieval Star Wars series. Of course, there is also a steady 120 years of cinematic Arthurianism in new variants (not so long ago, King Arthur’s ecocritical and self-critical nephew in his encounter with the Green Knight).

It would be difficult to compete with all this for attention without a clear business decision, a political decision - or a sensible combination of both. And it is especially difficult in the semi-periphery, in which we still find ourselves here in Poland. The center’s offerings meet local needs well enough. However, the millennium of Bolesław the Brave’s (Polish: Bolesław Chrobry) coronation presents a significant opportunity for Poland to re-examine its medieval heritage and engage in a broader public discussion about its historical symbols and national identity. Nevertheless, the current socio-political climate and the controversies surrounding national symbols hinder such a unifying conversation, especially in the presidential election year. 

Why 966, 1025 and their millennia matter in Poland

In Poland, two of the first historical dates children learn at school are 966 and 1025. Why? Because they mark two key moments in the story of how Poland became a country. In 966, Duke Mieszko I was baptized - this is seen as the symbolic beginning of the Polish state and its entry into Christian Europe. Then in 1025, his son, Bolesław the Brave, became the first king of Poland. These dates are easy to remember and packed with meaning: One stands for the birth of the nation, the other for the crowning of its independence. However, despite this important beginning, Poland remained a semi-peripheral player in the medieval world. It was neither part of the dominant core powers, like the Holy Roman Empire or France, nor completely isolated on the periphery, but occupied a middle ground, gradually building its influence.

In between those two key dates - 966 and 1025 - there is another important event that often comes up: the Gniezno Congress (Polish: Zjazd gnieźnieński, German: Akt von Gnesen) in 1000. It was a meeting between Bolesław the Brave and Emperor Otto III of the Holy Roman Empire. The event symbolized recognition of Poland’s growing importance in Europe. Otto acknowledged Bolesław as a powerful ruler and ally. So, between baptism in 966 and coronation in 1025, the year 1000 marks Poland’s official welcome into the European ‘club’. It was more than a diplomatic gesture, but a clear indication that Otto regarded the Polish ruler as a partner in shaping the spiritual and political landscape of Europe. Two years later, Otto died, and the situation became more complicated. 

It was only in 1025 that Bolesław the Brave crowned himself the first king of Poland - just a few months before his death. It was a big moment: Poland had been a Christian state for only about 60 years. The coronation meant more than just a title. It was about international recognition, political independence, and showing that Poland could stand on its own next to the other kingdoms of Europe. Bolesław had been pushing for this recognition for years, using diplomacy, alliances, and war to put Poland on the map. The crown was both a reward for those efforts and a powerful symbol of Poland’s rising status. Although Bolesław did not live long enough to consolidate his royal authority, the act of coronation established a precedent that would shape the Polish monarchy for generations.

Back in 1966, the thousand-year anniversary of Mieszko I’s baptism - the symbolic start of Polish statehood - sparked massive nationwide celebrations. But it was more than just a historical moment. The communist government and the Catholic Church each wanted to own the narrative. On the one hand, the post-war communist state framed the 966 baptism as a step toward Polish independence and unity under secular leadership. On the other hand, the Church emphasized its spiritual meaning and continuity through the ages. These two competing anniversaries turned into a symbolic debate over who gets to define Poland’s roots. Despite the political tension, the millennium left a lasting mark. It showed that history isn’t just about what happened, but about how we choose to remember and use historical events. One of the biggest and most visible parts of the 966 anniversary in communist Poland was the "1000 Schools for the Millennium" campaign. Instead of building churches, which the state obviously was not keen on, the authorities launched a massive school-building project. The idea was to mark the thousand-year anniversary of the Polish state not with religious monuments, but with education and progress. And it worked - by the mid-1960s, hundreds of modern schools had popped up all over the country, and many are still standing today. For the ruling party, it was a way to offer a secular, forward-looking counter-narrative to the Church’s religious celebrations. For everyday people, it often meant something much simpler: a new local school, closer to home, and a sign that the state was investing in their children’s future. 

Simultaneously, Aleksander Ford’s Knights of the Teutonic Order (1960) became one of Poland’s most-watched films, attracting 32 million viewers by 1987. Produced to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald and aligned with the communist state’s nationalist agenda, the film adapted Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel as both patriotic spectacle and propaganda. It portrays a stark moral divide: noble Poles versus villainous Teutonic Knights, using visual contrasts and simplified characters to reinforce political messages. Though criticized for its ideological bias and lack of depth, the film’s grand scale, emotional moments, and technical innovations secured its popularity both in Poland and abroad (e.g. Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, France). Knights of the Teutonic Order was the first Polish blockbuster, produced with the involvement of the highest state authorities of the time, including the leader of the Polish communist party, Władysław Gomułka. 

The film’s production coincided with escalating tensions between Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany. Polish state media widely reported that West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had appeared at a state anniversary ceremony wearing a cloak resembling that of the Teutonic Order. As a result, the black cross on the knights’ robes in the film was intended as an allegory for the swastika, and the Polish-Teutonic conflict served as a metaphor for the contemporary diplomatic dispute between the two nations in the post-war period. 

How millennia and medievalisms are troubling for Poland

Since the screen adaptation of the Battle of Grunwald (1410) - somehow remaining related to the visuals of the German chancellor in a Teutonic cloak - a convincing film epic about the Jagiellonians dynasty (1386-1572) has not been produced. Serious Piast dynasty’s film story was not attempted. The propaganda of People’s Poland reached out to Piastism and Piast Concept, creating the groundwork for the idea of the so-called Recovered Territories of Poland’s post-1945 Western borderland.

Before (since 1920s) and afterwards, the sword of the Brave, famously (but untruly) chipped at Kyiv’s gate, both independently and interdependently found its way into magazine titles and onto specific jacket lapels. Sword of the Brave (Polish: Mieczyk Chrobrego) is a nationalist symbol in Poland. It depicts the royal coronation sword, Szczerbiec, wrapped in a ribbon in Poland’s national colors. First used in the interwar period by the nationalist parties, it became so politically charged that wearing it was penalized and legally debated already in the 1930s, but still used by nationalist groups and even in the 21st century banned from UEFA Euro (2008) events due to its association with extremist ideologies. Its return was noticed by the press in unusual circumstances, when one of the police officers checking the IDs of participants in the so-called anti-fascist picnic had a nationalist emblem pinned to his uniform vest. At that time (2019), a nationalist march was passing through Warsaw.

And that was it. Although resurrections of Antoni Golubiew’s serious and intellectual novels (written mainly between 1947-1956) about the Brave exist (discussions about them and films don't). There has also been no solid adaptation to the legendarium of Lech, Siemowit, Popiel or the Wawel Dragon outside the world of award-winning Allegro ads. Thus, the cultural background to discuss Poland’s origins and mythmaking would be there. One could, for example, turn to a very interesting work by a Lublin-based medievalist Czesław Deptuła on the Cracow conflict between the Skalka and Wawel as a mythical metaphor for the two centers of power - symbolized by Krak, Krakus, dragons. For the time being, we are left with a global spectacle in this role - the Targaryen fratricidal battles from Game of Thrones.

 From elsewhere in Poland, the role of knights - including the misguided ones, the ronins - is held (yes, yes) mainly by twentieth-century soldiers, policemen and even former secret police officers (after the trilogy about “Pigs”) - soon the premiere of “Assassination of the Pope”, from which I expect to remain on the same sheet of mytho-landscape. And as the quintessential honorary hero - Hans Kloss (once a captain, once a Hauptmann) and several of his doubles. These are also references to the ethos of chivalry, emblematic of the Middle Ages.

Therefore, let’s not be surprised that Boleslaw the Brave as a symbol does not have it easy at all in such a global and local environment. One would have to do the necessary homework on mythologization and demythologization. For it to make sense for the millennium of the coronation (and it could have), a major public discussion should have started a good five years ago. It could, for example, have come out of the world of museums, a cultural congress. However, this would have been a very labor-intensive undertaking. Let me illustrate it with an example of the Brave’s royal sword. 

I remember well how, in the second half of the nineties, on the corner of Ujazdowskie Avenue and Wilcza Street in central Warsaw, a sad gentleman vendor traded books from unfolded polka dots. A large sign in paint in the background of his workplace proclaimed “Either Szczerbiec - or stand.” Above referred as Brave’s Sword, Szczerbiec is a ceremonial sword used to crown most Polish kings between 1320 and 1764. Today, it is the only surviving piece of Poland’s medieval crown jewels and is kept at Wawel Castle in Kraków. Its hilt is decorated with Christian symbols, floral designs, and magical inscriptions, and the blade contains a slit with a small Polish coat of arms. Though often called “the Notched Sword,” the blade is smooth - the name refers to a sword meant to notch others. A legend claims King Bolesław I the Brave chipped it against Kyiv’s Golden Gate in 1018, but the gate was built later, and the sword itself comes from the 12th or 13th century. Still, the story lives on - illustrating how legends shape cultural memory even when the timeline doesn’t quite align. National symbols like Szczerbiec blend myth with documented fact.

‘Szczerbiec’ refers to the magazine named after the sword. Either the vendor agrees to sell the nationalist magazine Szczerbiec (founded in 1991), or their bookstand will be damaged or removed. The magazine in question was on the stand. This kind of pressure reflects the tactics sometimes used by fringe nationalist groups in post-communist Poland to assert dominance in public spaces and intimidate those not aligned with their ideology. The presence of the sign behind the vendor’s stand suggests that he may have been forced to comply, highlighting an atmosphere of fear and ideological bullying. And that’s probably how the conversation about the Middle Ages in the measure of twenty-first-century Poland would have ended.

It is a pity that today the atmosphere for the Brave and his sword as unifying symbols is not yet there. And it is a potentially capacious symbol - both of pride, and shame, and history, and myth, and an honest conversation about ambivalence. And also about reception and non-reception - what we want more of and what we want less of. For now, we are taking away the opportunity for such conversations. Maybe next time.

Danahay and Howey, Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism

Danahay, Martin and Ann F. Howey, eds. Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism: Re-Appropriating the Victorian and Medieval Pasts (Lieden: Brill, 2024), ISBN 978004677876 322pp. eBook and HB RRP €105.00

Reviewed by:

Stephen Basdeo, Leeds Trinity University

Martin and Danahay and Ann F. Howey tell us that “Medievalism in culture emerges in the early nineteenth century” (4). One of the book’s central premises is therefore incorrect, for such a statement would surprise the sculptors of the Saxon deities at Stowe Gardens (commissioned in 1727), and Thomas Arne, the composer of England’s great patriotic song “Rule Britannia” (from the masque Alfred, in 1740, relating the life and deeds of one of England’s greatest monarchs). Georg F. Handel, who wrote Rinaldo (1711), would raise an eyebrow, as would John Dryden, who translated some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Fables: Ancient and Modern and wrote King Arthur; or the British Worthy (1691), which was later turned into an opera by Henry Purcell. Readers of “true” crime would likewise be surprised, given that they could read, in any number of criminal biographies, stories of Robin Hood, Thomas Dun, and that very noted thief, Sir John Falstaff.

Medievalism was so popular in the century preceding the nineteenth that even the brilliant Henry Fielding turned to it to produce the Arthurian Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730). This was also the great age of the gothic novel beginning with the Castle of Otranto (1764). Shakespeare, his histories and tragedies, owe their status as classics largely to the labours of David Garrick, while scholars such as Joseph Ritson (of Robin Hood fame), Sir John Hawkins (A History of the Science and Practice of Music), Thomas Warton (History of English Poetry), Samuel Johnson and George Steevens (who edited Shakespeare), as well as Thomas Percy (famous for his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry) diligently researched and published their enquiries into various aspects of English medieval literature and culture. Finally, nameless ballad sellers and chapmen sold songs and poems of medieval British worthies in broadsides and chapbooks. I appreciate that a dedicated book on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medievalism is yet to be written, but it did not begin with the Victorians and the idea that it did should not be a central premise of the book’s introduction.

Upon such weak foundations and generalisations does Danahay and Howey’s Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism: Re-Appropriating the Victorian and Medieval Pasts (2024) begin, in an introduction titled “Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism—Why together? Why now?” The authors do not provide even a brief answer to this question despite the book’s aims to unite “all the contributions to the fields of neo-Victorianism and medievalism gathered in this volume” and ask “to what end is the recourse to history used, and what does it tell us about contemporary values?” (3). But editors don’t provide an answer to their key question because none of the chapters (with one or two exceptions) really bring neo-Victorianism and neo-medievalism together. What we have in this volume are papers of two different stripes: neo-Victorianism papers and medievalism papers and rarely do the two meet.

The chapters are perfectly good in themselves and might have been more appropriately published as single journal pieces. Karl Fugelso’s first chapter—which does discuss neo-medievalism and neo-Victorianism—provides a journal editor’s perspective on the question of what constitutes neo-medievalism, medievalism, and the medieval period. It was certainly refreshing to see Fugelso pour cold water on the idea of a non-western Middle Ages given the recent tendency to “globalise” the period (50). Indeed, as a Brazilian colleague once quipped: “If we’re going to have a global middle ages, why not a global pre-Aztec period?”[i] I also agree with Fugelso’s remark that it is largely pointless to separate neo-medievalism and medievalism, for, as anyone with even a passing interest in the field would likely know: “medievalism encompasses all responses to the Middle Ages” (53). Still, there’s nothing in Fugelso’s chapter which answers either of the key questions: “to what end is the recourse to history used, and what does it tell us about contemporary values?”

Valerie B. Johnson makes a compelling contribution to Robin Hood studies by examining how, and in what settings, Maid Marian trains to become an outlaw in Robin Hood films. In doing so, this is one of the few chapters which does answer the key question of what medievalism in the present tells us about contemporary values regarding the status of women in medievalism and popular culture generally (190). Another excellent contribution, and which meets the book’s aims, is Howey’s discussion of the Charlotte M. Yonge novel The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), and its manner of making the idea of knighthood relevant in the Victorian age. That being said, Yonge’s novel is hardly neo-Victorian but actually Victorian, published during the reign of that great monarch.

After Fugelso’s chapter there is a piece by Claire Nally which examines a neo-Victorian novel titled the Wonder (2016)—which does not mention medievalism at all but is certainly a chapter which made me want to read The Wonder in full. Then follows “Digital White Supremacy, White Rage, and the Middle Ages: Rebooting the Alt-Right through Medieval Studies” by Dorothy Kim who once again tells the story of her dramatic and seemingly never-ending battles with the Alt-Right in the United States. She begins by describing the Charlottesville far right protest in 2017 and then claims that her chapter will “map” the “alt-medieval ecosystem.” The only problem is that though she uses the verb “to map” with regard to these far right groups, Kim merely lists them and spends so little time on each group’s characteristics with the result that one feels Kim should have aimed for depth rather than breadth, focusing on one or two groups at most, perhaps within one country. Curiously, in Kim’s “alt-medieval eco-system,” she cannot seem to find a single far right medievalist group in the United Kingdom, which perhaps would have been worthy of comment given that, apparently during Brexit, says Kim, the Crusades were invoked to legitimise the far right support of it. Yet Kim offers no supporting citation for this assertion (96). Even if one conclude that Kim indeed mapped these groups, the question remains: What is to be done? Medievalists know that these groups exist in the United States and elsewhere, but what do we do with this information? Kim offers no solution on this score. Is it the implication that we as academics are somehow not doing enough publishing or public engagement? This is left unclear. Finally, it is not clear how any of this relates to neo-Victorianism, thus the chapter does not speak to the book’s aims.

The next chapter to focus only on one of the book’s aims is Hadley’s “Three Phases of a Statue,” examining the recent public debates over, and vandalism of, monuments to Queen Victoria in Montréal. The word medievalism does not appear in this chapter (though if I missed this reference, I am happy to be corrected). Hadley’s aim, however, is to debunk “popular arguments that monuments stand outside history;” (131) I am unconvinced, however, that anyone, either for or against the statues of the Queen-Empress in Canada, actually would argue this and, having served on my home city of Leeds’s statue’s and monuments review, much of the debate usually hinges on a misunderstood notion of “erasing history.”

Marie-Luise Kohlke's examination of “Janus-Faced Neo-Victorianism” in the Penny Dreadful TV series makes a rather overstated case for seeing medievalism in a series set during the nineteenth century on the basis that it features witches and spiritualism and has an overall gothic feel to it. According to Kolhke, “extant criticism on Penny Dreadful evinces a curious lack of explicit concern with the show’s reliance on the Middle Ages” (140). Could the “curious lack of concern” not simply be owing to the fact that there is indeed little or no medievalism in the series and therefore contemporary critics are pursuing more fruitful lines of enquiry? It would also have been nice if the author had at least acknowledged what a penny dreadful actually was in the Victorian era. Penny Dreadful is largely an urban gothic series; the heir of mid-Victorian British penny bloods and nineteenth-century French feuilletons, such as George W.M. Reynolds’s Mysteries of London (1844–48)—which features spiritualism and a witch-like “Old Hag” but is hardly medieval—Mysteries of the Court of London (1849–56), and Eugene Sue’s Mystères de Paris (1842–43). As such, the author might have consulted the numerous works on the urban gothic.[ii] This genre, in the British case especially, in a very roundabout way, adapted the conventions of the gothic novel in the previous century and transplanted them on to the social novel.

Amy Montz then offers an examination of the “steampunk novels” of Gail Carriger and those novels’ utlimate failure to denounce the British Empire’s exploitation of subject peoples. The novels are referenced and discussed in full—though Montz also offers quotations in which Carriger does indeed denounce the empire (230)—though there are no primary or secondary sources or even events cited to support the point on exploitation and, taking a look at the bibliography, there is not a single history book on the British Empire cited either. Quite clearly, this is unacceptable in any scholarly work which touches upon the history of the empire, even if that history is then refracted through the fictive lens of modern steampunk novels. The next steampunk chapter by Mike Perschon educates us all on the fact that steampunk is not exclusively Victorian (257), with a focus on the movie Mortal Engines. The film is also examined in the succeeding chapter by Kevin and Brent Moberly—a chapter which, to give due credit, does refreshingly discuss neo-Victorianism and medievalism together (279–285).

For Danahay, President Trump’s tenure and the subsequent age of “epistemological crisis” is an appropriate framing narrative for an exploration of William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), for the conditions which led Morris to write his utopian masterpiece have parallels with the Trump’s era of “fake news” (289). The chapter does not adequately situate Morris’s writings in their wider context, apart from a cursory comment that he was “respond[ing] to social change [and] … radical changes in the means of production that created a concomitant upheaval in modes of communication. Steam, the telegraph and eventually electricity restructured Victorian society” (289). Well, yes, innovations did occur in that period, though the traditional dating of the Industrial Revolution, from c.1760–c.1840, only includes three years of Victoria’s reign. On steam power: Newcomen’s steam engine was first installed in a Dudley coal mine in 1712; by 1800, there was at least 2,500 steam engines used in various coal mines, mills, and manufactories. As for the dominance of the steam-powered railways in the Victorian age, little need be said beyond the fact that Morris’s novel came a long time after the “Railway Mania” building and speculation boom of the 1840s, and that by the end of the century Great Britain had a railway network of over 20,000 miles.[iii] And yes, “eventually” electricity did transform Britain, but I’m not sure how relevant the point is to a discussion of a novel published in 1890, when it was only in 1888 that the government granted electricity supply franchises to 64 private companies and 17 local corporations but even this had little immediate effect; by 1919 only 6 per cent of households had electricity. This is because, given the cost and difficulty of its supply, most late-Victorian consumers opted to remain with gas power; even by 1938 only two thirds of houses had electricity.[iv] The specific things which Danahay claims Morris was responding to were simply facts of life by the latter’s time. On the point about fake news, Danahay reprints the first page of the 11 January 1890 issue of Commonweal and argues that, because the first instalment of News from Nowhere is printed on the first page where news would normally be, indicates that Morris wanted his novella to be seen as a news item, and thus it constitutes an early attempt at deliberate fake news (292). And yet, the full title of the story is printed on its first page: News from Nowhere; or, an Epoch of Rest. Being some chapters from a Utopian Romance. I am sure the quite well-educated Commonweal readers would have known, three lines into the story, that they were reading a work of fiction upon seeing the word “romance.” What follows after in the same chapter is a discussion of steampunk and alternative history, and the whole might better have been divided into two chapters—one on Morris and one on steampunk—for the two are an awkward fit together and no firm link is made between the two.

Thus the collection ends, leaving readers with praise for a few chapters, critiques of several others, and still without any firm answer to the volume’s key questions. Medievalism and neo-Victorianism are not “united” in any meaningful way because the chapters, while mostly sound in themselves, do not speak to the book’s overall aims.

Stephen Basdeo

 

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[i] Thanks to Luiz Guerra for this point.

[ii] On the urban gothic see Richard C. Maxwell, ‘G. M. Reynolds, Dickens, and the Mysteries of London’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 32: 2 (1977), 188–213 and Richard Maxwell, The Mysteries of Paris and London (University Press of Virginia, 1992)

[iii] Michael Freeman, ‘Transport’, in Atlas of Industrialising Britain, 1780–1914, ed. by John Langton and R.J. Morris (London and New York: Methuen, 1986), p. 88.

[iv] Carol Jones, ‘Coal, gas, and electricity’, in Atlas of British Economic and Social History since c.1700, ed. by Rex Pope (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 68–95.