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HP and Frodo Baggins inspire new generation -
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Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins inspire new generation of medieval scholars
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Wizardnews
Pop quiz: What do Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins and "Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (for Super Nintendo)" have in common?
A) Roots in medieval history and literature.
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B) Inspiration for a new and growing generation of medieval scholars.
C) All of the above.
Those who answered "C" can go to the head of the class.
Enrollment is surging in classes covering the formerly yawn-inducing subjects of crusades and Anglo-Saxon sagas. Some professors have tailored their classes to begin with modern fantasy literature, but reach back across the centuries to include the classics.
Other, more traditional medieval history classes fill to capacity, with waiting lists.
"They grew up with this. It's part of their vocabulary. It's part of their pop culture," said Erica Bastress-Dukehart, an assistant history professor at Skidmore College.
The professors don't really keep statistics on class-by-class enrollment, but university medievalists from Colonie to Eugene, Ore., report packed classrooms.
The academics attribute the trend to Hollywood and video games, with a little bit of the popular Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling, and C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia" series tossed in. It's a wave that seems to be cresting with the release this winter of the last film installment of J.R.R. Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Tolkein's story on the big screen "is almost as if it completes the thesis for them," Bastress-Dukehart said.
Students arrive at the beginning of the semester already versed in the basic ideas behind warfare and witchcraft, courtesy of the crossbows in video games and spell casters in novels. Unlike a few years ago, they know the Middle Ages weren't damsels in distress and knights in shining armor.
Siena College English professor Pamela Clements does not believe it's coincidental that the "Lord of the Rings" popularity last surged during the Vietnam War. She herself reread the trilogy soon after Sept. 11.
Questions of heroism, of choosing the right path, of being a good person occupy the minds of college students today, she said.
"People are responding to that, the idea of the reluctant hero who has a job to do, doesn't really want the job, but does it anyway," she said.
Clements' class on Authurian legends is wildly popular. Last semester she offered a "Lord of the Rings" class, which focused on the texts that influenced the modern saga. The class filled up within hours on registration day, and almost all of the students came to the class having already read the main text -- a rarity, Clements said.
In addition to the collective cultural swoon over the "Lord of the Rings" movies, the professors said most of their students had seen "Braveheart." Several lauded "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" as one of the truest and smartest, albeit goofiest, takes on the time period.
Maeve McEneny, a 19-year-old sophomore named for an ancient Celtic queen, enrolled in Clements' Authurian class this semester. The English education major has long been a fan of the fantasy novel and movie genre.
"Anything with a sword involved, I've probably seen it," McEneny said.
"It was sort of nerdy to be a fantasy kid. But now with 'Lord of the Rings,' it's kind of a cool thing."
She noted that no one has dropped out of the Authurian legends class -- unlike her other English courses, which usually shed a few students after the semester's first week.
The movies have also changed how teachers approach their lectures. Many incorporate the modern tales in their classrooms, to make their points with students.
"It's not about the popular culture, it's about using the popular culture," said University at Albany professor Helene Scheck, who is a film fan planning a summer course on Hollywood depictions of the Middle Ages.
"The Joan of Arc movies that were out a few years ago -- they had great catapults," she noted.
She also applauded films like "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", with Morgan Freeman as a Muslim, and "Black Knight," with Martin Lawrence, for offering diversity.
"It's not all about a white, European world anymore," she said. The Vikings, she noted, had outposts and ambassadors as far south as the Middle East. "They were more cosmopolitan than we like to think they were."
Occasionally the students do get carried away.
During classroom conversations on chivalry, Bastress-Dukehart asks her students who they would be willing to die for in battle.
"To a person, half of them would have followed Gandalf, and the other half would have followed Dumbledore," she said, referring to the bearded wizards who serve as wise senior statesmen in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the Harry Potter books, respectively.
Not all student interest in the Middle Ages is generated by Hollywood. Vincent L. Bocchetti, 22, and one of Scheck's students, became enamored of a modern translation of the classic romance between Tristan and Iseult.
He never succumbed to Potter-mania, and turned off the first "Lord of the Rings" movie after a few scenes, he said.
In academic conversations online, dissenters and purists say that movies get the history wrong, and fret that Hollywood is corrupting the purity of the university subjects.
"The fear is that the movies will replace the history," Scheck said.
That is not a view she shares.
"As programs struggle to survive, and medieval studies (departments) are becoming smaller and smaller, I think we should be thanking filmmakers who are generating interest for us."
