Lynn M. Martin Professorial Scholar
Associate Professor of History, Theatre, and Medieval Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Modern War, Medieval Imagery: The Visual Impact of Medievalism during World War I”

Although the First World War is usually understood as a quintessentially modern conflict, the politics and ideologies that led to the war’s outbreak were profoundly shaped by the meanings attached to Europe’s medieval past. Indeed, the war itself was figured as a continuation of medieval wars for sovereignty and self-determination. The visual culture that shaped the propaganda campaigns of the war, and that influenced popular understandings of it, were accordingly saturated with medieval imagery.