Hollywood Knights examines Hollywood Arthuriana as political nostalgia offered to American viewers during times of cultural crisis: the red scare of the 1950s, the breakdown of traditional authority in the 1960s and 1970s, the turn to the right in the 1980s and the redemption of masculine and national authority in the 1990s. Its analysis of these films explores their proposal of an ideal past - an Americanized Camelot and a democratized chivalry - as the solution to the problems of a troubled present, a solution that will ensure prosperity in the homeland and a globally beneficial American...

"Whether discussing how the figure of Arthur was appropriated by Welsh lords to justify acts of rebellions or by English kings to support a centralized monarchy, Aronstein subtly and intelligently recognizes complex interrelationships between history and art."--Martin Shichtman, Eastern Michigan University "A must-have for all those interested in King Arthur--from the amateur enthusiast to the established scholar."--Dorsey Armstrong, Purdue University The legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table permeate our culture: we find them in novels, movie parodies, and even the...

For many, the middle ages depicted in Walt Disney movies have come to figure as the middle ages, forming the earliest visions of the medieval past for much of the contemporary Western (and increasingly Eastern) imagination. The essayists of The Disney Middle Ages explore Disney's mediation and re-creation of a fairy-tale and fantasy past, not to lament its exploitation of the middle ages for corporate ends, but to examine how and why these medieval visions prove so readily adaptable to themed entertainments many centuries after their creation. What results is a scrupulous and comprehensive...