Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, Ph.D.

While we tend to think of the Middle Ages as a murky period so detached from the present that it has become a set of stereotypes, it still shapes our world to a surprising degree. Whether idealized as the “gold age” of heroic knights or depicted as “dark ages” of humanity, the very concept of the Middle Ages is also one of the most popular – and one of the most misrepresented and clichéd – settings of fantasy literature. In this talk I propose to look at some “medieval myths,” or the popular misconceptions about the Middle Ages, that often fuel nationalist, extremist, and ultra-conservative imaginations. Referring to 19th and 20th century medievalism in North America to provide context, I will focus predominantly on discussing the ways in which fantasy literature, predominantly by J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin and Guy Gavriel Kay, perpetuates or challenges these myths.

Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the University of Białystok. She is co-editor of two collections of essays – Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction: Narrating the Future (2021) and Fantasy and Realism (2019) – and an author of numerous articles related to various aspects of the fantastic. In April – July 2022 she was a Visiting Fellow at The Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University. Her research focuses on the intersections of cultural memory, medievalism and fantasy literature. She is particularly interested in tracing the echoes of medieval cultural and ideological constructs in contemporary discourses related to gender, sexuality and race. Currently, she is working on the project devoted to memory and medievalism in Guy Gavriel Kay’s fiction.

>Wydarzenie można zaliczyć w ramach programu OSA:

• Opiekun: dr Justyna Budzik
• Liczba godzin OSA: 2 godziny
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