A couple more for medievalism!

Well, all those times I called myself a medievalist, I didn't know what a funny thing I was doing. A medieval scholar is someone who studies medieval history, literature, art, or so on. A medievalist is one who adapts medieval themes into present culture, such as an architect or a social activist or a Sir Walter Scott. These articles abundantly pointed out the difference, and then broke it down, showing why the distinction is not one of privilege, and in many ways isn't a distinction at all. Thus, in a single sitting I've been both castigated and vindicated for my writing! Woo!

John Simons, "Medievalism as Cultural Process in Pre-Industrial Popular Literature"

Medievalism is only recognized by Victorian England because it is at that point that the refined high-culture readers and authors finally give it any attention. However, that is not to say that it wasn't there before. Continuously from the sixteenth century there have been genres of what has been typically considered "low" literature that have dabbled with the medieval to comment upon contemporary beliefs, contest social injustices, and entertain the public. Simons thus studies first the continuing manuscript romance tradition (in urban, nonaristocratic readership) and then, more briefly, the brief chapbook romances in the eighteenth century, read by agricultural laborers (farmers) and gentry children (well-off kids). By this, less well-off readers gain access to aesthetic pleasures where they couldn't have access to, say, belles lettres.

Clare A. Simmons. "Medievalism and the Quest for the "Real" Middle Ages: Introduction."

This is the essay that contested the division between medievalism and medieval studies. For a while the two were relatively unified, including in Furnivall's work with the Early English Text Society and earlier with various authors and philological groups. It was in the late 19th century, as English became a department in the University, that medieval studies sought to distance itself from the medievalists who used medieval themes for social, political, or aesthetic ends rather than historical authenticity or (what amounts to the same thing) literary purity. Lots of good medievalist background, like Chartism, quixotic fears, Burke, and so on. Finally, the division is negated, since scholars always approach their work with something they bring in... the enthusiast medievalist cannot be stopped.

Dellheim, "The Face of the Past: Preface, Ch. 1 (The Paradoxes of Progress)"

The medieval images and simulacra that adorn train stations and hotels, the most modern of the 19th century being simultaneously the most medieval in appearance. The English Parliament being rebuilt in a medieval mode that was "unpopular" as soon as it was built, and a London that looked more medieval in 1900 than it ever had since the Middle Ages. The look back is also a look forward, a necessary part of the discourses of progress as well as the longing backwards. Medievalism was all-consuming, used by progressives and conservatives to urge balanced progress and continuity.

Loretta M. Holloway and Jennifer Palmgren, "Introduction."

By now, so much of it has been said before. Permeation as a theme for medieval themes in 19th century England. Interesting because they show how even anti-medievalist backlashes couldn't avoid using medieval themes.