“In the Shadow of Greater Events in the World:” The Northern Epic in the Wake of World War II

Abstract

ABSTRACT: World War II was marked by widespread use of heroic narratives, national legacies, and grand ideas about destiny or the “arc of history.” These topics have a firm foundation in medieval literature, particularly in northern traditions. While literary medievalism had been in the limelight during the nineteenth century, during the early twentieth century it had been dismissed as a quaint curiosity; suitable for the benighted souls of the reading public, perhaps, but not to be taken seriously by avant-garde intellectuals. In the mid-twentieth century, however, literary medievalism returned with a vengeance. Questioning the critical narrative of twentieth-century literary history, this article examines iconoclastic works by Halldór Laxness (Iceland), T. H. White (England), John Gardner (America), and the Strugatsky brothers (Arkady and Boris, Russia), in order to compare perspectives on medievalism from different countries in the aftermath of the bloodiest conflict of all time.