Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T00:05:10.366Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Whiteness and Time: The Once, Present, and Future Race

from I - Medievalism on the Margins: Some Perspective(s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2015

Helen Young
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Karl Fugelso
Affiliation:
Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland
Get access

Summary

Nestled among the concrete, glass, and steel skyscrapers in the central business district of Perth, Western Australia, the mock Tudor frontage of “Ye London Court” is, at first sight, a curious landmark. Completed in 1937, the cobbled pedestrian mall compresses history, time, and place. A plaque at the entrance commemorates 1997 as both the 60th anniversary of the space and the 600th anniversary of the election of Dick Whittington as Lord Mayor of London. “Ye London Court” is just one of the many examples littered throughout the Australian landscape of medievalism being employed to foster connections between the antipodes and the old imperial center. Along the walls portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I overlook gothic-lettered shop-signs advertising everything from nail salons to lawyers’ offices, and the “Purely Australian Clothing Co.” The medieval(-ish) font overrides all other symbols, except the trade-marked brand name of the national postal service. The space as a whole, and its individual elements, are wide open to interpretation by scholars of medievalism. In its present form as a tourist curiosity, “Ye London Court” sees romantic nostalgic medievalism and neomedievalisms bleed into each other. One of the most incongruous of the advertising signs reads “Aboriginal Art Australian Gifts” (Fig. 1). It is relatively easily parsed: the gothic lettering takes possession of indigenous culture, even as the shop it advertises fragments it into commercial products, to be sold, bought, and owned by passing tourists. Australia, a Western nation in another hemisphere from England's, provides a small piece of Europe with a tiny piece of local culture embedded within it. Neomedievalism serves commercial neocolonialism. This reading is typical, in some if not all ways, of the scholarship of medievalism in that it considers the cultural context of a manifestation of medievalism. But in doing so, it disengages the word “Aboriginal” from its history as a specifically racial – and not just cultural – category.

Type
Chapter
Information
Studies in Medievalism XXIV
Medievalism on the Margins
, pp. 39 - 50
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×