I would like to propose a genuine distinction between medievalism and neomedievalism, a distinction that can be used going forward but also one that, I believe, is already in place in the way in which individuals construct their approach to the medieval – whether consciously or unconsciously. The difference between the two terms as they are used in the English-speaking world is that medievalism implies a genuine link – sometimes direct, sometimes somewhat indirect – to the Middle Ages, whereas neomedievalism invokes a simulacrum of the medieval. I do not impute any higher value to the one than the other, but simply want to find a way to distinguish between the two terms as they are currently being used in North America. The general distinction that the one involves modern digital technology and new media as opposed to the other using the rather stodgy old-style approaches of books and pictures does not seem to me to adequately describe the way in which “medievalism” and “neomedievalism” function in use. Thus, neomedievalism is not well explained by its media, and it is quite possible to identify a neomedievalist book. Similarly, it is equally possible to find a movie that is an example of medievalism, and not simply neomedievalist. For example, one recent screentreatment of the story of Beowulf and Grendel is a clear example of medievalism, in that the director, Sturla Gunnarsson, researched deeply into Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic legend, worked out an interpretation of the Old English poem depending on the theme of fathers and sons, and reworked the material to present a movie profoundly tied to a medieval place and time. Beowulf and Grendel turns the action from the marvelous to the thoroughly explicable; it postulates that monstrous behavior is passed from generation to generation as humans and the giants who are Grendel and his kin mutually hate and destroy each other. In order to make this argument, the film introduces one rather startling character, a witch who has prophetic powers, but otherwise the film works very hard to recreate the Anglo-Saxon story as a medieval storyteller might provide it in the modern age.