So today I started work on my PhD. I will be looking at the use and perception of space contained within the Gott Collection housed at the Hepworth gallery Wakefield with several layers - Victorian medievalism, current medievalism, the use of space in the Middle Ages, Victorian period and in the modern day.
I'm jumping into something new and leaving behind medieval gender history which isn't something I thought I would say. At the moment I think I'm still within the more undergraduate stage of thinking I understand some of the key concepts - that there is medievalism in the nineteenth century as a response to the scary industrialism (and the varied problems it brings) as well as a continuation of the perpetual fascination with the medieval period more recently evolved as Romanticism. Medievalism affected architecture, art, interior design and literature to produce a response to both of the contemporary and previous schools of thought/practice and to the changing world of the period, giving it a 'Janus-faced gaze' as Sophie Gilmartin termed it.
This is what I expected to find therefore I am suspicious of it! I am also very aware of the lack of materials at Huddersfield for (Victorian) medievalism as it is not something we teach.
