”Neo-Medievalism Studies”, Italy, and the Four Ghosts: architectural history and the study of medievalism

Abstract

This historiographical piece has two main objectives. On the one hand, it sets out to offer the first sustained discussion of the study of – and the tendency to ignore, underestimate, and criticise – Italian neo-medieval architecture. On the other, by focusing on the Italian case, it reflects on the interplay of architectural history and medievalism studies, making the special claim that, if medievalism and medievalism studies can be defined as the responses to the Middle Ages and the study of those responses, respectively, then ‘neo-medievalism’ and ‘neo-medievalism studies’ shall describe the architectural and artistic manifestations of medievalism and their study. Using the analogy of the ‘Ghost of the Present’, the ‘Ghost of the Future’, and the two ‘Ghosts of the Past’, the article opens by discussing the reasons for the neglect and marginalisation of, and bias towards, Italian neo-medieval architecture. After reconstructing a critical history of the key episodes in scholarship that has touched upon Italian neo-medieval architecture, it proposes an analysis of the notion of – and an apologia for the study of – neo-medievalism beyond the boundaries of space, style, and time.