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For many, the middle ages depicted in Walt Disney movies have come to figure as the middle ages, forming the earliest visions of the medieval past for much of the contemporary Western (and increasingly Eastern) imagination. The essayists of The Disney Middle Ages explore Disney´s mediation and re-creation of a fairy-tale and fantasy past, not to lament its exploitation of the middle ages for corporate ends, but to examine how and why these medieval visions prove so readily adaptable to themed entertainments many centuries after their creation. What results is a scrupulous and comprehensive examination of the intersection between the products of the Disney Corporation and popular culture´s fascination with the middle ages.

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Introduction: Disney´s Retroprogressive Medievalisms: Where Yesterday Is Tomorrow Today; T.Pugh PART I: BUILDING A BETTER MIDDLE AGES: MEDIEVALISM IN THE PARKS Mapping the Happiest Place on Earth: Disney´s Medieval Cartography; S.Yandell Disney´s Castles and the Work of the Medieval in the Magic Kingdom; M.Bayless Pilgrimage and Medieval Narrative Structures in Disney´s Parks; S.Aronstein PART II: THE DISTORICAL MIDDLE AGES ´You don´t learn it deliberately, but you just know it from what you´ve seen´: British Understandings of the Medieval Past Gleaned from Disney´s Fairy Tales; P.Sturtevant The Sorcerer´s Apprentice: Animation and Alchemy in Disney´s Medievalism; E.F.Labbie The Sword in the Stone: American Translation and Disney´s Anti-medievalisms; R.Gossedge Walt in Sherwood, or the Sheriff of Disneyland: Disney and the Film Legend of Robin Hood; K.J.Harty Futuristic Medievalisms and the U.S. Space Program in Disney´s Man in Space Trilogy and Unidentified Flying Oddball; A.Foster PART III: DISNEY PRINCESS FANTASY FAIRE ´Where happily ever after happens every day´: The Medievalisms of Disney´s Princesses; C.Bradford Disney´s Medievalized Ecologies in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty; K.C.Kelly The United Princesses of America: Ethnic Diversity and Cultural Purity in Disney´s Medieval Past; I.Mitchell-Smith Esmerelda of Notre Dame: The Gypsy Girl in Medieval View from Hugo to Disney; A.Craven Reality Remixed: Neomedieval Princess Culture in Disney´s Enchanted; M.S.Cecire

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"This collection of fourteen essays provides a balanced and often quite witty assessment of Disney´s films, TV shows, marketing strategies, theme parks, personal philosophies, pedagogy, social and political practices of Walt Disney and his Corporate Legacy . . . The collection speaks well to a scholarly audience, while, at the same time, addressing intelligently a broader audience that includes virtually anyone who has ever seen a Disney movie or TV program or been to a theme park - that is, about everyone who has grown up in America or elsewhere. The bibliography is excellent." - Medievally Speaking

"The book offers an extensive as well as absorbing survey of Disney´s efforts to exploit and keep up with the American tendency to forget the past." - The Medieval Review

"The volume is grounded in theory and the scholarship is of a high standard while also being accessible, and individual chapters may be useful at undergraduate level. It will be of interest not only to scholars of medievalism, but to those working in gender studies and popular culture studies more broadly as well." - Parergon

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