According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “mediaevalism” is “The system of belief and practice characteristic of the Middle Ages […] the adoption of or devotion to mediaeval ideals or usages; occas. An instance of this.” This wording is found in the first edition of 1933, though it must have been composed considerably earlier, with supporting quotations running from 1853 to 1890. The editors of the second edition of 1989, however, saw no reason to adapt or expand the old definition, which thus remains standard and in a sense authoritative. The OED sense of the word, moreover, remains perfectly familiar: when a very recent book on C. S. Lewis refers to Lewis's “medievalism” (modern spelling), his “devotion to medieval ideals and usages” is exactly what is meant. However, in recent years, and very largely as a result of the initiatives of Leslie Workman, a second sense has become current, which I would define – trying as far as I can to imitate the OED's magisterial style – as “Any post-medieval attempt to re-imagine the Middle Ages, or some aspect of the Middle Ages, for the modern world, in any of many different media; especially in academic usage, the study of the development and significance of such attempts.” This is what is meant by the title of this journal, Studies in Medievalism.

The trouble with such a definition is that, in its effort to be comprehensive, it lacks clarity; and, as the history of submissions to this journal still too often shows, it lacks general acceptance and recognition even within the academic world.