Valhallolz: Medievalist humor on the Internet

Abstract

The Internet provides social conditions that allow medievalist ideas to continue to evolve in the twenty-first century. It is fertile ground for medievalist humor, and a significant proportion of that humor comes in the form of memes. Memes were first described in 1976 by Richard Dawkins as 'units of cultural transmission.' They are analogous to genes, replicating and mutating in response to the culture that hosts them, and passed on socially, rather than biologically. The Internet provides a ready social network and an accessible set of technological tools for memes to flourish. This essay explores the ways in which Internet memes foreground the social relations that structure medievalist humor.postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2014) 5, 199-214.On 14 October 1066, King Harold II of England was famously killed at the Battle of Hastings by an arrow to his eye (Figure 1). The veracity of this story, passed down through popular history, has more recently been called into question. Chris Dennis acknowledges its iconic status while at the same time arguing that the historical evidence does not support it (Dennis, 2009, 14), while Siobhan Brownlie argues that its power as a cultural memory lies not in its ability to represent the truth, but in its ability to speak to the ongoing issue of EnglishFrench relations (Brownlie, 2012, 360-377). Images and ideas may indeed mean something different within different contexts and when different uses are made of

Memory and far-right historiography: The case of the Christchurch shooter

“…Like the icon of Christ Pantocrator holding the Gospels, Tarrant holds his rifles with the inscriptions visible as well as a copy of The Great Replacement while gesturing his blessings. Wilkins has shown how history memes play on the incongruity between past and present for symbolic purposes (Wilkins, 2014). The saintly depiction of Tarrant in the same way draws symbolic meaning from a high culture of historical Orthodoxy to venerate his contemporary actions.…”

Stylistic humor across modalities

“…The earlier studies have focused on individual successful memes, meme series and on particular sites that have originated them. For example, Kate Miltner (2014) has examined the hugely popular cat memes called LOLcats and Kim Wilkins (2014) has looked at memes that draw on medievalist themes. Chan (2012) in turn has focused on the creation and meaning of internet memes on the imageboard website 4chan.…”

“…Kim Wilkins (2014) has approached humor on the internet with her study on memes that draw on medieval themes and templates, such as The Bayeux Tapestry and Norse mythology. Also Wilkins states that incongruity is a significant constituent in the humor of memes.…”

“…Wordplay is a common lure in the memetic toolbox. Wilkins (2014), who has studied online memes with medieval themes, noted that mock archaic language is an important ingredient in making certain kind of memes. Archaic words are used to simulate a sort of medieval English without any serious attention to authenticity.…”