January 29, 2004

Palace of Westminster (Medievalist) vs. Abbey and Westminster Hall (Medieval)

            What is medievalism and what is medieval?  According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, medievalism is the “enthusiasm for or imitation of the arts and customs of Europe during the Middle Ages” (321).  Essentially, the medieval ages inspired the medievalism of today.

            Let’s back track to the time of the Abbey.  The Abbey first came into association with royalty at the “recorded burial of Harold Harefoot in the abbey precincts in 1040” (174).  Today, the Westminster Abbey is the burial site of many famous scientists, poets, and royalty such as Galileo and Columbus.      

            The Abbey “is the most French of all English Gothic churches” (175) simply because of Henry the King’s influence.  His upbringing in France influenced the way the architecture was built during his rule to include polygonal apse, ambulatory (walk way), and radiating chapels.

            “Then the Abbey lay in the fields, with streets and houses only on the smallest scale,” (177) Pevsner imagines.  Accordingly, literary medievalists enjoy placing their stories in the medieval pretext, so this image should be quite popular among medievalist literature.

            The most distinguish feature of the Abbey is “its height in relation to width” (180).  Because it is primarily of French influence, no wonder it is the most closely related than any other English church to the churches of France.

            What’s curiously similar is that these two churches share a similar sky line: the Abbey has “temporary-looking low pyramid-roof on the crossing tower and the W towers lack strength to counterbalances the body of the building” (177) while the Palace and the “informality with which the area was treated is indeed astonishing” (183).  However since its original setting much reconstruction has occurred to alter this similarity discovered.

            Since the Palace followed more closely with Pugin’s belief in picturesque asymmetry, the Palace was built “with large vertical ducts in various places” and “central fleche and the pretty turrets” (183) among flat roofs and battlements as originally thought of by Barry.

            I feel like the content of this assignment’s reading material is overwhelming:  all the architectural terminology can be overbearing.  It’s hard to stay focused on the readings when I can hardly understand what the article is talking about.  I strongly believe that the readings should be more complete and less convoluted in nature:  the language should be introductory similar to that a tour guide would use with the tourists.