A case for a “medievalist historiophoty”? The Last Kingdom (BBC Two / Netflix)

Résumé

In the words of Pierre Sorlin, “We could say that the past is narrated in the present tense, or that it is rebuilt on contemporary references” (The Film in History, 71). The 21st century has seen a surge in narratives taking place during the Viking invasion of England in the 9th century; one of the most famous on-screen depictions is the adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories, entitled The Last Kingdom (2015 – 2023, BBC Two / Netflix). But what are the strategies used to depict this period on screen?To answer this question, this article will draw on the definition of historiophoty. According to Hayden White, who coined the term in his 1988 essay “Historiography and Historiophoty”, historiophoty is “the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse”. Working on a more precise definition, by attempting to know what parts of history are more likely to be rendered, will allow us to proceed to some cinematic analysis of how they are depicted. Examining historiophoty through the lens of cinematic medievalism, including medieval political theories such as the concept of body politic, will reveal how these concepts intertwine to create a “medievalist historiophoty”.

Références

Alfred the Great. Directed by Clive Donner, performances by David Hemmings, Michael York, Prunella Ransome and Colin Blakely, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1969.

Amy de la Brétèque, François. L’Imaginaire médiéval dans le cinéma occidental. Paris, Honoré Champion, 2004.

Atwood, Roger. “The Vikings in Ireland”. Archaeology, v. 68, n. 2, 2015, pp. 46-49.

Bernau, Anke & Bettina Bildhauer, editors. Medieval Films. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2009.

Bildhauer, Bettina. Filming the Middle Ages. London, Reaktion Books, 2011.

Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Wisconsin, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Briens, Sylvain, “Boréalisme. Le Nord comme espace discursif”. Études Germaniques, v. 71, n. 2, 2016, pp. 179-188.

Burgoyne, Robert. The Hollywood Historical Film. Hoboken, NJ, Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

Cornwell, Bernard. The Last Kingdom. London, HarperCollins, 2004.

Elliott, Andrew B. R. Remaking the Middle Ages. London, McFarland, 2011.

Ferro, Marc. Cinéma et Histoire. Paris, Gallimard, 1993.

Foot, Sarah. Æthelstan – The First King of England. Yale, NH, Yale University Press, 2011.

Gautier, Alban. “Représenter le fait religieux dans les séries Vikings et The Last Kingdom”. Le Temps des Médias, v. 37, 2021, pp. 71-89.

Hollander, Anne. “Film and Theater: Costume and Convention”. The American Scholar v. 42, n. 4, 1973, pp. 671-675.

Jarvie, Ian C. “Seeing Through Movies”. Phil. Soc., v. 8, 1978, pp. 374-397.

Keynes, Simon & Michael Lapidge, translators. Alfred the Great. Asser’s Life of King Alfred and other contemporary sources. Harmondsworth | New York, Penguin Books, 1983.

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in an Age of Mass Culture. Columbia, NY, Columbia University Press, 2004.

Pastoureau, Michel. Red: The History of a Color. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2017.

Rigby, Stephen H. “The Body Politic in the Social and Political Thought of Christine de Pizan (Abridged Version). Part I: Reciprocity, Hierarchy and Political Authority”. Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, v. 24, 2012, pp. 461-483.

Rosenstone, Robert. “History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film”. The American Historical Review, v. 93, n. 5, 1988, pp. 1173-1185.

Rosenstone, Robert. Visions of the Past – The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1995.

Rosenstone, Robert. History on Film/Film on History. London, Routledge, 2013.

Thanouli, Eleftheria. History and Film – A Tale of Two Disciplines. Bloomsbury, 2019.

The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die. Directed by Edward Bazalgette, performances by Alexander Dreymon, Harry Gilby, Mark Rowley and Laurie Davidson, Carnival Films, 2023.

Thomson, Graeme. “‘Early Christianity was as bad as Iris’: The author of The Last Kingdom and Sharpe, Bernard Cornwell, explains how his novels are payback for his childhood with the ‘Peculiar People’ religious sect.” Daily Mail Online, 24 Nov. 2018. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-6415155/Bernard-Cornwell-religion-success-making-America-home.html, accessed 12 Nov. 2025.

Singer, Julie. Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval France. Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2018.

Sorlin, Pierre. The Film in History – Restaging the Past. Oxford, Blackwell, 1980.

White, Hayden. “Historiography and Historiophoty”. The American Historical Review v. 93, n. 5, 1988, pp. 1193-1199.

Whitelock, Dorothy, editor. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation. London, Eyre et Spottiswoode, 1961.

“Why films have become so ridiculously long.” The Economist, 14 Oct. 2023, https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/10/14/why-films-have-become-so-ridiculously-long, accessed 12 Nov. 2025.

Zemon Davis, Natalie. “‘Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead’: film and the challenge of authenticity”. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, v. 8, n. 3, 1988, pp. 269-283.

Zurlo, Gina A. “Religions in Europe: A Statistical Summary”, in Grace Davie and Lucian N. Leustean, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe. Oxford, Oxford University, 2021.