SOURCE: Donatelli, Joseph M. P. “The Medieval Fictions of Thomas Warton and Thomas Percy.” University of Toronto Quarterly 60, No. 4 (summer 1991): 435-51.

In the following essay, Donatelli argues that Warton and Percy were leaders in a movement that inspired a popular fascination with the Middle Ages.

The enthusiasm for the culture of the Middle Ages during the latter half of the eighteenth century finds various forms of expression. Yet the visitors who flocked to Walpole's Strawberry Hill instead of Glastonbury Abbey, the readers who purchased Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry instead of Joseph Ritson's scholarly editions, and the antiquarians who preferred Matthew Prior's prettified and sentimental version of ‘The Nut-Brown Maid’ to the original remind us that the pseudo-medieval was often more attractive than the genuine article. For the past was invested with a significance that might prove offensive to contemporary beliefs, tastes, and values: a medieval...