The Glory of the Son: Romantic, Grotesque, and Comic Medievalism in the Musical Pippin
Dana M. Polanichka
This article studies Pippin as a modern American performative reincarnation of the Carolingian period, specifically Charlemagne legend, intended to address political-military events in 1970s and 2010s America. It argues that Pippin’s creators employed romantic grotesque visions Middle Ages, well comic medievalism, critique society its military-industrial complex. Moreover, musical’s re-envisioning legend inverts central messages legend’s earlier, post-Carolingian incarnations criticize nationalist, imperialist, militarist ideologies. Thus, becomes an medievalism is ‘resource for resistance’.
The Mediaeval Journal