Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media contextualizes historical films
in an innovative way - not only relating them to the history of cinema,
but also to premodern and early modern media. This philological approach
to the (pre)history of cinema engages both old media such as scrolls,
illuminated manuscripts, the Bayeux Tapestry, and new digital media such
as DVDs, HD DVDs, and computers. Burt examines the uncanny repetitions
that now fragment films into successively released alternate cuts and
extras (footnote tracks, audiocommentaries, and documentaries) that
(re)structure and reframe historical films, thereby presenting new
challenges to historicist criticism and film theory. With a double focus
on recursive narrative frames and the cinematic paratexts of medieval
and early modern film, this book calls our attention to strange,
sometimes opaque phenomena in film and literary theory that have
previously gone unrecognized.