Mediaevalia

In “Dreaming the Middle Ages,” Umberto Eco examines the shelves in an American bookstore. He lists several titles he believes constitute a “neomedieval wave” in popular culture.¹ He then characterizes “Ten Little Middle Ages” that demonstrate various ahistoric, “medieval” portrayals found in popular culture. The book titles he lists, such as The Sword is Forged, The Lure of the Basilisk, and Dragonquest, clearly belong in the bookstore’s Science Fiction and Fantasy section.² If Eco had searched the Mystery section of the store, he would have found a similar “neomedieval wave.” One of the most prolific authors in this subgenre is Paul C. Doherty, who read history at Oxford where he wrote his D.Phil. thesis, “Isabella, Queen of England, 1296–1330,” in 1978. In a career spanning thirty years, Doherty has published more than one hundred historical mystery novels, most of them set in the Middle Ages.³ Doherty’s Canterbury series (1994–2012), based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,⁴ relates most closely to the neomedieval category that Eco labels traditional, “or of occult philosophy”: a world “swarming with Knights Templars [sic], Rosicrucians, [and] alchemists.”⁵ The seven novels in Doherty’s series fit Eco’s category of occult philosophy by connecting each mystery to the actions of a supernatural cabal or secret society.

Despite the use of supernatural events and conspiracy theories in his plots, Doherty attempts to “portray accurate ‘pictures, or windows of medieval life’” in his books.⁶ He believes that “a good historical mystery offers an experience of a different world to the one in which the reader lives, one which, in many ways, is alien to them. It introduces people to a new world.”⁷ In the introductions included in the recent Kindle releases of his back catalogue, Doherty expands [End Page 291] on his philosophy that the medieval should be alien.⁸ In this “Letter to the Reader” section, Doherty writes:

I want to intrigue you with a murderous mystery and a tangled plot, but I also want you to experience what it was like to slip along the shadow-thronged alleyways of medieval London; to enter a soaringly majestic cathedral but then walk out and glimpse the gruesome execution scaffolds rising high on the other side of the square. In my novels, you will sit in the oaken stalls of a gothic abbey and hear the glorious psalms of plain chant even as you glimpse white, sinister gargoyle faces peering out at you from deep cowls and hoods.⁹

Doherty attempts to establish a personal relationship by addressing his readers as “you,” so that they become tourists in this alien world he has created with him as their tour guide. And, like all good tour guides, he will not just show them the “majestic cathedrals” marked on the tourist maps; he will show them a slice of an “authentic,” unsanitized culture as well.

Even as Doherty professes his commitment to historical authenticity, he also champions speculation about well-known historical events. In an article he wrote for Overseas, he wonders why historical study closes down interpretive possibilities instead of welcoming speculation. He continues by offering alternate readings of the deaths of William Rufus and the Princes in the Tower as well as other famous historical mysteries, which demonstrates his willingness to challenge convention.¹⁰ By attempting an accurate depiction of social conditions within such speculative plotlines, Doherty titillates readers through a portrayal of medieval squalor, public punishment, and mysterious rites and conspiracies. Doherty concludes his “Letter” with a direct reference to the supernatural aspects of his Canterbury novels, while he also evokes a Chaucerian atmosphere: “Take your seat in some tavern along the ancient moon-washed road to Canterbury and listen to some ghostly tale which chills the heart.”¹¹ By placing Chaucer’s characters within the eerie atmosphere of these novels, Doherty mimics the Tales’ structure. His use of Chaucer’s text qualifies as an appropriation rather than an adaptation; in Kathleen Forni’s classification, appropriations, unlike adaptations, offer playful interpretations of the source in that they are not “concerned...