ABSTRACT
The medieval in fantasy may have a dormant, even a deathly aspect, framed between the death of the Classical Age and the rebirth of the Renaissance, which the term “dark age” captures nicely. Almost anything can pass as medieval in the modern imagination. The term medieval carries a bewildering diversity of meaning and valence. The medieval of medievalism, however it is conceived, is generally presented as monolithic. The medieval fantasy is profoundly conflicted and the pain of that conflict is evident in the urgency of attempts to resolve it one way or the other. Medievalism and Orientalism have proved a potent blend for an exotic fantasy of the Middle Age. In the 1980s the countertenor became entangled in a musicological argument over authentic performance practice for medieval music which still lingers in a modified form. The ambiguity of the countertenor voice evoked fantasies of the mysterious East.
