Body and senses in the production of cultural meaning: from Middle Ages to TV series, films and video games

Abstract

In medieval times, the literary nature of the works, including written ones, were determined by contextual elements such as the acoustic and momentary channel of communication along with the domain of gestur-al, instrumental and vocal codes. These elements conditioned writers and performers when they improved and perfected their capacities and perfor-mance, on which the message as a whole depended. Today the media and entertainment industry also use complex and rich connections between verbal and visual signs to produce highly symbolic messages through im-aginary re-enactments of the past. The wide range of discursive productions of the Middle Ages can be ana-lysed through the study of the elements and factors that become carriers of meanings and the way in which they do so. We consider that a comparable perspective is also suitable for contemporary semiotic practices that, when interpreting documentary sources of various types and incorporating them into suitable fictional formats for the general public, constitute playful re-configurations of the historical, literary and fantastic Middle Ages. Accordingly, this paper attempts to examine certain components of mass culture which have transformed narratives, characters and fictional worlds, distinctive of the Middle Ages, into communicative and semiotic practices reinterpreting historical and literary texts as a way of reflecting on people, social life and its problems in the present world. It starts from con-sidering that semantic plurality and diachronic bases of the idea of body and senses enable an interdisciplinary and comparative study, in order to understand their historicity, their ideological effect and the innumerable aesthetic possibilities which they promote in different areas of culture. The reflections take into account the bodily and sensory aspects of the Middle Ages selected by series, films and video games with an impact, as signifi-cant elements, on current cultural orientations and attitudes.