아서 왕의 전설을 통해 본 영국의 과거와 현재 간의 연속성: <몬티파이썬과 성배>에 나타난 대안적 역사관
The Historical Continuity between the Past and the Present of England: The Alternative Model of History in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a loose parody film of Arthurian legend set in AD 934, an unidentified medieval knight slays a contemporary historian and King Arthur and his knights are arrested as murder suspects by contemporary cops. While the film has been analyzed by numerous fans, critics, and scholars, the riddle of this unique and transcendent time frame has yet to be solved. The paper examines the film's one-dimensional temporality as an alternative model of history in terms of Michel de Certeau's critique of traditional historiography. According to de Certeau, western history has been obsessed with ‘death,’ a metaphor for the historian's severance of the contemporary era from the previous age based on difference. This conscious effort to differentiate the present from the past has often resulted in the suppression of continuity and similarities between the two. Monty Python and the Holy Grail presents a stimulating counter-example of this historiographic tendency with an illogical and flat narrative structure where the Middle Ages and modernity coalesce. Rather than a critique of past society and culture, the film is a satire of the continuity between the Middle Ages and contemporary England, exemplified by the subsistence of monarchy and Christianity in the country. With the parallel structure, the film does not only provoke the audience's awareness of modernity's debt to the Middle Ages but also challenges the linear and progressive understanding of human history.
Abstract
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a loose parody film of Arthurian legend set in AD 934, an unidentified medieval knight slays a contemporary historian and King Arthur and his knights are arrested as murder suspects by contemporary cops. While the film has been analyzed by numerous fans, critics, and scholars, the riddle of this unique and transcendent time frame has yet to be solved. The paper examines the film's one-dimensional temporality as an alternative model of history in terms of Michel de Certeau's critique of traditional historiography. According to de Certeau, western history has been obsessed with ‘death,’ a metaphor for the historian's severance of the contemporary era from the previous age based on difference. This conscious effort to differentiate the present from the past has often resulted in the suppression of continuity and similarities between the two. Monty Python and the Holy Grail presents a stimulating counter-example of this historiographic tendency with an illogical and flat narrative structure where the Middle Ages and modernity coalesce. Rather than a critique of past society and culture, the film is a satire of the continuity between the Middle Ages and contemporary England, exemplified by the subsistence of monarchy and Christianity in the country. With the parallel structure, the film does not only provoke the audience's awareness of modernity's debt to the Middle Ages but also challenges the linear and progressive understanding of human history.
참고문헌 (22)
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