medieval themes
Knights and dragons
Medieval themes are subjects, motifs, and settings drawn from or evoking the European Middle Ages—roughly the 5th through 15th centuries.
In literature, games, and film, these include knights, castles, feudal hierarchies, quests, chivalry, and religious conflict.
The phrase often signals a romanticized vision of the period: The game features medieval themes like sword combat and court intrigue.
Renaissance fairs and fantasy genres lean heavily on medieval themes, sometimes blending historical elements with magic and mythology.
- cathedralsPrincipal churches of dioceses
- knightsTitled warriors on horseback
- knight errantRoaming medieval warrior-adventurer
- damsel in distressWoman needing rescue
- epic poetryExtended narrative in verse
dragons · feudalism · alchemy · dark ages · serfdom · castle walls · ballads · troubadours · pilgrimage · vassalage · gargoyles · crusades · Arthurian legends · holy grail · allegory · scholasticism · siege weapons · guilds
- German RomanticismHoffmann, blue flower, Brothers Grimm, creative imagination, lieder
- Pre-RaphaelitesRossetti, brotherhood, Ophelia, Waterhouse, William Morris
- Gothicgargoyle, gothic fiction, pointed arch, gothic architecture, flying buttress
- RomanticismWilliam Blake, the sublime, J.M.W. Turner, Eugene Delacroix, emotionalism
- Euro Metalpower metal, folk metal, Serenity, Heavenly, Tyr
- Scott StudiesWalter Scott, Sir Walter Scott, Waverley, Ivanhoe, Rob Roy