Are they all just focused on sex, debauchery, lots of drinking today? I went to the one near Pasadena around a decade ago, maybe related to the OG faire, and there was so much sexual humor in the open air (like jokes shouted by storekeepers, and in the play being run) where I'd consider it an adult environment. It was a little disappointing because I was expecting something like a live-action museum, sort of like col…
> Are they all just focused on sex, debauchery, lots of drinking today?
...As opposed to the actual medieval period, which was famously chaste, calm, and sober?
The humans find narratives about those things very interesting, perhaps because listening to them has been a crucial survival trait since they evolved storytelling. But the question above is why there are Renaissance Faires rather than Middle and High Medieval Faires (Viking times) or Early Modern Faires (Treasure Island times).
In my experience, Ren Faires tend to run the whole range of early medieval to renaissance times. In Florida, there is a permanent year round dinner entertainment show that includes horseback stunts called Medieval Times. In my local Ren Faire, it's really all meshed together, if someone wanted to have a viking event or attraction it would fit right in and no one would bat an eye.
So the answer is that people are unclear on the concept of "Renaissance"?
first off, as a ren fest veteran, it's easier to just take "renaissance" to mean "basically any time between the collapse of rome and world war i, also with the possibility of time travellers and things that never existed in the first place and anachronisms like turkeys in pre-Colombian England" and take "Renaissance" with the capital "r" to mean "from the 1300s to roughly the discovery of the new world" Second, I th…
> Old West Fest For sure, there are things like Cheyenne Frontier Days though not sure that it really goes as far as the cosplaying that is seen in ren faires. People do dress in western clothes, although they're not necessarily acting out a part. Rodeos and western wear though are still fairly common in modern day America though.
Have you ever done a ren fest? It's an awful lot like that. The paid actors are in character but everyone else is just modern folk in a weird, garish misinterpretation of pre-1900s fashion. It's kinda fun watching someone in Victorian finery try to fit a turkey leg and a beer in one hand so they can take a selfie, the anachronism of it is cute. It's a bit more audience participation-y than, say, colonial williamsburg where the idea is that you're separate from the period-appropriate folk and watching, but any sort of roleplay from the patrons is optional and silly.
In my experience, Ren Faires tend to run the whole range of early medieval to renaissance times. In Florida, there is a permanent year round dinner entertainment show that includes horseback stunts called Medieval Times. In my local Ren Faire, it's really all meshed together, if someone wanted to have a viking event or attraction it would fit right in and no one would bat an eye.
So the answer is that people are unclear on the concept of "Renaissance"?
It's just become a stand-in word to describe this class of fairs. In practice, sometimes they are called medieval fairs at the event, but there's not a huge distinction. No one is going to nitpick at a medieval fair that some tech or innovation didn't exist until later and if a ren fair features elements of medieval times, it's just not going to be called out. Most people mean early renaissance anyways, as the fantasy to play up to, when knights and swords still played a big role and before colonial empires and musketeers really took over.
> Renaissance fairs don’t really exist in Europe. We have them in Slovenia. In the summer local castles will put on a fair for the tourists and kids. Sometimes multiple! Typically you get a visiting troupe or two from Italy, they like to do flag twirling shows. There’s always a group of folks from Czech who put on an armored fighting competition. I’ve seen jousting tournaments too. And then you have a slew of local a…
There were at least a dozen this past summer. There was one in Žovnek Castle two weeks ago. A couple of weeks before that, in Ptuj. Before that, in Celje. Before that, there was a Roman-era festival in Ptuj, which was seriously cool. And the best medieval-themed festival was in Žužemberk. I went to all of them because I have young kids and they love that stuff. It's a fun day out. Also gives us an excuse to wear all…
> In truth, these festivals are all over Europe. They're just not well advertised, so you have to look for them.
Considering how crowded they feel, I’d say the advertising is plenty sufficient. They’re local events with limited space.
A lot of fairy tales in the West take place in a "medieval mythical time" as I call it: Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella etc. Not sure how many children are still reading or hearing those these days but I think that generates some of the interest. The women can still pretend to be Cinderella and men get to pretend to be knights or Robin Hood and such.
Yeah. I think this setting goes from like… the fall of western Rome to the Early Modern period, haha. (I mean, King Arthur stories have been reimagined with Arthur as a Roman or somebody filling the vacuum of them leaving Britain, so it must bump up against that side).
King Arthur is most likely a story talking about the defence of Britain against the Saxon invaders by the "native" Britons but told by Anglo Saxons 400-500 years later that were themselves living the invasion of Britain by the Normans this time.
Theoretically it's Renaissance rather than Medieval. And English Renaissance at that, which is well after the Renaissance was well underway in Italy. But most RenFests seem to cover a period of about 500 years, plus a fair bit of outright fantasy. At least at my local one, there is a Court playing out a fictional version of a real event early in the reign of Henry VIII, a period right on the cusp which I would call m…
> Why is that period so fascinating? My guess is the invention of the printing press. Thanks to that, tons of stories and myths have been preserved and proliferated with origins in the Renaissance. We also tend to group a lot of Medieval and Victorian era stuff in with the Renaissance, meaning it effectively spans a huge era of recorded human history.
The printing press definitely played a huge role.
The earliest equivalents of modern mass market paperbacks were fueled by existing legends like King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable which invented the whole medieval romanticism genre. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the cosplay gear at renfaires reflects that 12-13th century era rather than the changes that amassed versus gun powder (although that might just be the ones I've been to).
Sadly not much of that literature survived because it was bottom of the market and it's hard for scholars to really study.
Similarly why do people dress up as pirates and Vikings for Halloween? We're talking about gangs of armed robbers who engaged in rape, pillage, murder, and slaving.
The humans find narratives about those things very interesting, perhaps because listening to them has been a crucial survival trait since they evolved storytelling. But the question above is why there are Renaissance Faires rather than Middle and High Medieval Faires (Viking times) or Early Modern Faires (Treasure Island times).
That depends on the country. In Finland, reenactment events tend to be either "ancient" or "medieval". The former focus on the Iron Age until around 1200, or prehistoric times before Swedish rule and the establishment of Christianity. The latter extend until around 1500 or 1600.
Then there is a separate tradition around idealized peasant life in the 18th and 19th centuries. But that's not really reenactment, as the tradition started with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century.
What interests me is why humans crave this one time in history (medieval?). It’s old enough to be different than now but not old enough to be like caveman times? Lower technology than now but not no technology. Do people in other countries that aren’t western civilization have similar cravings for that era or an era like it?