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<blockquote data-quote="dougmander" data-source="post: 3633225" data-attributes="member: 14375">D&amp;D is an evocation of a fantasy medieval world with strong elements of orientalist romance.The two descriptors that most properly describe what D&amp;D's creators were attempting to invoke are &quot;medievalist&quot; and &quot;orientalist&quot;. In the 19th century, artists, writers, and academics became enamored of the middle ages as a romantic setting -- Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Eglinton Tournament of 1839 to name but a few examples. Concurrently, a fascination with the exotic aspects of the near east produced artists like Ingres, the growing popularity of the Arabian Nights, and attempts to create both visual and narrative pastiches that evoked an exotic eastern setting, like Coleridge's Khubla Khan. This aesthetic has since been called &quot;orientalism.&quot; These two movements were not concerned with historical or cultural accuracy, but with creating a fantasy of long ago or far away. You can trace the influence of these movements through the fiction of Lord Dunsany, who in turn influenced HPL and REH, and on to DeCamp, Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, and finally to D&amp;D.All this is by way of saying, D&amp;D is not &quot;medieval&quot; in the sense of the historical middle ages, but in its early incarnations, anyway, was firmly rooted in the medievalist and orientalist traditions that recast the middle ages and the classical civilzations of the near east as romantic fantasy worlds.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="dougmander, post: 3633225, member: 14375"] D&D is an evocation of a fantasy medieval world with strong elements of orientalist romance. The two descriptors that most properly describe what D&D's creators were attempting to invoke are "medievalist" and "orientalist". In the 19th century, artists, writers, and academics became enamored of the middle ages as a romantic setting -- Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Eglinton Tournament of 1839 to name but a few examples. Concurrently, a fascination with the exotic aspects of the near east produced artists like Ingres, the growing popularity of the Arabian Nights, and attempts to create both visual and narrative pastiches that evoked an exotic eastern setting, like Coleridge's [i]Khubla Khan[/i]. This aesthetic has since been called "orientalism." These two movements were not concerned with historical or cultural accuracy, but with creating a fantasy of long ago or far away. You can trace the influence of these movements through the fiction of Lord Dunsany, who in turn influenced HPL and REH, and on to DeCamp, Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, and finally to D&D. All this is by way of saying, D&D is not "medieval" in the sense of the historical middle ages, but in its early incarnations, anyway, was firmly rooted in the medievalist and orientalist traditions that recast the middle ages and the classical civilzations of the near east as romantic fantasy worlds. [/QUOTE]

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