The Nineteenth Century’s Middle Ages: Representation of the Middle Ages through nineteenth century novels or arts

Henry Adams, Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913).

In Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams depicts several well-known monuments and old sights of France, all of which were built during the middle ages. In this book, published in 1913, Adams comments on those monuments as he is looking at them. As a foreword of his book, he explains in which conditions he is doing this, telling the reader that the most perfect audience would be a young niece carrying a new Kodak camera, and that all his descriptions should be read while bearing this in mind, that he's speaking to a curious ten-year old little girl with a craving for gothic things.

In this essay, we will focus on a particular sub-section of Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, as Adams wanders in the gothic cathedral of Chartres, in the south-west of Paris. In this very cathedral, he stops in front of the Virgin of Chartres, a statue representing the mother of Jesus Christ, built, as one may assume,, according to the gothic tradition of the middle ages, and lets his imagination wonder as he tries to picture to himself the Virgin's memories or reflexions upon her statue as a godhead. He also gives a rather accurate description of the stained-glass windows which can be seen as huge frescos, giving interpretations. Further in the book, the reader can also find plans of the cathedral itself, reproduced from actual documents, giving measures and lots of other different details (angles, materials...).