Medievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of the Middle Ages, or devotion to elements of that period, which has been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture.

Since the 18th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and arts and crafts movements and neo-medievalism (a term often used interchangeably with medievalism).

Medievalism can also be used as an insult, implying conservatism and outdated attitudes. The words "medievalism" and "Medieval" are both first recorded in the 19th century. "Medieval" is derived from Latin medium aevum (Middle Ages). This term comes from the idea the Middle Ages was an interruption in the advance of classical learning.

In the 1330s, Petrarch expressed the view that European culture had stagnated and drifted into what he called the "Dark Ages," since the fall of Rome in the 5th century, owing to among other things, the loss of many classical Latin texts and to the corruption of the language in contemporary discourse. Scholars of the Renaissance believed that they lived in a new age that broke free of the decline described by Petrarch. Historians Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo developed a three tier outline of history composed of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The Latin term media tempestas (middle time) first appears in 1469. The term medium aevum (Middle Ages) is first recorded in 1604. "Medieval" first appears in the 19th century and is an Anglicised form of medium aevum.

Stephanie Trigg is a literary scholar in the field of medieval studies, known in particular for her work on Geoffrey Chaucer. She is a Trustee of the New Chaucer Society; on the Executive Board of the International Piers Plowman Society; and on the Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She is Professor of English Literature and Head of the English and Theatre Program, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Trigg’s most important book is Congenial Souls. The book represents a major intervention into the field of Chaucer studies in that it applies the insights of critical cultural analysis to a field that tends to be more conventionally concerned with either literary description of Chaucer’s work or depiction of his life and times. Rather, the book analyses the critical literature on Geoffrey Chaucer across the six-hundred-year period from his death in 1400 to the present, arguing that this long history of reading and writing about Chaucer is marked by a distinctive social process. Imagined and idealised reading communities formed around Chaucer’s works, driven by the unconscious, collective desire to speak with Chaucer, and to become part of his own intimate circle of friends and other poets.