Kissing Cousins: Incest and Sex Change in Tristan de Nanteuil

Chansons de Geste

In this paper I re-examine Blanchandine‘s sex change in light of its relation to the issue of incest; as I will show, incest is directly related to the sex change and also punctuates the narrative at other points. Tristan de Nanteuil depicts two sexual and/or romantic relationships between cousins…

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien

The famous line from that modern romance- “A kiss is just a kiss”- is the message the Gawain-poet gave his listeners six centuries ago.

Queer times: Richard II in the poems and chronicles of late

Richard II in the 1390s

The article focuses on the representation of deviant sexual behavior in 14th-century English poetry and other chronicles. The portrayal of King of England Richard II as a rebellious youth, which is interpreted as perverse and lacking manliness, and the propaganda needed to offset this perception are discussed. Historical information is given about the political culture and power of the church. The murder of Edward II after being accused of sodomy by the Bishop of Hereford is mentioned.

Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature

knights

In this thesis, I will look at mainly French and German texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries which deal with the subject of cross-dressers in the decidedly masculine domain of the knight. There are many tales of cross-dressing, particularly of women, but the concept of men dressing as women while jousting, and women dressing as knights, brings up several questions about the clothes, what it meant to be male and female, and how cross-dressing could be viewed on the tournament field.

The Chaste Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry

Clerical Sexuality

The Chaste Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry Jennifer Brown (Marymount Manhattan College) Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 19, No. 1, January (2010) Abstract IN JACQUES DE VITRY’S THIRTEENTH-CENTURY vita of Marie d’Oignies, the hagiographer, or author of a sacred biography, implicates himself in his knowledge of a priest’s surprising reaction […]

Are We Post-Queer? A Roundtable on the Present and Future of Queer Theory in Medieval Studies

Homoerotic - Homosexual love

This was part of an excellent panel discussion on the future Queer Theory, pedagogy, gender and the cross over between Queer Studies and politics.

How to be a Man, Though Female: Changing Sex in Medieval Romance

Mutacion de Fortune - Christine de Pizan

Gender participates in a series of taxonomies that structure the social order, and it therefore participates in processes beyond itself, such as Christianity and knighthood, which are equally about identity within the world of chivalric romance. Therefore, the inscription of one often helps to define the other.

Got Medieval?

Homoerotic - Homosexual love

Developing queer history through the concept of affective connection—a touch across time—and through the intentional collapse of conventional historical time, I wanted in Getting Medieval to help queer studies re- spond to such desire.

Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval English Literature

Removing Madness - Renaissance

Madness has been long misrepresented in medieval studies. Assertions that conceptions of mental illness were unknown to medieval people, or that all madmen were assumed to be possessed by the devil, were at one time common in accounts of medieval society.

The negotiation of gender and power in medieval German writings

medieval woman reading

The Christian religion plays a most important role in the internalization and re-enforcement of patriarchy in the Western world. As will be seen later in this thesis, the relationship between a patriarchal God and his “children” is reflected in the relationship between the male head of the family and his wife, children and servants.

Queer Pedagogy (A Roundtable)

Beowulf and Hrothgar

A roundtable discussion on teaching Queer Theory with Susannah Mary Chewning (Union County College) Lisa Weston (California State University–Fresno); and Michelle M. Sauer, (University of North Dakota)

Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective

Medieval anatomy & body

erhaps some help is to be found in the usual scholarly move of sur- veying the literature. What does the phrase mean in the rapidly increas- ing number of books with the body in the title-an increase only too apparent to anyone who walks these days into a bookstore?

medievalverse magazine