Sexuality and its queer discontents in Middle English literature / Tison Pugh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pugh, Tison.

Series:

New Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))

The new Middle Ages

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English literature.

Gender identity in literature.

Heterosexuality in literature.

Homosexuality in literature.

Physical Description:

xii, 220 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature exposes the ways in which ostensibly normative sexualities depend upon queerness to shore up their claims of privilege. Through readings of such classic texts as The Canterbury Tales, Pearl, Amis and Amiloun, and Eger and Grime, Tison Pugh explains how sexual normativity can often be claimed only after queerness has been rejected, no matter how appealing such queerness might remain at the story's end. Masculinity itself is thus revealed to be a queer performance, one which heroic protagonists of medieval narratives embody while nonetheless highlighting its constricting limitations.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature 1

2 Abandoning Desires, Desiring Readers, and the Divinely Queer Triangle of Pearl 21

3 Queering Harry Bailly: Gendered Carnival, Social Ideologies, and Masculinity under Duress in the Canterbury Tales 49

4 "He nedes moot unto the pley assente": Queer Fidelities and Contractual Hermaphroditism in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale 75

5 From Boys to Men to Hermaphrodites to Eunuchs: Queer Formations of Romance Masculinity and the Hagiographic Death Drive in Amis and Amiloun 101

6 Queer Castration, Patriarchal Privilege, and the Comic Phallus in Eger and Grime 123

7 Conclusion: Compulsory Queerness and the Pleasures of Medievalism 145.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [193]-213) and index.

ISBN:

1403984875

9781403984876

OCLC:

155122375

Online:

Publisher description