Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Same-sex Desire in the 14th Century

by R. Zeikowitz

Overview

Zeikowitz explores both affirming and denigrating discourses of male same-sex desire in diverse fourteenth-century chivalric texts and describes the sociopolitical forces motivating those discourses. He attempts to dethrone traditional heteronormative views by drawing attention to culturally normative 'queer' desire. Zeikowitz articulates possible homoeroticized spectatorial interactions between male readers and imagined or actual model knights, dramatized accounts of same-sex unions, and mutually stimulating - or competing - forces of homosocial and heterosexual desire in chivalric texts, such as Charny's Book of Chivalry , Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , and Troilus and Criseyde . He also examines how intimate male bonds are rendered sodomitically-inflected, dangerous attachments in chronicle narratives of the reigns of Edward II and Richard II.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403960429
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	07/10/2003
Series:	The New Middle Ages
Edition description:	2003
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

RICHARD E. ZEIKOWITZ is Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Alabama.

Table of Contents

Articulating Premodern Male Homoeroticism PART ONE: AFFIRMATIONS OF MALE SAME-SEX DESIRE Introduction: Promoting Homosocial Intimacy Chivalric Bonds and the Ideals of Friendship Competing Desires Homoerotic Identifications Male-Male Gazing PART TWO: DENIGRATIONS OF MALE SAME-SEX DESIRE Introduction: Sodomy as a Discursive Weapon Sodomy, Politics, and Male-Male Desire Dramatized Sodomitical Discourse: The Case of Troilus and Pandarus Afterword: Queer Lessons from the Fourteenth-Century