Sexuality and its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature

by T. Pugh

Overview

This book 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 and Eger and Grime , Tison Pugh explains how sexual normativity can often be claimed only after queerness has been rejected.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403984876
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	04/09/2008
Series:	The New Middle Ages
Edition description:	2008
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

TISON PUGH is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English, as well as a Distinguished Researcher in the College of Arts and Humanities, at the University of Central Florida, USA.

Table of Contents

Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature Abandoning Desires, Desiring Readers, and the Divinely Queer Triangle of Pearl Queering Harry Bailey: Gendered Carnival, Social Ideologies, and Masculinity under Duress in the Canterbury Tales 'He Nedes Moot unto the Pley Assente': Queer Fidelities and Contractual Hermaphroditism in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale From Boys to Men to Hermaphrodites to Eunuchs: Queer Formations of Romance Masculinity and the Hagiographic Death Drive in Amis and Amiloun Queer Castration, Patriarchal Privilege, and the Comic Phallus in Eger and Crime Compulsory Queerness and the Pleasures of Medievalism

Editorial Reviews

"Adventurous, accessible, and fun, Pugh's study certainly qualifies as a must read for any medievalist interested in issues of sexuality and gender." - Speculum

"Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature is an excellent, groundbreaking book and a major contribution to the ongoing project of recuperating the queer in medieval literature. Pugh's primary concern is with constructions of heterosexual masculinity, and the ways in which such constructions are enabled by the intercession of the queer. This has always been one of the main projects of Queer Theory, and Pugh's book serves as a demonstration of the power of Queer Theory to address pre-modern representations, as well as being an important intervention in the study of medieval literature itself." - Robert Sturges, Professor of English, Arizona State University and author of Chaucer's Pardoner and Gender Theory and Dialogue and Deviance

"Pugh s attention to questions of genre and narrative structure in the book is consistently engaging" - Studies in the Age of Chaucer

From the Publisher