Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature (New Middle Ages)

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.