Abstract
Discussions of sexuality in the Middle English chivalric romance are complicated by a generality of terms—sexuality, after all, does not carry signification outside of historical and cultural context, and even within the cultural bounds of a given text, descriptions of sex or sexual references can have a variety of meanings. In the case of reading medieval sexuality especially, these differences in meaning are significant: sexual pairings that indicate procreation and/or the continuation of a hereditary line, for example, would be read as categorically different from sexual pairings based on or resultant from physical enjoyment or erotic or carnal desire.1 This difference seems equally significant for questions of identity for those involved in the act of sexual intercourse. The notion that virginity might depend on a woman’s state of mind rather than on the physical fact of penetration, for example,2 or that a couple might maintain chastity even while having sex,3 indicates that the narrative meaning of erotic desire and sexual activity requires close attention and a good deal of historical contextualization. Examination of the Middle English romances, specifically those dealing with chivalric identity formation,4 reveals erotic encounters to be problematic for the chivalric identity of the knight protagonist.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
James A. Schultz provides a useful overview of this discussion in “Heterosexuality as a Threat to Medieval Studies,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15.1 (2006): 14–29.
See Corinne Saunders’s “Symtyme the Fende: Questions of Rape in Sir Gowther” in Studies in English Language and Literature: “Doubt Wisely” Papers in Honour of E. G. Stanley, ed. M. J. Toswell and E. M. Tyler (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 286–303.
See R. Howard Bloch. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 97–101.
Geraldine Heng’s call in Empire of Magic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003)
(in “Gowther Among the Dogs: Becoming Inhuman c. 1400,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages ed. J. J. Cohen and B. Wheeler, [New York: Garland Publishing, 1997], p. 221 [219–244]).
(“The Social Function of the Middle English Romances,” in Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, and History, ed. D. Aers, [Brighton, Harvester Press, 1986])
John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, in The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899).
Peter Brown and Andrew Butcher, The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the Age of Chaucer (Blackwell: Oxford, 1991), pp. 205.
Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, Dislocating Masculinity (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 11–23.
Vern L. Bullough’s “Introduction: The Christian Inheritance,” in Sexual Practice and the Medieval Church, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982), pp. 6–7 specifically.
See Georges Duby, The Chivalrous Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 112–22, p. 113 particularly.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1925), 11. 2489–530.
“Sir Gowther,” in Six Middle English Romances, ed. Maldwyn Mills (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1973), 11. 670–75.
Lybeaus Desconus, ed. Maldwyn Mills (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 11. 2109–50.
“A Knight’s Tale,” in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. Benson, R. Pratt, and F. N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1986), 11. 2978–79.
See James A. Schultz. Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. xvii particularly.
Karma Lochrie. Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality when Normal Wasn’t (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), pp. xiii–xvi.
Richard Kaeuper agrees, stating that chivalric narratives “instruct … knights how to play the ideal lover as well as the perfect knight.” See Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 35.
James A. Schultz, in Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
Arnold Davidson. “Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality.” Critical Inquiry 14 (1987): 37 [16–48].
Leo Steinberg in The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (New York: Pantheon, 1983).
Alasdair C. MacIntyre. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
Carey Nederman’s “The Meaning of ‘Aristotelianism’ in Medieval Moral and Political Thought.” Journal of the History of Ideas 57.4 (1996): 563–85.
Ilan Mitchell-Smith. “‘As Olde Stories Tellen Us’: Chivalry, Violence, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Critical Perspective in ‘The Knight’s Tale.’” Fifteenth-Century Studies 32 (2007): 83–99.
See book seven of the Confessio Amantis, ed. R. A. Peck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980).
Walter Clyde Curry. Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1960).
Florence M. Grimm. Astronomical Lore in Chaucer (New York: AMS Press, 1919).
Albertus Magnus. The Book of Secrets (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
C. S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
(see Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], p. 2).
(Lee Patterson. Negotiating the Past [Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987], p. 183).
(Geraldine Heng. Empire of Magic [New York: Columbia University Press, 2003], p. 125).
Vern L. Bullough. “On Being Male in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Masculinities, ed. C. A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), p. 34 [31–46].
“Sir Degare,” in Middle English Metrical Romances, ed. W. H. French and C. B. Hale (New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1930), 11. 591–670.
Thomas Chestre. “Sir Launfal,” in Middle English Metrical Romances, ed. W.H. French and C.B. Hale (New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1930), 11. 289–296.
See David M. Halperin, “Is there a History of Sexuality?” History and Theory 28.3 (1989): 257–74.
Alan Bray. Homosexuality in Renaissance England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 16–17.
Tim Hitchcock. English Sexualities, 1700–1800 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 5.
Geoffrey Chaucer. “Truth,” in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. Benson, R. Pratt, and F. N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1986) p. 653.
D. Vance Smith. “Body Doubles: Producing the Masculine Corpus.” In Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997: 3–20), pp. 8–9.
James A. Brundage. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 20–30 especially.
Sir Amadace, in Six Middle English Romances, ed. Maldwyn Mills (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), 11. 739–41.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2013 Jennifer N. Brown and Marla Segol
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mitchell-Smith, I. (2013). The Double Bind of Chivalric Sexuality in the Late-Medieval English Romance. In: Brown, J.N., Segol, M. (eds) Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137037411_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137037411_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29229-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-03741-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)