Reading Sex in Premodern England: Medieval Sexualities

How do we understand representations of gender, sexuality, and erotic desire from a time when, as one scholar puts it, "normal wasn't"? How do we understand same-sex desire before "sexuality" was an active concept? How can we tell whether expressions of physical affection and love are "just" conventional or are deeply felt? Medieval literature brings with it many period-specific and culturally-specific constructions: courtly love; Christ as bridegroom and mother; woman as Eve and Virgin Mary; Nature as goddess (and Nurture too). We will consider how various discourses-medical, religious, legal, political, economic-inform literary representations of gender and sexuality. We will read love lyrics, mystical writings, autobiographies, romances (like the Roman de Silence-about a girl raised as a boy), canonical texts by writers like Chaucer, and anonymous debate poems about whether same-sex or heterosexual intercourse is preferable. We will consider long-eclipsed genres like the pastourelle-a narrative of attempted "seduction" (and often rape) of a maiden discovered in an outdoor scene. Our concern will be not only to place these texts in their historical contexts, but to consider what has been inherited and what has been lost from these traditions. What do we still suffer and what might we wish to recover? Fulfills the medieval historical requirement.