New Queer Medievalisms
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Edited by:
Will Rogers
New Queer Medievalisms explores new directions in the study of queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and asexual medieval identities and simultaneously expands the work of the queer Middle Ages beyond early English and continental studies. This series extends the important work of investigating the intersection of queer theory with the study of the Middle Ages by expanding the conception of queerness and queer identity. Almost every area of Medieval Studies has a dedicated group of scholars interrogating the connections between medieval topics and Queer Studies. This series provides these scholars with a new venue dedicated to their work while also bringing new scholarly and geographic specialties into the conversation.
The series’ Advisory Board comprises:
- Will Rogers, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Series Editor
- Michelle M. Sauer, University of North Dakota, Series Editor
- Christopher Roman, Kent State University
- Anna Klosowska, Miami University
- Gabrielle Bychowski, Case Western Reserve University
- Bill Burgwinkle, King’s College, Cambridge
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Natalie Grinnell, Wofford College
Submissions
Proposals or completed manuscripts to be considered for publication in this series should be sent to Tyler Cloherty (tylercloherty44@gmail.com), the acquisitions editor for the series.
Topics
Sadomasochistic Beowulf applies gender/queer theory to the study of Old English literature, advancing the knowledge of both fields. Its arguments are formulated through the works of Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Georges Bataille, and others.
The project explores a field of queer pleasures associated with the dispersal of the self, the extinguishing of the ego, the submission to a more dominant psyche, the postponement of jouissance, and with what Volker Wolterdorff calls "masochistic self-shattering."
The book covers a range of Old English texts from heroic verse narratives to the prose texts of devotional and penitential anthologies and relates these to the poem Beowulf.
This volume builds on recent scholarship on contemporary poetry in relation to medieval literature, focusing on postmodern poets who work with the medieval in a variety of ways. Such recent projects invert or “queer” the usual transactional nature of engagements with older forms of literature, in which readers are asked to exchange some small measure of bewilderment at archaic language or forms for a sense of having experienced a medieval text. The poets under consideration in this volume demand that readers grapple with the ways in which we are still “medieval” – in other words, the ways in which the questions posed by their medieval source material still reverberate and hold relevance for today’s world. They do so by challenging the primacy of present over past, toppling the categories of old and new, and suggesting new interpretive frameworks for contemporary and medieval poetry alike.
