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Date Issued:
2011
Summary:
If queer is an applicable label for that which aims to subvert or counteract normativity, then Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wife of Bath's tale, and her Prologue are each, in their own ways, queer texts. I examine the ways in which the feminine presences of Morgan le Fay and the Loathly Lady influence and challenge the heteronormative, homosocial space of Arthur and his knights. The two knights in each respective tale journey away from their heteronormative spaces, in which a complex system of homosociality and chivalric patriarchy dominate, to a queer space where each must go against his societal norms and rely on feminine agency and talismans in order for their quests to succeed - and to ensure their survival. It is this very convergence of heteronormative and queer spaces that enables Morgan's defiance of heteronormativity and dominance over those who enter her feminine, non-normative domain.
Title: A queer world: feminine subversions of chivalric homosocial normativity.
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Name(s): Pitts, Jessica.
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Department of English
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Date Issued: 2011
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Physical Form: electronic
Extent: v, 81p.
Language(s): English
Summary: If queer is an applicable label for that which aims to subvert or counteract normativity, then Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wife of Bath's tale, and her Prologue are each, in their own ways, queer texts. I examine the ways in which the feminine presences of Morgan le Fay and the Loathly Lady influence and challenge the heteronormative, homosocial space of Arthur and his knights. The two knights in each respective tale journey away from their heteronormative spaces, in which a complex system of homosociality and chivalric patriarchy dominate, to a queer space where each must go against his societal norms and rely on feminine agency and talismans in order for their quests to succeed - and to ensure their survival. It is this very convergence of heteronormative and queer spaces that enables Morgan's defiance of heteronormativity and dominance over those who enter her feminine, non-normative domain.
Identifier: 757932058 (oclc), 3318679 (digitool), FADT3318679 (IID), fau:3730 (fedora)
Note(s): by Jessica Pitts.
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011.
Includes bibliography.
Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subject(s): Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400
Gawain and the Green Knight
Feminism and literature
Gawain (Legendary character) -- Romances
Man-woman relationships in literature
Human body in literature
Symbolism in literature
Sex in literature
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3318679
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU