Queering the Medieval Mediterranean. Transcultural Sea of Sex, Gender, Identity, and Culture, ed. Felipe E. Rojas and Peter E. Thompson. The Medieval Mediterranean. Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400–1500, 121. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2021, 248 pp.

Abstract

Abstract This volume is a rich collection of essays studying medieval “cultures of queerness.” Bringing various scholars of Spanish, French, English, and Portuguese literatures together, the focus of this volume lies in the Spanish Mediterranean. Its goal is to read their source material through the lens of possible “queer” structures. Since the umbrella term “queer” is a modern construct, the editors use theoretical frameworks to understand it as “other” and an “alternate” (2), and therefore “a powerful tool for the analysis of sex, gender, and identity” (2‐3). Through this different theoretical prism of “queering” the sources, the essays in this volume aim to offer more nuanced interpretations of well-known literary texts, as few previous studies have attempted (Queering the Middle Ages, ed. Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger, 2001; Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. Josiah H. Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson, 1999. The new book by Katherine Harvey, The Fires of Lust. Sex in the Middle Ages, 2021, on the other hand interestingly does – though only focusing on Western Europe – not mention the term “queer” even once).