Chaucer\u27s \u3cem\u3eTroilus and Criseyde\u3c/em\u3e in Male Homosocial Contexts: The Politicization of Same-Sex Desire

I explore the dynamics of homosociality in late medieval culture, investigating both Chaucer\u27s Troilus and Criseyde and its cultural and political environments. I articulate two conflicting attitudes toward male same-sex relations: one affirming and celebratory, the other homophobic. I conclude that Chaucer\u27s poem both replicates and generates a late medieval sociocultural discourse characterized by tension between normative male same-sex behavior and the potential politicization of such behavior. In the introductory chapter, I survey important recent historical and feminist criticism of Troilus and Criseyde and situate my project within the current debate regarding definitions of premodern sexuality. In chapter 2, part one, drawing on medieval concepts of imagination and vision, as well as psychoanalytically-inflected film theory, I suggest that chivalric treatises, biographies, and romances invite novice knights/readers to call forth potentially homoerotic images of model figures. I go on to examine eroticized male-male encounters in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur. In part two, I delineate the emotional intensity which informs male same-sex bonds in Amys and Amylion and the French Prose Lancelot by situating these texts within a biblical, classical, and medieval literary tradition that celebrates homosocial intimacy. Chapter 3 examines politically-motivated depictions of male same-sex intimacy in important fourteenth-century historical texts. After exploring how testimonies from the trials of the Knights Templar produce a narrative of aggressive same-sex behavior, I demonstrate how the major chronicles of the reigns of Edward II and Richard II wage a politically-motivated attack on each King\u27s relationship with his court favorites. I argue that the chroniclers were not attacking the idea of close male friendships, but rather Edward\u27s and Richard\u27s choice of intimate companions. Chapter 4 examines how Chaucer\u27s poem exemplifies, complicates, and dramatizes key homosocial interactions illustrated or suggested in chivalric texts. Drawing on Freud, his feminist and queer interpreters, as well as Rene Girard\u27s and Eve Sedgwick\u27s theories of triangulated desire, I articulate the interplay between homoeroticism and heterosexual desire. In chapter 5, I argue that, by depicting Troilus and Pandarus as advisee and adviser, respectively, Troilus and Criseyde suggests the highly criticized relationship between Richard II and his court favorites. I then demonstrate how the text moves against Troilus and Pandarus\u27 friendship

Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak

In 1997 I was asked to organize humanities outreach activities at the University of California, Irvine. The result was the formation of Humanities Out There (HOT). In our workshops, faculty members and graduate students supervise teams of undergraduates in order to take the methods and materials of the university into the larger community.I believe that programs like these will  become increasingly important in the next century, as economic, cultural, and educational divisions deepen in the wake of the demise of affirmative action and as the humanities fight to define their missions in a world driven by technology and its discontents. In this brave new world, what I call the new outreach may have a role to play in responding to social crises as they are visited on the life of the university. The new outreach will be driven by intellectual content, not public relations.It will take its orientation from the faculty rather than administrators. It will engage all the research disciplines rather than remain the purview of education departments. It will be integrated into the professional lives of its participants rather than rely on the spirit of volunteerism alone

Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak

In 1997 I was asked to organize humanities outreach activities at the University of California, Irvine. The result was the formation of Humanities Out There (HOT). In our workshops, faculty members and graduate students supervise teams of undergraduates in order to take the methods and materials of the university into the larger community.I believe that programs like these will  become increasingly important in the next century, as economic, cultural, and educational divisions deepen in the wake of the demise of affirmative action and as the humanities fight to define their missions in a world driven by technology and its discontents. In this brave new world, what I call the new outreach may have a role to play in responding to social crises as they are visited on the life of the university. The new outreach will be driven by intellectual content, not public relations.It will take its orientation from the faculty rather than administrators. It will engage all the research disciplines rather than remain the purview of education departments. It will be integrated into the professional lives of its participants rather than rely on the spirit of volunteerism alone