Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 3999
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Frantzen , Allen J.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Studying Sexuality in Anglo- Saxon England: QueerTheory and the Corpus of Penitentials [Seventh Biennial Meeting of the International Society of Anglo- Saxonists, "Old and New Ways in the Study of Anglo- Saxon Culture," Stanford University, August 6-12, 1995. Session 6].
  • Source: Old English Newsletter 28, 3 (Spring 1995):
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Conference Paper Abstract
  • Subject (See Also): Homosexuality Penitential Books Queer Theory
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 8-9
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
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  • Abstract: One of the most encouraging developments in the maturation of feminist criticism of medeval texts is the emergence, beyond the vague field of "gender" studies, of new initiatives in the study of medieval sexuality. David M. Halperin's learned and rigorously argued analysis of homosexuality in ancient Greek culture has supplied a model for the study of sexual identity and sexual behavior in other ancient cultures, the culture of Anglo-Saxon England included. Halperin combines the discipline of a classical philologist with an admittedly (indeed, professedly) aggressive stance on certain questions in the history of sexuality - the stance of a queer theorist. Queer theorists claim that heterosexuality is a normative influ- ence both in society and in historical writing that followed the "discovery" of homosexuality in the late nineteenth century. Accordingly, queer theorists call for new analysis of sexual acts that have been labeled "homosexual" and that have been said to carry the same social stigma in pre-modern cultures that attaches to homosexuality in contemporary cultures. They argue that such acts should not be seen in terms of the homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy that has emerged in the last century, but instead in terms of complex and culturally-specific social standards that were - or so the queer theorists of later medieval cultures now claim - more tolerant of homosexual relations than we have supposed. If the views of queer theorists are gaining acceptance in medieval circles, that is in part because their arguments were anticipated by medieval ists practicing traditional methodologies but offering controversial claims all the same. In 1980, for example, John Boswell argued that from the eighth to the tenth century male homosexual behavior was widely tolerated in Western Europe. Just one year before, Michael Goodich wrote, "The first testimony to the existence of homosexuality in Europe in the Middle Ages appeared in the late tenth and early eleventh century," and that "[i]n this period, deviant sex was not yet regarded as a serious threat to Christian morality." Anyone with a passing acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon penitential literature knows that both assertions are incorrect. But both views have been accepted and repeated, and their effect has been to establish a new, remarkably tolerant standard for medieval sexuality that, to scholars outside the fields of Anglo-Saxon and contemporary continental cultures, enhances the plausibility of queer theorists' claims. Queer theorists insist not only that we retire the simplistic homosexual/heterosexual duality that has governed all prior discussions of the subject, but also that we view the sexual standards of earlier cultures in more precise and complex ways. In my paper I analyze the evidence of all the Anglo-Saxon penitentials, of which I have constructed a computerized corpus that enables reference to homosexual acts (and others), the vocabulary that describes them, and the scale of penance attached to them relative to other sexual sins. There are four handbooks of penance written c.950-1050, each found in at least two manuscripts and some in as many as four. Only one of these texts has been edited in the last fifty years; one of them, known as the "Canons of Theodore," has not been edited since 1830. The sources of the vernacular texts are Latin penitentials as old as the late seventh century, some parts of which passed, virtually unaltered, into the later vernacular documents. I have organized the entire corpus into a com- puterized database organized by manuscript, so that every version of every text is now available to be searched. I have explored the corpus using a list of key words for homosexual acts and relations, extracted the relevant passages, and examined their Latin sources. I will categorize regulations in which homosexual relations are described and will trace (to the extent possible) the cultural antecedents of those connections [Reproduced by permission of Robert Schicler, the “Abstracts of Papers in Anglo-Saxon Studies” editor, and the editors of the “Old English Newsletter.”].
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  • Author's Affiliation: Loyola University, Chicago
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1995.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 00301973