Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture Erotic Medievalisms

Erotic displays of marginalized people in medieval contexts, such as Santiago García and David Rubín’s Beowulf, Lil Nas X’s "Montero," Patience Agbabi’s "The Kiss,", direct sexual desires towards social justice. It is about sexual liberation from oppressive disciplines by means of representation in popular culture Erotic Medievalisms is about the liberatory potential of sexualities, particularly as they relate to medieval histories and modern pleasures. Each of the texts analyzed within subvert norms rooted in medieval cultures or assumptions about the "real" Middle Ages, constructing queer histories that blur the lines between fantasy and authenticity. These medievalisms extend eroticisms and erogenous zones beyond normative limits of pleasure. Moreover, situating these diverse iterations of desire within the medieval past emends narrowly-constructed histories that limit the erotic fantasies and experiences of marginalized people. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.