Háskóli Íslands

Hugvísindasvið Medieval Icelandic Studies

Queering Medieval Translatio

Translation, Transformation, and Travel in the Strengleikar

Ritgerð til M.A.-prófs í Medieval Icelandic Studies

Paul Martino Kt.: 280995-4449

Leiðbeinandi: Sif Ríkharðsdóttir September 2018

Abstract

Our understanding of gender and sexuality is rapidly evolving and expanding, in both social and academic spheres. Several scholars of medieval literature such as Caroline

Dinshaw and Bill Burgwinkle have applied modern queer theory to medieval literature, yet the rich corpus of Old Norse prose has largely been neglected in this regard. This thesis seeks to contribute to a growing body of queer Norse scholarship with a study of alternative sexualities in the Strengleikar. By considering the text’s elements of translatio through a lens of queer theory, one is able to use the extant corpus of queer medieval scholarship to better understand the queerness of the

Strengleikar in a comparative cultural context. I argue that in the context of a chivalric society that constructs sexuality with regard to a value of perpetual lineage, literary translatio exerts a queering effect due to its ability to disrupt patterns of reproduction. In the Strengleikar, the queerness of translatio manifests itself textually through sexual transformations brought about by travel and transformation.

Strengleikar’s theme of queer translatio is reflected contextually by the text’s queer status as a translation.

ii Ágrip Skilningur okkar á kyni og kynhneigð hefur þróast hratt og er stöðugt að taka breytingum, bæði í akademískum skilningi og í almennu samfélagi. Nokkrir fræðimenn á sviði miðaldafræða, eins og Caroline Dinshaw og Bill Burgwinkle, hafa beitt nútímakenningum á sviði hinsegin fræða á miðaldabókmenntir. Hinn ríki fornsagnaarfur Norðurlanda hefur þó verið vanræktur á þessu sviði. Þessi ritgerð leitast við að efla hinsegin fræði í norrænum fræðum með rannsókn á hinsegin kynhneigðum í Strengleikum. Með því að kanna þýðingarfræðilega hluta textans gegnum linsu hinsegin fræða er hægt að nota slíkar kenningar til að skilja betur hinsegin eiginleika Strengleika í þvermenningarlegu samhengi. Í ritgerðinni verður því haldið fram að þegar litið sé til lénsbundins samélags þar sem kynhneigð og kynferði er mótað út frá þörf á að tryggja og viðhalda blóðlínu þá hafi ferlið sem felst í „translatio“ (yfirfærslu) svokölluð hinsegin áhrif (e. queering effect) þar sem það rýfur slík mynstur hefðbundins æxlunarferlis. Í Strengleikum þá birtast þessi hinsegin áhrif af yfirfærslunni í textanum sjálfum í gegnum kynferðisleg umskipti sem tengjast bæði ferðalögum og hamskiptum. Þetta þema Strengleikja um hinsegin yfirfærslu birtist meðal annars í jaðarstöðu textans sem þýðingar.

iii

Acknowledgements First, I must thank my advisor Sif Ríkharðsdóttir for her continuous academic support. Sif’s encouragement pushed me to write a bold and original thesis I never would have thought possible. Sif also made significant contributions to the Icelandic abstract above.

I likewise wish to thank Professors Haraldur Benharðsson, Torfi Tulinius,

Wendy Hoofnagle, and Lesley Jacobs for being ever-resourceful and nurturing my academic growth. Additionally, I thank Dr. Jan Alexander van Nahl for his role in coordinating the department’s theses this year.

I’d also like to thank Amy May Franks for being such a great organizing force in the queer medievalist community and introducing me to so many spectacular scholars. Indeed, I owe gratitude both to the queer scholars and to the scholars who are queer. Without their love, pride, and trailblazing research, this thesis could not exist.

I am always grateful for the love and support of Jake and of my family, who were rooting for me the whole time from across the ocean. Finally, I thank Lynn,

Mads, and Sarah, who helped make the dark Icelandic winter feel a little bit warmer.

iv

Queering Medieval Translatio: Translation, Transformation, and Travel in the Strengleikar

Paul Martino

v Table of Contents Introduction ...... 1 A brief overview of the Strengleikar ...... 3 1. Towards a Queer Translatio ...... 5 Translatio: beyond translation ...... 5 Queering translatio ...... 7 Queer theory: theory, which is queer ...... 10 Identifying queerness in medieval literature ...... 12 Constructing medieval sexuality: nature, lineage, honor ...... 14 The gender politics of medieval sex ...... 19 2. Visiting Queer Realms: Travel and Sexual Transformation ...... 24 “Spontaneous conflation”: compounding othered identities ...... 25 Utopias: compartmentalizing diversity with fantasy ...... 28 Classifying the asexual knight ...... 30 Chivalric defect: queer knights of the Strengleikar ...... 33 Anxiety of lack: Guiamar’s corrective translatio ...... 36 Banishing the queer to Avalon in “Janual” ...... 38 Words of warning: failed sexual translatio in “Tveggja Elskanda Ljóð” ...... 42 Conclusions: queerness of travel ...... 44 3. Gay Werewolves: The Queerness of Shapeshifting ...... 47 The “sliding scale”: monsters as queer bodies ...... 47 Bestial bodies: lewdity, crudity, and unabashed nudity ...... 52 Queering gender, queering humanity: Bisclaret’s shapeshifting ...... 57 Beyond shapeshifting: lineage and sexual translatio in “Jonet” ...... 62 Conclusions: queerness of transformation ...... 65 Conclusion: Strengleikar’s queerness in text and context ...... 68 Marie de France, queer icon ...... 68 Queering the translatio of the Strengleikar ...... 72 Works Cited ...... 76

vi Introduction

The interpretation of premodern cultural affairs through a queer lens has always been a controversial scholarly endeavor. One must conduct such analysis with caution, as our notions of queer bodies and behavior are social constructs of the modern era, as is the concept of sexual identity as a whole. Many renowned scholars such as Bill Burgwinkle,

Carolyn Dinshaw, and Ruth Mazo Karras have explored the concept of medieval queerness, but the rich literary corpus of northern Europe remains largely understudied in this respect. This thesis seeks to rectify that situation by considering the Strengleikar as a translated text, and discussing its textual and contextual transformations in terms of sexuality. By focusing on the text’s aspect of translation, one is able to apply an extant corpus of queer medieval scholarship in order to examine the interpretation and reception of translated queer themes in thirteenth century Norway and, ultimately, the institutional role of sexuality in medieval translation theory.

The Strengleikar are stories of travel and metamorphosis. These literary themes of motion are reflected in the Strengleikar ’s cultural context by the text’s status as a transformed and foreign product of translation. The narrative motion of the text— that is, the textual translatio — is primarily rooted in gender and sexuality. Take, for example, Guiamar’s sexual transformation brought about by his journey to a strange kingdom, or the seemingly homosexual relationship between Bisclaret and his lord brought about by Bisclaret’s metamorphosis into a wolf. Thus, a queer analysis of these themes can glean a new perspective on translatio , power, and medieval social institutions with respect to gender and sexuality.

1 The first chapter of this thesis, “Towards a Queer Translatio ,” begins by defining both translatio and queerness within a medieval context, and establishes the theoretical relationship between the two. This chapter goes on to provide a brief overview of the methodology and historiography of applying queer theory to the discipline of medieval studies. After outlining the construction of medieval sexuality through primary sources, the chapter concludes by introducing medieval gender roles into the consideration of queer translatio .

“Visiting Queer Realms: Travel and Sexual Transformation” applies queer theory to the spatial translatio that occurs in the narratives of of “Janual,” “Guiamar,” and “Tveggja Elskanda Ljóð.” This chapter first explores the role of othered entities medieval society, and how they are integral to the fantasy genre in the Middle Ages.

Considering these three ljóð with respect to the genre as a whole, this chapter goes on to argue that travel to fantastic realms is a plot device used primarily to preserve the metanarrative of gender and sexuality in Arthurian literature. This chapter concludes that due to the normalizing yet inherently altering application of “sexually corrective” translatio , spatial transition in the context of medieval fantasy has the ability to simultaneously queer and “unqueer” the sexuality of characters in transit.

“Gay Werewolves: The Queerness of Shapeshifting” addresses the intersection of sexuality and humanity. First, a theoretical assessment of monstrous and bestial bodies in a medieval context demonstrates how such entities become queer when considered on a spectrum of humanity. Examples from the ljóð “Milun” and “Laustic” are incorporated to illustrate a sexual juxtaposition between human and bestial bodies.

The subsequent analysis of shapeshifting and sexuality in “Bisclaret” and “Jonet”

2 concludes that, like the spatial translatio discussed in the previous chapter, metamorphosis of the body has conflicting effects on sexuality.

Finally, the conclusion of this thesis considers the cultural context of the

Strengleikar as it relates to the literary translatio within the text. It first considers Marie de France’s contribution to the queerness of the Strengleikar before discussing the queering effect of the subsequent translation process. In its translation, the Strengleikar undergoes travel and metamorphosis in a way that parallels the characters of the ljóð discussed in the two previous chapters. This thesis concludes that translation of the

Strengleikar is yet another act of translatio that attempts to normalize the text, but in actuality queers the text even further so that its cultural context reflects its queer textual elements. Ultimately, the Strengleikar ’s status as a translated text is what reconciles its narrative defiance of medieval sexual institutions.

A brief overview of the Strengleikar

Strengleikar is an Old Norse prose translation of twenty­one Anglo­Norman lais ,1 called ljóð in Old Norse. A majority of these short stories are found in the Lais of Marie de

France, but the Strengleikar collection omits the lai “Eliduc” and adds “Douns Ljóð,”

“Grelent,” “Guruns Ljóð,” “Leikara Ljóð,” “Ricar Hinn Gamli,” “Strandar Ljóð,” and

“Tidorel.” Most of these are Breton lais , but unlike the ones attributed to Marie de

France, these are all anonymous and generally not considered to be the works of Marie.

1 To be more precise, there are twenty­one extant ljóð found in De la Gardie

4­7/AM666 b, 4to. While not impossible per se, there is no evidence to indicate the potential for other unknown manuscripts of Strengleikar containing additional ljóð .

3 There is one extant medieval copy of the text, split between the manuscripts De la Gardie 4­7 and AM 666 b, 4to (Cook and Tveitane iv). The latter is simply a number of missing leaves from the former, which were removed at some point. The manuscript is typically dated to c. 1270 and is considered to be the first commissioned translation of

King Hákon Hákonarson (Cook and Tveitane iv). These translations of French courtly literature became quite popular during a time of important diplomatic correspondence and trade between England and Norway (Sif Rikhardsdottir 18).

There has been much speculation concerning the identity of the translator of the

Strengleikar . The work is most often attributed to a certain “Brother Robert,” but such claims are dubious and, for the purpose of this thesis, largely irrelevant. Thus, this thesis only refers to “the translator” and opts not to name or gender them.

4 1. Towards a Queer Translatio

The concept of sexuality is inseparable from the impactful terminology used to describe it. Defining queerness in a medieval context is difficult, as our understanding of the term is often muddied by modern preconceptions of sexual identities. Queerness— that is, divergent gender or sexuality— in the medieval period is not defined as such. There is, however, a designated space in medieval literature and social structures for the discussion and exploration of what will herein be termed queerness. Due to the nebulous nature of the term in a medieval context, queerness exists even where the omnipresence of sexuality is not immediately apparent. In order to identify queerness in medieval literature, one must look towards actions and characters that subvert the heteronormative framework of sexuality as nature’s means of reproduction, or where change or motion has caused some kind of disruption to the power structures and gender roles built upon this framework. As will be demonstrated herein, translatio can act as a compass pointing towards queerness in medieval literature. Likewise, considering the medieval concept of translatio through a lens of queer theory highlights the sexual power dynamics that acts of translatio can facilitate or disrupt.

Translatio : beyond translation

While originally meant to signify movement in general, the concept of translatio had become more directly associated with literary translation in the Middle Ages (Stahuljak

143). The term translatio is a derivative of the Latin verb transferre , meaning “to carry over” or “to bring across” (Stahuljak 143). Thus, translatio in a literal sense is not attached to translation; this connotation merely stems from popular usage in translation

5 theory. Sif Rikhardsdottir’s nuanced exploration of the term reveals a deeper and more complex understanding of translatio that emphasizes elements of “carrying over” in a context of translation. Sif states:

When literary heritage reflects the ideological and social structures from

which it originated, it also transcends the moment in history through this

intertextual exchange… In a literary legacy of any given community a

modern reader can thus discern patterns of cultural movement and

transformation as they have been preserved in time. (1)

By this definition, the process of translation is easily linked with the original Latin significance of translatio and can be tied to the various other types of movement that this thesis considers.

Considering translation within a broader definition of translatio expands the potential significance of translated texts. Sif and other scholars taking a New

Philological approach to translation emphasize the importance of considering cultural context alongside textuality, considering translated texts as “part of a whole, which is the textual process, rather than as a secondary derivative of a unique and fixed original”

(Sif Rikhardsdottir 9). To translate is also to transform, to transmute, and to alter a text for consumption by a new audience. In this regard, translated texts offer insight concerning interaction between cultures. A translator must address cultural differences to make a text appropriate for a reader of their native language. These changes, long treated as mistranslations, must instead be considered creative choices by the translator which signify cultural and ideological differences between the two or more cultures in question (Sif Rikhardsdottir 2­5). Therefore, the act of translatio with regard to a

6 translated text is not just the simple act of translation from one language to another; it consists of the process by which a given text is transformed to occupy a new social and cultural paradigm, as well as the moment of cultural exchange and the transcendence of social boundaries that is encapsulated in translation.

Translatio as cultural transformation occurs both in context and contents of translated texts. Amanda Griffin highlights the concept of textual translatio , which she identifies as transformation in setting or in character sometimes reflected in the cultural context of the text by the translatio of its translation (19). Just as translatio with regard to translation is a transformation resulting from cultural exchange, textual translatio is about transformation resulting from new circumstances in anything from setting to body. This is especially true in the case of Strengleikar , which prominently features themes of motion, transition, translation, and transformation that transcend spatial, social, and cultural boundaries. Griffin further connects textual translatio to translingual notions of translatio in stating that “a transformed body, much like a rewritten text, very often retains sufficient traces of its original manifestation for it to be understood as a changed entity, rather than a completely new one” (16). Indeed, aspects of a text or a character that do not change are equally important as those which do change for identifying cultural transformation. Without knowledge of the original, the act of translatio is essentially invisible.

Queering translatio

In a medieval context, an act of translatio is inherently an act of queering. Zrinka

Stahuljak’s book Bloodless Genealogies of the French Middle Ages: Translatio,

7 Kinship, and Metaphor considers translatio as it pertains to textual inheritance in medieval French literature. Stahuljak suggests that the romance genre often applies the topos of translatio in order to explore the transmission of power that occurs through genealogical succession (142). Indeed, Stahuljak sees translatio as a force of hereditary disruption, and translation in particular as “a break in genealogy” (156). In the translation theory of the Middle Ages, translatio described the transfer of power and knowledge geographically and chronologically (Stahuljak 143). This transfer of power is disruptive in nature, reliant on dying kings, violated oaths, rivaling states, and falling empires. Stahuljak cites a correlation between destruction and translatio in the twelfth century Roman de Troie , in which translatio describes the intergenerational shift of power that follows the destruction of Troy (150). As will be discussed later in this chapter, the power of genealogy is the crux of medieval sexuality. Translatio is a process of queering because of its ability to disrupt chivalric power dynamics of genealogy and thus sexuality.

Like translatio , queerness is a rather loosely defined term somewhat dependent on a binary of an original and a variant. In order for translatio to occur, there must be an original and a transformed version of the original. Phillip Bernhardt­House points out that queerness is likewise inherently comparative (160). Indeed, in order for there to be an “other,” there must first be a “one.” However, Bernhardt­House fails to acknowledge that this distinction is dependent on power dynamics that are largely the result of the one’s subjugation of the other. Queerness in particular has often been considered exclusively in this binary framework, causing a severe paradox in the development of queer theory. Despite the binary, the objective of applying queerness as a critical theory

8 is to penetrate normativity, binaries, constructivist categorizations, and preconceptions that tend to limit scholarship (Giffney and Hird 5). The resolution of this paradox lies in a definition of queerness that is elusive by nature and nebulous by necessity, so as not to be exclusionary or dependent on the very power dynamic which queer theory seeks to eliminate. Translatio describes the process by which queerness is able to fluidly transcend this binary; every time queerness occurs through the crossing of a boundary of gender or sexuality, an act of translatio occurs.

At last, the relationship between translatio and queerness is apparent. Noreen

Giffney and Myra J. Hird define queering as “disturbing the familiar” (4). This definition is quite useful as it encapsulates not just that which is firmly on the queer side of the original­variant binary, but also that which disrupts this boundary. Eliminating this divide between the queer and the post­queer is vital in applying queer theory to translatio . Translatio occurs when the porous boundary between the original and the other is transversed in some way, whether the boundary is physical, geographic, cultural, personal, or symbolic. Thus, it is a process of queering in that it disturbs the binary between the privileged normal and the subjugated other. In Strengleikar , queer translatio is visible in several in­text and contextual aspects of the text, including travel to other realms both real and imagined, shapeshifting and the movement of bestial bodies, and finally, through the translation of the text from one culture to another, each of which will be explored in the next three chapters respectively.

9 Queer theory: theory, which is queer

Applying modern theory to premodern texts is a valid and necessary approach to literary scholarship. Despite concerns of anachronism, literary theories draw attention to otherwise invisible cultural minutiae within a text that are deeply valuable for understanding the ideals, preferences, and inclinations of a premodern society. Glenn

Burger and Steven F. Kruger justify the practice by suggesting that applying a postmodern movement to medieval texts “historicizes postmodernity,” and postmodernity and the present are merely “a continuum of history” (xiv). This claim is admittedly quite reductive and unsatisfying in its brevity. However, one might argue that this statement of justification is entirely unnecessary in the first place, as the scholarly need for applying critical theory to premodern literature far outweighs any counterargument to doing so. Burger and Kruger later state that queer study of the past is important because it recovers culture and social significance that is distorted, obscured, hidden, or altogether lost (xiv). This statement captures the necessity for applying postmodern methods to medieval studies quite nicely. Several years later, as queer scholarship is thriving, the desire for diverse scholarship continues to drive and augment the advantages of applying postmodern queer theory to medieval literature.

Queer theory is a relatively young methodology, but it is nonetheless very well established. Glenn Burger pointed out in 2001 that “queer” had only recently become its own genre. Prior to this development, queerness had only existed within a framework of heterosexuality (215). Queer theory is a reaction to this oppressive heterosexual framework. Noreen Giffney and Myra J. Hird offer a beautiful summary of the importance of queer studies:

10 The unremitting emphasis in queer theoretical work on fluidity,

uber­inclusivity, indeterminacy, indefinability, unknowability, the

preposterous, impossibility, unthinkability, unintelligibility,

meaninglessness and that which is unrepresentable is an attempt to undo

normative entanglements and fashion alternative imaginaries. Far from

being a narcissistic exercise in abstraction, this represents a concerted

effort to make sense of, and make space in, a world that has given up on

us. (4)

This seemingly incoherent laundry list of ideas that contribute to queer theory is multifaceted by necessity, for the term “queer theory” is somewhat of an oxymoron.

Queer theory seeks to be revisory and disruptive, yet applying critical theory is intrinsically normalizing, as it is a method of making order out of chaos (Colebrook 17).

This paradox is resolved by the inclusivity of queer theory. Queer theory does not attempt to organize the chaos of queerness; rather, it simply draws a circle around it, making “queer” a highly inclusive yet well­defined category that can be identified, discussed, and applied. It is this “indeterminacy, indefinability… and that which is unrepresentable” that makes queer theory queer; it concerns that which is queer, but maintains a space of queerness even in its normativity.

While the need for queer scholarship has been proven time and time again, clarifying the goals of queer scholarship is nonetheless helpful in developing the theoretical framework of a queer translatio in medieval literature. Queer studies are, by nature, extremely theoretical. While the historical framework of heteronormativity cannot be dismantled, it can be questioned and overlooked. Therefore, queer readings of

11 medieval literature do not intend to be definitive, and a “homotextual” reading of a medieval text is by no means an attempt to rewrite the history of sexuality by

2 constructing queerness where it does not exist. Rather , applying queer theory to medieval literature distinguishes queerness that is already present, but had previously been marginalized and neglected by traditional scholarship. In short, queer scholarship of the past seeks to explain what could be, not to rewrite what already is.

Identifying queerness in medieval literature

A firm understanding of medieval queerness continues to remain quite elusive, even after two decades of queer medieval scholarship. Carolyn Dinshaw’s 1999 book Getting

Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre­ and Postmodern undoubtedly brought attention and legitimacy to the field of queer medieval studies, paving the way for an abundance of extremely important scholarship in the field thereafter, such as the work of

Bill Burgwinkle, Karma Lochrie, and Ruth Mazo Karras, among many others. While scholars have tinkered with the concept of medieval queerness since at least the early

2 The term “homotextual” is coined here to emphasize the necessity for conducting a queer reading in consideration of a “medieval textuality” (Sif

Rikhardsdottir 8). In doing so, queerness within the text comes to light against a backdrop of historical and cultural context. Additionally, this term is not intended to be exclusive of any type of queer human sexuality. By opening one’s mind to a type of medieval textuality that considers the mere possibility of the existence of same­sex attraction, I also hope to highlight possible bisexual, asexual, trans, and other types of non­heteronormative and non­binary readings of sexuality and gender.

12 90’s, for which Dinshaw and the rest of us certainly owe much gratitude, Dinshaw is the first to properly engage with the matter through a postmodern lens. In 2006, Bill

Burgwinkle stated that medieval literature had previously been viewed as a

“Foucauldian wonderland” in which “unspoken laws govern behavior, exclusion is not yet the norm, and the subject forms within the social yet without the humanist status of unique master of its fate” (Burgwinkle, “Queer Theory” 79). Indeed, because queerness was not properly conceived as a social identity in Western society until the nineteenth century (and not legitimized until the late 20th century or even as recently as the past decade, arguably), prolific queer theorists of the twentieth century such as Michel

Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Jonathan Dollimore had discussed medieval queerness only in contrast with modernity, and without any clear definition (Salih 114).

Such a reductive understanding of medieval queerness is problematic in its projection of modern perceptions of queerness onto our understanding of medieval gender and sexuality, which creates a problem of anachronistic scholarship. A medieval definition of queerness should therefore be constructed through a lens of queer theory, but from the perspective of medieval sources. Such an approach identifies a queerness that is strictly medieval, but with the modern awareness of power dynamics that have always been in place yet previously undiscussed. For this perspective, one may look to the substantial ouvre of medieval French moralists, as well as literature of Old French and

Old Norse traditions.

13 Constructing medieval sexuality: nature, lineage, honor

Medieval writers including Marie de France regularly employ nature as a framework to discuss sexuality, especially in order to privilege normative sexuality. Alain de Lille’s

De Planctu Naturae concerns a personified Nature lamenting that the Roman goddess

Venus has introduced “disruption” to the order of natural production (Jordan 69). Here, sexual subversion, or queerness, is discussed rather vaguely and conservatively. Sexual deviance is linked to a false pagan deity, while normative sexuality falls under the purview of Nature, who was created by God (Jordan 69). A personified nature appears again in Jean de Meun’s thirteenth century Roman de la Rose . Jean de Meun, referencing Alain de Lille’s moral treatise, elaborates Nature’s problematization of queerness. In the Roman , Nature specifically decries all who refuse to procreate

(Schibanoff 38). While these two texts do not create any well­developed space for detailing sexuality, they do provide some initial insight into the construction of medieval queerness. Due to the absence of sexual identities in premodern society, these sources seem not to differentiate between homosexuality and asexuality. Sexuality (or a lack thereof) that does not yield offspring is defective and thus inferior to heterosexuality, which is productive. This stigmatization is the basis for defining medieval queerness.

The importance of reproduction in medieval society is reflected by the literature of the period through a preoccupation with lineage. Lineage, which can only be achieved through normative sexuality, contributes to honor and thus privilege in such texts. Queerness, like translatio as discussed earlier, disrupts chains of familial lineage and is therefore depicted as dishonorable. One may look to the romances of Chrétien de

14 3 Troyes for continental French examples, but the Lais , and subsequently the

Strengleikar , also place a very high value on noble genealogy.

The plots of “Milun,” “La Fresne,”and “Yonec” all feature children discovering their noble heritage through some tokens left to them by their parent. The latter two lais are both named after the child in question. Yonec is by no means the protagonist of his lai , yet Marie naming the lai for him clearly demonstrates his importance as a keystone character. The children’s “reunification packages” vary, with each including an item that emphasizes the role of familial heritage in each lai . In “Milun,” there is a letter that parallels the mode of communication that facilitated the secret affair heading to the boy’s conception. “Yonec” is given a sword subsequently used to fulfil his paternal

4 vengeance, while the infant Fresne is wrapped in a silk cloth that is used many years later as a consummation sheet following the girl’s marriage into her newly rediscovered social class. Additionally, all three children are given a ring, which serves an excellent metaphor for high lineage. An eternal circle cast in gold, perhaps featuring a striking and conspicuous precious stone, is representative of the enduring multigenerational wealth and honor of medieval nobility.

3 For the most significant examples of the impact of noble lineage in the works of Chrétien, see Perceval and Cligès.

4 For further discussion of “Milun” and especially “Yonec,” see the sections concerning its Norse counterparts “Milun” and “Jonet” in Chapter 3. It is also worth noting here that “Milun” features an arc of paternal vengeance like “Yonec,” although the deed is not actually carried out as the lady’s husband has already died when the son arrives to slay him.

15 Perhaps the best demonstration of the importance of lineage in the Lais , however, is the lai “Chaitivel.” The lai concerns a noble woman in Brittany who instantly commands the love of any suitor that lays eyes on her. In order to resolve this issue, the woman has four of her suitors compete in a tournament. One is victorious, but

5 sustains a wound to the thigh before the other three are killed. When the lady proposes that she shall compose a lai and call it “Quatre Dols” [Four Griefs], the surviving suitor suggests that she should instead call it “Le Chaitivel” [The Unfortunate One] (Marie de

France, “Chaitivel” ll. 203­208).6 Although the suitor has won the lady’s love, he cannot

5 The metaphorical significance of a wound to the thigh is discussed in detail in the second chapter of this thesis with regard to the ljóð “Guiamar.”

6 Citations of the Lais use line numbers, while citations of the Strengleikar use line numbers; this is simply because the Lais are written in verse while the Strengleikar consist exclusively of prose. Care has been taken to preserve the editing choices of

Cook and Tveitane, whose diplomatic edition of the text indicates expanded abbreviations with the use of italics. Additionally, quotes from both texts preserve the medieval and editorial punctuation of the two editions, including corrections and presumed readings indicated by brackets in the Lais and angle brackets in the

Strengleikar .

All English translations from the Lais , as well as those from Old Norse into

English, are original to this thesis, except where linguistic analysis calls for a more detailed exploration of translation and such discussions are explicitly cited from another source.

16 reproduce with her because of his injury: “Si n’en puis nule joie aveir / Ne de baisier ne d’acoler / Ne d’autrebien fors de parler” [yet I can have no joy from [my lover] / neither kisses nor embraces / nor anything but talking] (Marie de France, “Chaitivel” ll.

220­222). While an element of sexual pleasure is probably involved at least to some degree, the knight’s true misfortune is the termination of his lineage. In true form of the

Arthurian genre, he has fulfilled a task and earned the love of a noble woman, and likewise the right to continue his own noble bloodline. However, he is deprived of this sexual and reproductive prize, as well as the chivalric honor associated with it, because of the violent translatio that his body undergoes. Thus, the knight’s lineage is terminated, and he is rendered queer.

The role of lineage in constructing normative medieval sexuality is not exclusive to French chivalric and moral texts. In fact, these lais of lineage find a welcoming home when they are translated into the Strengleikar . The high value placed on family heritage in Old Norse literature is quite apparent in Icelandic literature of the period. The thirteenth and fourteenth century Íslendingasögur generally contain very detailed

7 genealogies. These genealogies are intended to legitimize family power through the honor of respectable lineage. In doing so, genealogies serve a secondary function of accruing power through the demonstration of the sexual normativity of a given family.

Later fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur contain perhaps less detailed genealogies, but certainly continue to respect the importance of lineage as an aspect of

7 For specific examples, I refer to the first several lines of Njáls saga , Laxdæla saga , Vatnsdæla saga , or, quite frankly, any other classical saga of one’s choosing.

17 8 cultural memory in the native Norse literary tradition. Due to this mutual value of lineage between the two societies, the chivalric plots of “Eskja,” “Jonet,” and “Milun” are embraced by the translator of the Strengleikar ; any plot having to do with lineage remains virtually unchanged.

The Strengleikar further demonstrates an interest in the theme of lineage in the addition of another ljóð , “Desire.” This ljoð comes from a lai that is not attributed to

Marie. The titular knight, Tilfysilegan [Desired One], is a testament to his father’s desire for heirs. His parents are unable to conceive a child until they make the long journey from England to visit Saint Giles of Provence, who is said to have luck in helping such troubled noble couples. The translatio of their journey is not only spatial; their circumstance transforms and they are suddenly able to reproduce, validating the productive sexuality of the couple. Tilfysilegan grows up to become a knight, undoubtedly owing to his noble heritage. While hunting one day, he has a tryst with a fairy woman in the woods. This affair yields a son, whom Tilfysilegan discovers several years later wearing a long­lost ring that was gifted from the fairy woman to Tilfysilegan.

Within the Arthurian canon, “Desire” demonstrates the adversity that three generations of a noble family are willing to endure in order to maintain their noble lineage without interruption. In doing so, the men of Tilfysilegan’s family are fulfilling the sexual expectations associated with their masculinity, achieving honor, and outwardly displaying their heterosexuality by reproducing.

8 Here, I refer to the several multigenerational fornaldarsögur including

Völsunga saga and Ragnars saga loðbrókar .

18 The gender politics of medieval sex

The consideration of actual sex acts are vital to understanding most types of sexuality.

On the significance of queer sex from a theoretical perspective, Burger and Kruger state:

queer sex disturbs the normative logic of a missionary position— man on

top, woman on the bottom— that depends, as the work of Judith Butler

would suggest, not on some natural law but instead on the performative

citation of a norm, constructed as a cause or natural origin, that is

nonetheless an effect on its very citation. Queer theory, in exposing the

fictionality of such constructions— the ways in which supposed causes

do not precede their effects but are instead themselves the (ideological)

effects and justifications of certain normative behaviors— has developed

a politics that allows it to claim such previously disallowed sexual

positions and desires as both powerful and meaningful. (xi)

Queer sex encompasses anything that doesn’t fit into a small, culturally constructed box of heteronormative sexual relations that reinforce a strict binary of gender roles. A queer theoretical approach to medieval sexuality should question what makes queer sex queer in medieval society.

The terminology used to describe queer sex herein must be rooted in the medieval conception of sexuality as a whole. Sarah Salih, like many other scholars and medieval primary sources alike, employs the term “sodomite” to describe medieval men who have sex with men. This term is intentionally vulgar, used to describe a group unfortunately defined by a single transgressive sex act and nothing else (Salih 113).

While medieval sources cannot conceive “sodomites” or “queers” as a sexual identity,

19 they can conceptualize and acknowledge the existence of men who desire other men and disrupt the heterosexual paradigm of medieval narratives and societies (Salih 126).

Thus, homosexuality is acknowledged, but not seen as legitimate sexuality.

Regardless of medieval acknowledgement of homosexuality, queer sex is still difficult to identify from a medieval perspective. Karma Lochrie suggests (admittedly in a sweeping generalization) that beyond procreative sex, all medieval sex was sinful regardless of the gender of the participants (92). However, this claim assumes that homosexual sex could have been understood as sex in the first place. In fourteenth century France, Arnaud de Verniolle was put on trial for homosexual behavior. His defense was that his actions were permissible because he engaged in sexual acts with other men, but never penetrative sex. Therefore, he did not mimic any type of heterosexual sex and therefore did not actually have sex with men (Canadé Sautman

181). This case demonstrates the fragility of what can be considered sex, and likewise what may be considered acceptable and what may be stigmatized. Claire Sponsler questions and problematizes the presumed medieval stigma towards homosexual sex, at least in the male arena: “friendship and sodomy were also closely related, and once again, sodomy was a crime not entirely easy for the crown to hate, given its close alliance with the male sociability so essential to medieval governmental structures”

(158). Sponsler is here addressing fourteenth century England, but the homosocial behaviors she references are also extremely prevalent in French, English, and Norse

9 romances throughout the High and Late Middle Ages. For example, the plot of Marie’ s

9 For rich homoeritic depictions of male social behaviors in Arthurian literature, see Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot , the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ,

20 lai “Equitain,” and later the Old Norse ljóð of the same name, relies on the willingness of a king and his seneschal to bathe together while on a hunting trip. Although homosexual behavior is certainly queer in its disruption of reproduction, gender and class are clearly factors in whether homosexual behavior is considered acceptable or stigmatized as queer.

The semantics of gender and sexuality are generally dependent on one another, and this is especially true in the medieval context given the intersectionality between the two that is integral to medieval conceptions of queerness. Given medieval society’s lack of structured variant sexualities, in order to reconcile homosexual sex from a medieval perspective, one partner is viewed as assuming a gender role that does not match their biological sex. Homosexuality thus becomes queer in two regards: its defiance of reproduction, and its disruption of the power dynamics associated with the rigid gender roles built upon the institution of heterosexuality.

In his pivotal 1983 book The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in

Early Northern Society , Preben Meulengracht Sørensen refers to a passage in Njáls saga , in which a settlement between two families is ruined after Flosi mocks Njáll’s beardlessness. In retaliation, Skarpheðinn throws knickers at Flosi, and exclaims to the surrounding crowd that Flosi is the passive recipient of sex from a female troll every ninth night (Sørensen 10). All three of these insults imply queerness primarily through gender, not through sexuality. Beardlessness is queer in its defiance of gender expectations. While there is an implication of queer sex in Skarpheðinn’s comment, and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur . All contain exceptionally phallic descriptions of battle, male­female­male love triangles, and subtle whispers of homosexual attraction.

21 wearing knickers and being penetrated by a troll is queer because of Flosi acting as a woman both in a performative manner by wearing knickers and in a sexual manner by being penetrated.

Sørensen furthermore describes two particular Old Norse terms that indicate how medieval Norse understanding of queerness relies on gender. “Ragr”/“argr” and

“regi”/“ergi” are both used to describe queerness, implying both effeminacy and homosexuality. A man who is “argr” is willing to participate in the feminine act of being penetrated (Sørensen 18). Sexual queerness and genderqueerness are conflated, both equally subversive within the medieval social binary of normative and queer.

Gender is brought up once again in Njáls saga when Hildigunnr whets Flosi into revenge by swearing on Flosi’s manhood that Flosi must avenge his kin (Sørensen 10).

This obligation to his family has everything to do with honor and lineage, which constitutes an aspect of Flosi’s masculinity. Even where sexuality is not relevant, queerness occurs in the lineage­disrupting translatio of violating or swapping gender roles because of the relationship between gender and reproduction in medieval society.

Returning once again to Alain de Lille, twelfth century morality takes a similar stance on gender in sexuality, suggesting that men should take the active role in sex because of their “natural gender,” and to take part in sodomy is to take on the role of a woman, “disclaiming the manhood nature gave” to him (Schibanoff 28­30). To Alain, violations of sexuality and gender are equivalent offences, as gender roles are constructed upon heteronormativity; to subvert one is to disgrace the other. Both are transgressions against the institution of reproduction. Therefore, in the context of medieval literature, queerness is not solely based on sexual identity. Medieval queerness

22 encompasses any behavior, theme, or body that unsettles the sexual binary or subverts prescribed gender roles, thereby defying the tenet of sexual productivity.

Just like other acts of translatio , queer translatio is a transformation caused by transcending some physical or conceptual boundary. In this case, such boundary can be sexual or gendered, as both disrupt the cycle of lineage through an act of translatio .

Considering translatio through a queer lens, and likewise considering queerness through a lens of translatio , highlights the sexual power dynamics that arise as a result of crossing boundaries that separate sexually privileged and subjugated bodies in medieval institutions of gender.

23 2. Visiting Queer Realms:

Travel and Sexual Transformation

The Arthurian genre is dependent on its heteronormative structure, in which the narrative of the knightly quest is driven by male desire and the chivalric necessity of reproduction. Other factors such as fealty to one’s lord and physical tokens of knightly success should not be ignored entirely. However, even the earliest prototypes of the

Arthurian quest romance have a common conclusion: a knight successful in his quest

10 earns the love of a maiden and thus the ability to perpetuate his lineage. Occasionally , one comes across a knight that disrupts this narrative with queerness. A queer knight is defective because he is unable to fulfill the reproductive duties expected of him, disrupting ideals of chivalry as well as the quest narrative. In such cases, the text must find a way to reconcile the knight’s queerness within the narrative. The ljóð “Guiamar,”

“Janual,” and “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” all employ an act of spatial translatio to alter the sexuality of a queer knight in some way. The eponymous characters of “Guiamar” and

10 I here refer to the Welsh Culhwch ac Olwen , often regarded as the earliest

Arthurian quest story having been composed in the early eleventh century. However, in his article “The Date and Authorship of Culhwch ac Olwen : a reassessment,” Simon

Rodway dates the text to the late twelfth century, suggesting it to be contemporaneous with the works of Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes. I wish not to engage in this debate here as it is irrelevant; regardless of dating, the quest­reliant plots of all three of these examples do depend on the heteronormative necessity of reproduction in a chivalric context, while the genre as a whole places enormous emphasis on lineage as discussed in the previous chapter.

24 “Janual” as well as the male lover in “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” are transported to queer realms that mirror their own respective sexual flaws. Through this queer translatio , their chivalric shortcomings are reconciled in three very different ways. Guiamar learns how to perform heteronormative sexuality and becomes a superb knight, Janual remains in his queer utopia where he is free of his masculine obligation and no longer interferes with the chivalric narrative, and “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” ends in tragedy, warning what occurs when a promising young nobleman is offered the opportunity to correct his disruptive sexuality but opts not to do so.

“Spontaneous conflation”: compounding othered identities

Spatial translatio is a convenient way for the medieval author to rationalize queerness.

Physical separation allows the reader to satisfy their curiosity towards divergence from a safe distance. Michael Uebel explores medieval treatment of the other through a study of literary depictions of Islam, which he calls the epitome of “alterity” in the era of the

Crusades (26). Uebel states:

[Alterity] was not always reducible to the terms of the self­same...

Perceptions of the same in the different gave way to perceptions of the

different in the same… The transformative power of otherness reveals

the extent to which social and individual bodies continually interchange

with the world across porous boundaries. (1)

The term “alterity” is here exceptionally appropriate due to its invocation of translatio ; alterity is not just the other, but specifically that which has been altered or transformed in some way in order to become the other. Thus, the original is privileged over the

25 altered. In reality, however, this transformation does not always occur. Rather, it is perceived to occur by normative society, implying that the other cannot exist naturally, but only through a metamorphosis of corruption, seduction, temptation, or perversion.

This lens of transformation is the coping mechanism by which normative institutions acknowledge the existence of the other exclusively through comparison, thereby allotting the other a status of inferiority to the original. The resulting “ritual subordination of the stranger” also applies well to queer bodies (Uebel 3). Indeed, sexual alterity is frequently conflated with various othered identities in medieval literature.

By associating queerness with non­Western culture, medieval writers compartmentalize subversive sexuality into a stigmatized space where it can be contained and examined from afar, all the while pushing a religious and ethnocentric agenda by depicting non­Christians as queer. Bill Burgwinkle points out that

“sodomites” are often recognizable in medieval literature through several other characteristics, including “indeterminate gender, a weak will or disposition, foreign ethnicity, social origins, or particular physical traits” (Burgwinkle, Sodomy 154). These associations occur in both directions; Uebel highlights a number of sexually deviant traits that demonize Muslim characters in medieval texts, including insatiable sexual desire, powers of seduction, deviation from monogamy, and homosexuality (30).

Gregory S. Hutcheson explores this phenomenon further through the literature of medieval Iberia, in which Islam was an extremely prevalent theme due to the Moorish occupation. He cites Hrotsvitha’s tenth century Passion of Pelagius , in which

26 11 “sodomitic vice” is heavily associated with “idolatry” (101). In the Passion , the tainted body of a sodomitic, pedophilic, and lustful caliph serves as the perfect foil to the holy body of a young, virgin, Christian Pelagius (Hutcheson 101). Depicting the caliph as sexually queer also highlights his religious and ethnic “queerness.” As a non­Western invader, the caliph is duly unwelcome in an upstanding Spanish society. With regard to the literature of the Reconquista as a whole, Hutcheson states: “the Saracen is at the very least implicitly sodomitic, less by reputation or as a result of empirical evidence than because he is already essentially evil, already subject to the spontaneous conflation in medieval moralistic discourse of idolatry, sorcery, treachery, and sexual perversion”

(102). This era of Iberian history as a whole can be described allegorically as queer. Not only was Spain penetrated by a military force, but Spain was penetrated by a foreign, non­Christian entity through these alleged powers of sexual treachery and magic.

It is all too easy to conflate the unfamiliar into a single grotesque, monstrous other when subjugation and fear are the primary motivators. Hence, there is very little nuance in medieval depictions of alterity. Reflecting again on Alain de Lille’s association of queerness with a foreign and pagan deity, it is quite apparent that the queer, the foreign, and the non­Christian— whether Muslim or pagan— are functionally interchangeable in coded medieval discussions of alterity, or, at the very least, are stigmatized compoundly to the point where both queer and non­Christian or

11 In this particular instance, “idolatry” is taken to mean any non­Christian religion. Which religion, whether Islam or some form of paganism, is somewhat irrelevant due to the medieval tendency to lump othered identities together, as will be discussed later in this paragraph.

27 non­Western bodies occupy the same subjugated liminal sphere. Thus, queerness becomes a geographically foreign trait, and that which is foreign to Western society becomes queer by association.

Utopias: compartmentalizing diversity with fantasy

The other is often confined to a liminal space at the edges of the accessible world, or even beyond. When this occurs, two different hypothetical utopias are created. The first is the space purged of the other, entirely normalized. The second occurs when some liminal space is occupied exclusively by the other. Free from the institutions of a normalized society, this sphere becomes utopic to the marginalized beings that occupy it. Michael Uebel discusses the role of fantasy and utopias in particular as a literary reaction to the trauma of the Crusades. He suggests that literary fantasy was used to cope with the introduction of the “oriental” other in a society which lacked an outlet for

12 its desire for variety, adventure, and diversity (Uebel 5). W ithin the framework of fantasy, insecurity with the other is channeled into exoticism and fetishization (Uebel 5).

However, Uebel proposes that fantasy also benefits othered bodies to some degree.

According to him, fantasy creates a secondary utopia in which the other is no longer

12 I would like to note that while Uebel is perhaps justified in using the term

“oriental” for the sake of capturing the relationship between medieval Europe and the rest of the world, I personally find the term rather distasteful in a modern scholarly context due to the hegemonic implication it carries. Hence, I quote his use of the word here to retain his own intentions, but will use the term “non­Western” in my own writing.

28 subject to the perceptions of society and, at least temporarily within the given space, is no longer subject to the stress of being othered (Uebel 3). Although such a model facilitates a kind of segregation, this compartmentalization has the potential to benefit both parties in a society unwelcoming of alterity. The creation of fantasies in general provides space for reinvention and self­critique in both normative society and othered bodies (Uebel 4). This indeed occurs in the Strengleikar , in which fantastic realms and queer utopias are to correct sexually problematic characters in one way or another.

Uebel’s theory of mutually advantageous segregation leading to a utopia of the other does not hold up, however. While the queer “utopias” in the Strengleikar certainly allow for reinvention through translatio , the effect is always normalizing rather than queering, hence propagating the very oppression the othered “utopia” seeks to overcome.

Imaginary spaces are especially effective in harboring queerness. Fantastic realms not subject to the rules of nature are likewise unobliged to respect the reproductive aspect of medieval sexuality. In order for these utopias to function as they are intended to, however, there must be a spatial, and thus cultural, break with the tangible world (Uebel 5). This raises questions concerning the metaphysics of fantasy, especially with regard to the Strengleikar : are utopias always invented, or can a real­world location be deemed a utopia? The postcolonial interpretation of non­Western lands is constructed from preconceived notions conjured up from the hostility of the

Crusades,.Thus, non­Western countries certainly become realms of fantasy in that they are constructed primarily through imagination and falsities. In the introduction to her edition of the Lais , Claire M. Waters points out that the Lais place heavy emphasis on landscape and geography, yet this geography is rather loosely enforced (23). Indeed, the

29 line between real and imagined locales is poorly defined. In “Guigemar,” “Lanval,” and

“Yonec,” as well as their Norse counterparts and the ljóð “Grelent” (not found in

Marie’s collection of lais ), characters travel to kingdoms that appear to be geographically existent, yet these locales are clearly realms of fantasy. “Janual” offers a brief yet telling explanation of the utopia featured in the ljóð . Avalon, described as “hin fridasta ey i heiminu m ” [the most beautiful island in the world] is simultaneously foreign and fantastic, inconceivably perfect yet spatially tangible (Cook and Tveitane

226). Whether crossing the sea on a boat, groping one’s way through a pitch­black cave, or fording a river on horseback, some means of travel is required to reach the liminal spaces that become queer utopias, whether seemingly extant or clearly imaginary.

Distance from the immediately tangible world is what allows a given setting to become utopically queer; there is no need to differentiate between the extant and the imagined as translatio is a requirement regardless. Spatial travel, whether geographic or metaphysical, is an act of translatio ultimately leading to some type of transformation within the traveler. This is true of characters that become situated in a fantastic utopia,

13 as well as when a character, or perhaps a text, becomes framed by the new culture of a non­utopic foreign land.

Classifying the asexual knight

“Guiamar,” “Janual,” and “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” all feature protagonists with a notable knightly shortcoming; all three are asexual to some extent. Of course, like other

13 Translatio and the cultural framing of literature is discussed further in the conclusion of this thesis.

30 queer sexualities, asexuality did not function medievally as a sexual identity like it does today. There is very limited discussion of asexuality in medieval literature, with a notable exception; Sarah Salih identifies the holy virgin as a category of (a)sexual identity in the Middle Ages (126). She also states that men, as sexual subjects rather than sexual objects, are not categorized sexually in the same way that women are (Salih

126). This creates a paradoxical sexual category: the male virgin. The male virgin is not only queer because of his disruption of natural reproduction; this is a sexual identity that contradicts itself in its self­categorization. Unlike other sexual categories, the male virgin constitutes a sexual identity in medieval society because this identity, normally taken up for religious reasons in medieval literature, is performative, while other examples of queerness are not. Cassandra Rhodes, examining the performative aspects of male virginity in medieval texts, suggests that female virginity is discussed exclusively in bodily terms, while the virginity of male saints is intertwined with various other aspects of their lives, making their celibacy a true sexual identity (16).

Furthermore, male chastity is an inherent right when in a holy context. While female saints often have to resist sexual violence to preserve their virginity, male saints rarely have to protect their chastity in any way; if they do, it is simply by rejecting suitors

(Rhodes 25). Yet outside of a saintly context, is male virginity still an identity and a right? Guiamar, Janual, and the unnamed male lover of “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” are noblemen, but certainly not saints. While they do face threats to their celibacy in the form of suitors, their abstentions from sex is not performative and thus unacceptable as a sexual identity. Their lack of sexuality is disruptive without adequate cause, and is therefore detrimental to their knighthood.

31 The knight who is inherently queer— that is, the knight who does not engage in heterosexuality out of sexual preference rather than for religious purity— is unusual in the medieval corpus. Peggy McCracken highlights the only three knights described as chaste in Arthurian tradition, all found in the Vulgate Cycle: Perceval, Galahad, and

Bors. Unlike the asexual knights of the Strengleikar , these three knights do not appear deficient in their knightly duties due to their lack of sexuality; in fact, they are said to be the best knights in Arthur’s court (McCracken, “Chaste Subjects” 127). These three chaste knights are portrayed specifically in grail romances, a subtype of the quest narrative in which knights are rewarded with access to God instead of a woman

(McCracken, “Chaste Subjects” 126). This story type disrupts the typical narrative of most romances, perhaps in order to accommodate the archetype of the holy chaste knight. The chaste knight is disruptive of the romance genre and the heteronormative framework of chivalry as a whole; by electing not to reproduce, these knights interrupt the networks of power that rely on lineage. However, because of their religious justification, the genre is willing to accommodate the privileged holy virgin with the grail romance narrative, and their knighthood is not considered queer in any way.

The asexual men of Strengleikar are very different from the three virgin knights of the Vulgate Cycle. Their asexuality does not appear to be elective, but rather a truly inherent sexual preference. Interestingly, of the aforementioned chaste knights, Perceval is the only one to express sexual temptation (McCracken Chaste Subjects 128). This is not to say that Galahad and Bors are inherently asexual, however. In a Christian context, one must assume that chastity is taken up as a holy feat given the extensive corpus of elective male virgins and the lack thereof with regard to inherently asexual men. Hence,

32 the innately asexual men in the ljóð in question are enigmas within the genre. While

Perceval, Galahad, and Bors choose not to reproduce for religious reasons, Guiamar,

Janual, and the lover are unable to produce because they lack the sexual desire to do so.

The chaste knights of the Vulgate Cycle able to function as successful knights in the grail romances of the Vulgate Cycle, but the innate asexuality of the three knights in the

Strengleikar leave them queer within the genre.

Chivalric defect: queer knights of the Strengleikar

“Guiamar” is the translation of the Anglo­Norman “Guigamar.” After an encounter with an otherworldly deer, the eponymous knight is whisked away to a mysterious land where he has a passionate affair with a maiden held captive by her jealous husband.

Guiamar is described as supremely talented in all knightly feats, yet “þat var undarlegst i h ans natturu at hann hafnaðe vandlega kono m at un n a” [it was most wondrous in his nature that he completely forgoes loving women] (Cook and Tveitane 12). Guiamar’s distaste for the love of women is clearly not a choice. There is no indication as to whether Guiamar is attracted to men, but speculating on this matter is irrelevant here;

Guiamar’s sexuality is disruptive in a chivalric context because of his inability to reproduce and uphold his lineage. The term “undarligr” implies that Guiamar’s lack of sexuality is enigmatic, exceptional, and even otherworldly; his asexual nature transcends the heteronormative framework of reproduction. Ambiguous syntax in the

Anglo­Norman equivalent of this line forces the Norse translator to make a choice regarding the explanation of Guiamar’s sexuality. In “Guigemar,” Marie’s phrasing might suggest that nature committed a mistake in creating Guigemar, or that Guigemar

33 14 transgresses nature himself. While the lai may emphasize the fact that his asexuality disrupts natural reproduction, the ljóð instead draws attention to the fact that Guiamar’s asexuality is innate rather than elective, and thus queer.

“Janual” concerns a knight who becomes involved with a mysterious fairy lover.

When he rebukes King Arthur’s queen (here unnamed) for her sexual advances, the queen accuses him of partaking in sodomy and Janual is put on trial for insulting her.

Unfortunately, the first 153 lines of “Janual” are lost due to an absent leaf, but as the remainder of the text follows the Anglo­Norman lais especially loyally, one can reasonably look to Marie’s lai for a description of Janual’s character that might encode his sexuality. Lanval is described as an outcast, disliked by his fellow knights and neglected by Arthur. He is also described as a foreigner from a very distant land ( Marie de France, “Lanval” l. 30). He is disliked by his fellow knights and neglected by his lord

Arthur, who offers him neither land nor a wife (Marie de France, “Lanval” ll. 17­18). As a result, he becomes anxious, depressed, lonely, and poor. All of these defects compound with one another to queer his chivalric masculinity.

14 “ De tant i out mespris nature” ( Marie de France, “Guigemar” 57). Bill

Burgwinkle proposes the following possible implications:

Nature made a mistake when she made him

Nature transgressed her own laws

Nature failed him

Guigemar had so transgressed against Nature

Guigemar had so failed in his duty to Nature

Guigemar had so disdained Nature ( Sodomy 141).

34 “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” appears to be a tale of forbidden love on its surface. An overprotective king insists that any suitor of his daughter must be able to carry her up a wondrously tall mountain without resting before the suitor can marry her. When the daughter falls in love with one of the king’s young courtiers, the two come up with a scheme to overcome the king’s challenge. Although this lover is not explicitly called a knight, he nonetheless fits into the framework of chivalric society in a knightly sense.

He is described as a “Svnr eins dyrlegs man nz, friðr ok vel mannaðr yvir all aðra… oft lengi i k onungs hirð” [son of a nobleman, handsome and well mannered above all others… regularly in the king’s retinue] (Cook and Tveitane 162). Though he is not a knight, he is perhaps on track to become one, and is certainly expected to follow a course of chivalric virtue because of his noble lineage. “Tveggja elskanda ljóð” follows the narrative of a marriage­quest narrative quite neatly, in which the central character is typically a knight. Hence, despite not being called a knight, the lover occupies the same archetype as Guiamar and Janual.

Like the two knights, the lover is flawed in masculine characteristics that reflect his sexual shortcomings. When the boy suggests attempting the king’s trial, his lover tells him “ec veit at visu at ei getr þu borit mic, þvi at þu ert ei sva craftugr ne aflugr”

[“I know certainly that you cannot carry me, because you are not so strong nor mighty”]

(Cook and Tveitane 162). Furthermore, she warns her lover that when he asks the king to attempt the trial, the king will call him “bernscan” [childish] (Cook and Tveitane

164). Despite apparently being old enough to marry and serve in the king’s court, the narrator supports the maiden’s perspective by repeatedly referring to the lover as

“sveininn” [the boy]. The lover’s apparent youth and lack of fully grown strength

35 implies that he has not yet developed into a masculine role in society neither socially nor sexually. Though he expresses clear interest in women, the boy’s implied virginity would soon become queer if left intact; it therefore needs to be resolved promptly.

Anxiety of lack: Guiamar’s corrective translatio

With regard to constructing fantasy realms, Uebel points out that utopias are founded on an anxiety of lack; through utopias, something missing can be acquired (6). In the case of the queer realms of the Strengleikar , this lacking is sexual. Although sexual correction is sometimes manifested tangibly, such as the potion in “Tveggja elskanda ljóð,” these are merely symbols for the normative sexualities acquired by their possessors. In all three stories, some liminal space seems to become a utopia for the protagonist by exempting the queer character from heteronormative society. However, the translatio of traveling to these utopic realms is employed to address the sexual disruption caused by the protagonists; queer “utopias” are actually an attempt to correct their lack of normative sexual desire.

When Guiamar first travels to his fantasy realm, it does not appear to be a utopia at all. However, this liminal space later proves to provide exactly what is needed to remedy the knight’s queerness. H. Marshall Leicester reads Guigemar’s journey to the otherworld as “the abstraction into romance of what might otherwise be, say, a story about a problem of feudal succession and the provision of an heir” (137). Leicester recognizes the importance of normal reproduction in chivalric lineage and identifies the necessity of Guigemar’s utopic translatio . His comment corresponds with Uebel’s

36 aforementioned suggestion of the fantasy genre as compartmentalization of the other, and emphasizes the significance of Guigemar’s sexual disruption within the genre.

Guiamar’s journey of translatio begins on a hunting trip. Guiamar attempts to shoot a deer running through the forest with her calf. The deer called is a “kollo” [doe] but sports a single antler at the center of her head (Cook and Tveitane 14). When the arrow magically rebounds and breaches Guiamar’s thigh after hitting the doe, it becomes apparent that she is a physical manifestation of his own sexuality. The deer is capable of reproduction as evidenced by her calf, but nevertheless queer as signified by her antler. Furthermore, the homosexually dissonant image of the phallic arrow penetrating close to his genitals endangers his natural ability to procreate and highlights the urgency of his situation. The deer speaks, telling Guiamar that his wound can only be healed by a lover who is willing to suffer immensely for his love. The wound forces him to retreat to a nearby ship, which ferries him to his utopia. This boatride is the act of spatial translatio that enables Guiamar’s sexual transformation, traversing the break with reality that qualifies the kingdom he travels to as a utopia. There is little to suggest that the place he arrives at is not real, yet the kingdom is clearly not governed by the laws of natural reproduction; hence, it is indeed fantastic. Upon arrival, Guiamar is greeted by an unnamed maiden kept imprisoned by her old husband. Presumably, their marriage does not function as a reproductively sexual relationship. There is no mention of sex or children. The maiden is guarded by a priest who is “or ollu m likams losta”

15 [beyond all bodily lust] (Cook and Tveitane, 19). The kingdom is a queer utopia that

15 It is worth noting that the Anglo­Norman text describes the priest as a eunuch:

“les plus bas membres out perduz” (Marie de France, “Guigamar” l. 257).

37 embodies Guiamar’s asexuality, yet turns out to be the place where Guiamar will undergo his sexual translatio and develop a desire for women.

The maiden nurses Guiamar back to health, fulfilling the prophecy set by the deer and locking the two lovers into an ill­fated relationship. Only after a year and a half, during which Guiamar enters into a sexual relationship with the lady, can he return home and leave his lover behind in the strange kingdom. He demonstrates his newfound knightly virtue and sexual prowess when the two are discovered by the lady’s husband.

Guiamar, wielding a curtain rod to fight him off, finally fulfills the phallic image of the the sword­wielding knight fighting to protect his prize. Having validated his heterosexuality and masculinity, Guiamar’s sexuality is transformed from queer to normative, and he is finally able to fulfill his knightly duties.

The two give each other parting gifts in order to preserve their love— for

Guiamar, a shirt with a knot tied in it, and for the maiden, a belt. Both can only be undone by the other lover. Leicester points out that this shirt gives Guiamar (or

Guigemar, to Leicester) an excuse to continue living without sex just as he did before, but without exterior pressure to marry and reproduce (138). Nonetheless, Guiamar’s corrected sexuality proves to take hold: after the lady is kidnapped, Guiamar rescues her, completing the arc of the quest narrative and achieving honor and lineage.

Banishing the queer to Avalon in “Janual”

In “Janual,” queerness is not corrected per se. Instead, it is simply expelled permanently through an act of translatio — that of Janual’s departure to a queer utopia from which he does not return. However, in “Janual,” the utopia initially travels to the knight. The

38 relief of Janual’s reproductive duties begin with the introduction of his fairy lover.

Again referring to “Lanval” due to the missing lines of “Janual,” the lover is introduced as beautiful. However, far more attention is paid to her material possessions:

La reine Semiramis,

Quant ele ot unkes plus aveir

E plus pussaunce e plus saveir,

Ne l’emperere Octovien

N’esligasent le destre pan.

Un aigle d’or ot desus mis;

De cel ne sai dire le pris,

Ne des cordes ne des peissuns

Que del tref tienent les giruns;

Suz ciel n’ad rei ki[s] esligast

Pur nul aver k’il i donast.

[Not Queen Semiramis

when she had her greatest wealth

and greatest power and greatest wisdom

nor the emperor Octavian

could have bought the right flap.

An eagle of gold was set on top;

of its value I cannot say

nor of the cords nor of the stakes

which held the sides of the tent

39 no king under heaven could buy them

for any wealth he might offer.] (Marie de France, “Lanval” 82­92)

Rich depictions of her fine clothing and rich bedding follow suit (Marie de France,

“Lanval ll. 97­103). She also provides Lanval with excessive wealth, which Arthur is unable to do. Thus the relationship between Lanval and his lover is not just sexual; she also becomes his lord in a sense. In doing so, she mirror’s Lanval’s own queerness by taking on a masculine role and establishing a corrective utopia for him, fulfilling his lack of money and companionship.

Both Janual and his lover are foreigners to Arthur’s kingdom that defy gender roles. However, while Janual is deficient in his masculinity, the lover exceeds her femininity with her ample wealth and power. Indeed, Leicester points out the lai demonstrates a marked interest in female power and stresses her independence and rulership over Janual (Lanval to Leicester) despite the overt objectivation of her body and Janual’s extreme sexual desire for her (150). Indeed, although the lover may seem to be an object of masculine desire, the sexual relationship is dictated exclusively by her terms. She tells Janual that she will only appear in places where one might “fin n a un n asto sina ropláust ok amælis fra man n a augsyn” [meet his lover without reproach and criticism away from the sight of people] (Cook and Tveitane 214). Their relationship must be confined to a clandestine sphere that can function as the spatial manifestation of a queer utopia. By taking the dominant role in their relationship, the lover perverts the broken lord­knight relationship between Arthur and Janual while providing Janual relief of his masculine duties. Thus, the lover introduces Janual to a

40 queer utopia where the natural order of gender does not apply and Janual is free of his masculine sexual obligations.

When Janual rejects the queen’s advances, she accuses him of homosexuality.

This is the most natural way for the queen to sully Janual’s reputation, as his character already carries strong connotations of queerness. The event also draws attention to the actual queerness of Janual’s sexual circumstances— his lack of a reproductive relationship— as well as circumstances that may be perceived as queer from the perspective of other characters within the text who are not aware of his lover. Janual replies to the queen’s advances: “fru min kvað h ann mæl ecki slict. vist ei licar mér ast

þin ne un n a yðr. Hvarki sacar þin kvað h ann ne astar þocca þins. vil ec vera svicare. ne suivirðing herra mins” [“my lady,” he said. “Don’t say such words. I certainly do not want your love, nor do I love you. Neither for your sake,” he said, “nor for the sake of your affection will I be a deceiver or a disgrace to my lord”] (Cook and Tveitane 216). It appears that Janual is expressing loyalty to Arthur, unwilling to engage in adultery with his wife. At this point in the ljóð , however, Arthur has neglected Janual and there is little reason for Janual to uphold his commitment. Janual’s true lord is his lover, whom he does not want to betray with adultery.

Janual’s translatio develops further as he spends time with his lover. The knight eventually begins to desire his lover so much that the strength of his obsession seems magical: “sira Janual gec c ser ein n saman ok licaðe h on um ei at kan n azc við drotni n genga ne meyiar hen n ar Settiz mioc fiarre þeim. Ok langaðe h ann þa mioc eftir vn n asto sin n i at kyssa hana ok halsfaðma ok leica við hana” [Sir Janual went alone and he did not like to be familiar with the queen nor her maidens. He sat down very far from

41 them and longed much for his lover, to kiss her and embrace her and play with her]

(Cook and Tveitane 216). He grows reclusive and becomes even more of a stranger than he already was, and is ultimately left depressed and suicidal when his lover withholds her visits after Janual tells the queen about her (Cook and Tveitane 222). The knight’s constant longing is not mere lust; Janual prefers to occupy the utopic realm of his lover, where he is free of the expectations of his gender. Finally, at the conclusion of Janual’s trial— his final mortal obligation and the zenith of all hostilities raised against him by a heteronormative court— his lover reappears to whisk the knight away to Avalon: “reið hon með ho n um til eyiar þe ir rar er ualun heitir... þagat var tekinn sa hinn ungi maðr.

Siðan fra engi maðr til h ans . ok fir ir þui kan n ec ecki lengra telia yðr fra þeim” [she rode with him to the island called Avalon… the young man was taken thither. Since then no man has ever [seen or heard] of him, and therefore I can tell you no more about them] (Cook and Tveitane 226). As Leicester points out, it initially appears that the knight is escaping a world too morally devoid for his unabound love and loyalty to his lover (160). However, Avalon is actually the manifestation of the queer utopia that his lover gradually introduced to him throughout the ljóð, where Janual can exist without reproductive obligations and his queerness does not offend a chivalric society.

Words of warning: failed sexual translatio in “Tveggja Elskanda Ljóð”

“Tveggja elskanda ljóð” depicts a utopia very similar to that found in “Guiamar,” which quarantines queerness to correct the sexuality of the protagonist. In an effort to remedy the boy’s shortcomings, his lover sends him to Salerno, where an aunt of hers can cure

42 him with potions. This element of magic fantasizes its associated geographically existent location, allowing the aunt’s house to function as a corrective utopia:

sem hon hafðe yuir séét bræuit. þa mællti ho n at svein n in n skylldi dveliaz

með hen n i til þess er hon hafðe reynt alla meðferð h ans . ok styrcti hon

h ann þa með læcni n gum ok fec c h onu m þesskonar dryc c at alldre verð

h ann abergir þeim dryc c þa fær h ann þegar fullkomin n styrc ok fullgort

megion ok allt afl. [When she had overlooked the letter, then she said that

the boy should stay with her until she had tested his entire condition, and

then she made him strong with medicines and got him such type of drink

that never would he become so exhausted that [the potion] would not

thence get him perfect strength, full power, and all might]. (Cook and

Tveitane 164)

While in Salerno, the boy seems to have his sexual awakening. The aunt’s method of

“testing his entire condition” is perhaps sexually suggestive, bringing the boy into the strength of a fully grown, sexually active man.

The boy’s magically acquired fertility is carried over into the real world in the form of the potion that he brings back, giving him a choice: having experienced normative sexuality and masculinity, he can either leave this experience behind in

Salerno, or take the potion during the trial and enable himself to marry, retaining his ability to reproduce in his home realm. Although the lover has undergone a spatial translatio , his sexual translatio is dependent on his own willingness to accept his reproductive responsibility. The boy— who, notably, continues to be referred to as

“sveinninn” even after his journey— chooses not to take the potion, and dies while

43 attempting to carry his lover up the mountain. His death is described with sexually charged language:

ran n hiarta h ans allt or h onu m. ok la h ann þar þa svabuit sprungin n …

Hon kærðe þa dauða h ans . með havo ope. ok kastaðe þegar keralldeno

frá sér er drycren n var i. ok ran n drycren n or ok dreifðizc uiða v m fiallit.

Sva at allt þ at fylki bæt t iz af þui fyr ir þui . at þar ſvn n uz morg goð gros

siðan er morgvm mon n um bættiz er af drvcku þeim dryc c .

[All his heart flowed from him, and he lay there, dead and having

bursted… [The maiden] then mourned his death with a loud scream, and

thence threw from herself the container which the potion was in. The

drink spilled and spread wide over the mountain, so that all people

benefited from this, because many good plants appeared there, which

cured many men who drank their juice.] (Cook and Tveitane 166)

The potion signifying the boy’s fertile seed makes the mountain lush with plants that

“cured many men” and “all people benefited from this.” Perhaps these plants are agents of fertility, curing impotency. The lover has sabotaged his sexual translatio . However, in doing so, he possibly enhances the sexuality of the entire kingdom. The death of the virgin boy is reminiscent of the aforementioned chaste knight archetype. Although his asexuality remains intact, his queerness makes his martyrdom all the more impactful.

Conclusions: queerness of travel

Medieval literature demonstrates a tendency to conflate various subjugated identities.

Thus, queerness is often associated with the foreign. The spatial construction of the

44 other allows medieval literature to employ utopias as a method of exploring othered identities while simultaneously oppressing them. Although utopias can sometimes be beneficial for both normalized and othered bodies, the Strengleikar employs queer utopias in an attempt to somehow reconcile the queerness of the protagonists of

“Guiamar,” “Janual,” and “Tveggja Elskanda Ljóð.”

The protagonists of these three ljóð are all characterized as sexually lacking through their flawed chivalry. The sexual category of the inherently asexual knight is unique to the Strengleikar (and the Lais ); although there are other knights in the

Arthurian tradition who do not partake in sex, they are precluded from queerness because their chastity is religious in nature. Thus, the genre is willing to accommodate these knights, but not the asexual knights of the Strengleikar . Therefore, the asexuality of these three characters must somehow be “corrected” within the text.

The translatio of journeys to queer utopias result in three different types of sexual translatio across the three ljóð . Guiamar’s visit to his kingdom of asexuality is a method of sexual correction. He engages in a heterosexual relationship and becomes reproductive, fulfilling the expectations of masculinity and chivalry within the genre and proving his knighthood accordingly by completing a quest to save his maiden. After being slowly introduced by his fairy lover to a queer utopia in which he is free of his gendered sexual obligations, Janual is permanently transported to Avalon. Queerness in this ljóð is remedied by banishing queerness to a designated utopia where Janual´s shortcomings will no longer disrupt heteronormative society society. Finally, “Tveggja

Elskanda Ljóð” is a cautionary tale, warning against the temptation of leading a life that does not contribute to natural reproduction. The aunt’s magical powers of sexual

45 translatio are contingent on the boy’s own decision­making. Although he has the opportunity to “cure” his virginity by taking the potion, he opts not to. Thus, the boy becomes a virgin martyr, sacrificing the fulfillment of his sexual gender role to afford the opportunity to other men in the kingdom.

The protagonists of the three ljóð all undergo a sexual translatio reflected by a spatial act of translatio . Although translatio is the cause of initial alterity, sexual or otherwise, it is here used to “unqueer,” not queer. However, the sexualities of the three knights nonetheless remain queer even after their transformations, as they are altered from their naturally unnatural state. The spatial division of normative and queer sexuality in these three ljóð exemplifies the conflation of the queer and the geographically foreign, and furthermore demonstrate how any act of translatio can be queer in its disruption of medieval institutions.

46 3. Gay Werewolves:

The Queerness of Shapeshifting

Chapter 1 recalled a certain passage in Njáls saga in which Skarpheðinn insults Flosi by throwing knickers at him and suggesting that Flosi is the recipient of sex from a troll every ninth night. It is not quite enough for Skarpheðinn to accuse Flosi of homosexuality; an accusation of engaging in sex with a monster is even more insulting.

Monsters and beasts are frequently associated with subversive sexuality in medieval society. The sexual queerness of non­human bodies stem from the fact that these bodies queer humanity to various extents. The shapeshifter is a unique type of body, in that it is both monstrous and bestial. The translatio undergone by shapeshifting bodies queers the spectrum of humanity by transcending the boundaries between human, monster, and beast. The ljóð “Bisclaret” and “Jonet” both feature shapeshifting knights whose transforming bodies undergo a queer translatio . In addition, their metamorphosis cause queer transformation in the gender and sexuality of characters they interact with.

The “sliding scale”: monsters as queer bodies

Monsters are a universally prevalent motif, transcending area, epoch, genre, and medium. Yet, one might ask, what exactly does the term “monster” entail? Amanda

Griffin views monstrosity as a product of metamorphosis— yet another type of translatio — that results in the creation of an “unnatural” being (22). In the context of medieval literature, Dana Oswald suggests that the very existence of monsters places humanity on a “sliding scale”; monsters are hybrid creatures that blur the line between animal and human, occupying the middle of this scale (3­4). By disturbing the

47 dichotomy of human and non­human, monsters force an audience to reflect on their own humanity as well as the humanity of other human and non­human bodies around them.

This causes a certain type of panic or insecurity, driven by fear of monstrosity or queerness. The uncanniness of monstrosity is achieved through the unsettling of a generally accepted binary between dominant human bodies and subjugated non­human bodies; thus, the ensuing fear is identical to that which occurs as a reaction to the introduction of any sort of othered identity into socially institutionalized spaces or

16 societies.

Medieval depictions of monstrosity, like those of other forms of alterity discussed by Uebel, maintain distance to satisfy curiosity and thrill the audience without actually exposing them to the othered entity in question. Uebel indeed proposes monstrosity as a type of alterity, citing monsters as a permutation of the utopic impulse.

He claims that in order for one’s mind to conceive a monster, one must deviate from natural thought and subsequently identify and compartmentalize the product (Uebel 5).

Oswald supports Uebel’s claim, suggesting that because of humanity’s simultaneous fascination and repulsion towards monstrosity, monsters are contained by literature:

“through practices of erasure, the text allows both distance and proximity to the monstrous, standing in as a kind of protection for the viewer or reader that enables safe indulgence in the pleasure provided by the monstrous form” (Oswald 2). The practice outlined here is an example of the subjugating mental process of translatio discussed in

16 Of course, fears such as homophobia, transphobia, and Islamophobia are not identified in medieval sources, but such sentiments are nonetheless present in medieval society and stem from this very same fear of the unknown.

48 the previous chapter by which normative institutions simultaneously acknowledge and confine the other in order to fetishize and oppress it.

Due to the psychological compartmentalization of alterity, medieval sources describe a variety of othered bodies as monstrous in a process of conflation. Muslims, as the most significant other in medieval society, are often associated with the antichrist, dog­men, demons, and other monstrous beings (Uebel 26­27). Queerness is likewise conflated with monstrosity in the medieval corpus, as in John of Salisbury’s twelfth century Policraticus :

In truth those who have such [same­sex] inclinations and desires are

half­beast. They have shed the desirable element, their humanity, and in

the sphere of conduct are made themselves like unto monsters. From

levity to lewdness, from lewdness to lust, and finally, when hardened,

they are drawn into every type of infamy and lawlessness. (18)

Referring again to the thirteenth century Laws of Gulaþing in order to supply an example adjacent to the Strengleikar , níð [sexual insult] is defined as follows: “Ef maðr mælir um annan þat er eigi ma væra. ne verða ok eigi hever verit. Kveðr hann væra kono niundu nott hveria. oc hever barn boret. oc kallar gylvin” [if a man says about another man that which cannot be, nor become, nor has been: says he is a woman every ninth night, or has birthed a child, or calls him “gylfin”] (Keyser and Munch 70). “Gylfin ” is a rare and poorly defined word, but Sørensen takes it to mean “monster” or possibly even

“werewolf” (15­16). A man is not literally a woman every ninth night; he takes the passive role in sex every ninth night. The concept of níð as a whole is not accusing a man of being a woman; the gendered statements are insulting because they accuse a man of

49 acting as a woman, in a sexual context or otherwise, which queers the medieval gender binary. Accusations of monstrosity belong on this list because monstrosity also implies a certain queerness that disturbs the binary of human and beast. This law simultaneously evokes images of queerness and monstrosity, clarifying their mutually offending quality of hybridity.

Monstrosity is to humanity as queerness is to heteronormativity; although the former can exist without the latter, a structure of comparison is used to subjugate the former. Thus, queerness and monstrosity are especially easy to conflate. Many medieval sources, such as the aforementioned Njáls saga , sexualize monstrous bodies in a way that perpetuates their queerness. Oswald notes that monsters expand the “catalog” of sexual possibility in the Middle Ages, as seen in Skarpheðinn’s declaration of Flosi having sex with a troll (11). Indeed, monstrosity adds the additional dimension of humanity to the spectrums of gender and sexuality, and monsters cannot engage in normative sexuality because of their inherently queer bodies.

Sexualizing the bodies of gendered monsters further augments their fearsomeness by compounding the threats of monstrosity and queerness in a single body. The male monster often desires excessive pleasure, while the female monster desires reproduction (Oswald 13). These traits pervert perceived human gender roles and introduce the threat of necessarily queer sex between a human and non­human entity. Furthermore, a monster’s lack of humanity prevents it from exercising sexual control or respecting the power structures of both humanity and gender. This threat of sexual violence is perceived as dangerous on an institutional level as a threat to human, masculine, and heteronormative dominance, and on a personal level as the fear of sexual

50 assault. Oswald further points out that monsters often transgress gender roles, such as the self­governing masecticized Amazons of classical myth (7). The monstrous body is not bound by nature as its very existence is already defiant; thus, it can disregard gender.

Just like queer bodies and other types of previously discussed othered bodies, the monster unsettles hegemonic medieval institutions, becoming terrifying in its disregard for gendered and sexual power dynamics. As a result, the queerness of monstrous bodies is especially threatening to heteronormative sexuality.

Because monsters vary in their degrees of humanity, their perceived threat to heteronormative sexuality likewise varies. Monster theory, like queer theory, makes order out of chaos, yet by definition must be imperfect in order to be inclusive of marginalized bodies. Even so, shapeshifters push the boundaries of monstrosity; this aspect of liminality compounds their monstrosity and queerness even further. Oswald identifies three categories of monstrous bodies: those that are more than human, those that are less than human, and those that are human with the addition some other element not intrinsic to an individual human body (6). Even within the limits of monstrosity, the degree of monstrosity varies in relation to humanity, which is in turn reflected in sexuality. Shapeshifters do not neatly fit into one of these three types, as they are simultaneously human, monster, and beast. Therefore, although their sexual habits are always innately queer due to the queerness of monstrous bodies, they vary depending on the shapeshifter’s shape at the time of a given occurence of sexuality.

As previously stated, the bodies of shapeshifters are monstrous because of their disruption of the human­beast binary and their threat to human dominance. This raises the question of whether shapeshifting bodies are bound to the sexual standards of human

51 or non­humans. The shapeshifters of Strengleikar are somewhat unique in this regard.

Thomas Schneider points out that the Lais (and thus the Strengleikar ) have been influenced by a certain element of twelfth century philosophy, which dictates that the body is transformative while personal identity is enduring (27). Indeed, both Bisclaret and Jonet retain their human nature while in animal form. Thus, a paradox of personal identity is created: these two characters are human in nature, monstrous in person, and bestial in body. When their sexuality is considered with regard to these varying degrees of humanity, the two shapeshifting knights demonstrate how metamorphosis is a form of translatio that queers gender and sexuality.

Bestial bodies: lewdity, crudity, and unabashed nudity

In order to assess the sexual fluidity of shapeshifters, it is important to have a firm grasp of medieval perspectives on animals and their sexuality. According to Emma Campbell, the twelfth century marks a lasting change in attitude toward animals in medieval literature. Animals are regularly used as substitutes for humans in allegorical tales such as the lais and Marie de France’s Fables , making the line between human and animal somewhat porous (Campbell 97). Posthumanism is the theoretical lens which takes this porous boundary into account, reconsidering the human experience by recontextualizing humans in terms of a more complete sphere of nature including plants, earth, and especially animals, which are not human, but have in many ways contributed to humanity (Griffin 24). Amanda Griffin discusses metamorphosis in terms of posthumanism:

52 Many texts portray the nonhuman or socially inferior human element of

any transformation as undesirable, humiliating, or damning. But if we

think through these transitions between human and nonhuman (or

subhuman) states as speaking to categories which are themselves

contingent and mutable, these tales can be understood as participating in

an ongoing reflection of what it means to be human. (Griffin 24)

Griffin’s perspective aligns well with Dana Oswald’s “sliding scale” approach to humanity. Posthumanism attempts to subvert human­centric categories of bodies, demonstrating the same type of translatio that queer theory employs to overcome the socially constructed boundaries of heteronormativity.

Bestial bodies are not intrinsically queer like monstrous bodies, but there is nonetheless a marked association in literature between the queer and the bestial that mimics the queerness of monstrosity. This association is due largely to the aforementioned medieval practice of using bestial bodies as allegorical proxies for human bodies, which is especially useful when discussing sexual deviance. Amanda

Griffin refers to the “animal lack” of reason, speech, clothing, and other aspects of humanity as a defining trait of bestial bodies (106). Animal lack can also be considered in terms of power, subjugating the beast in favor of the human. Because of animal lack, bestial bodies are not bound to the same sexual rules that humans are. Thus, allegorical animals empower medieval authors to explore stigmatized sexual practices from a distance, achieving an effect similar to that of fantasy as discussed in the previous chapter.

53 A connection between animals and queerness is particularly pervasive in theological and legal literature. The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, which is roughly contemporaneous to the Strengleikar , conflates bestiality and homosexuality as the same sin— concubitis (Jordan 144). Additionally, the Icelandic Homily Book and a number of other Icelandic theological texts found in the Diplomatarium Islandicum treat sodomy and bestiality— “adultery between males, or committed by men on quadrupeds,” as Sørensen states— as equivalents (26). Referring again to the passage concerning níð in the Laws of Gulaþing:

orð ero þau er fullrettis orð heita. þat er eitt ef maðr kveðr at karlmanne

oðrom, at hann have barn boret. þat er annat. ef maðr kveðr hann væra

sannsorðenn. þat er hit þriðia ef hann iamnar hanom við meri. æða kallar

hann grey. æða portkono. æða iamnar hanom við berende eitthvert.

[There are certain phrases called “fullréttisorð.” One is if a man says to

another man that he has birthed a child. This is another: if a man says of

another that he is used sexually by another man. The third is if he

compares him to a mare, or calls him a bitch or harlot, or compares him

with any female animal]. ( Norges gamle Love I 57)

By comparing a human body to a bestial body, these insults imply deficiencies in masculinity resulting from sexual shortcomings and genderqueerness, but also from lack of proper socialization within a civilized society and thus humanity. The lack of humanity in animals mirrors the lack of reproductive sexuality in queer bodies; the bestial and the queer are both categories that oppose the core values of chivalry,

54 Christianity, and medieval perceptions of natural personhood— in short, normative medieval society— due to their lack.

For examples of the exploration of subversive sexuality through animals within the fantasy genre, one needs not look further than the Strengleikar . In the aforementioned ljóð “Milun,” as well as “Laustik,” bestial bodies are sent by humans to carry out a sex act that properly socialized human bodies are forbidden from participating in: adultery. Although adulterous sex may not be understood as an act of queerness per se, adulterous sex cannot yield legitimate children, and therefore violates the chivalric tenet of lineage.

In “Milun,” a woman becomes pregnant with the eponymous knight’s child out of wedlock. She sends the baby off to her sister before her father, unaware of the affair, marries her off to another nobleman. Milun and his unnamed lover send letters to each other nestled in the feathers of a swan for 20 years. Although the two lovers must refrain from engaging in a physically sexual relationship, the swan is able to perform the act of translatio required to overcome the socially informed sexual boundary between the two.

The arrangement is not perfect, however. The son eventually learns of his parents’ situation and vows to kill his mother’s husband, but the husband has already died by the time the son arrives (Cook and Tveitane 192). The son, unlike the swan, is unable to cross the border drawn between his parents. Although the ljóð ends happily, the son’s vengeance quest is defective and cannot be completed. The boy’s parents were indeed reproductive, but in a way that defied normative sexuality. Therefore, they must pay a price through their offspring. As the product of a sexually illegitimate relationship, the son is deprived of the intergenerational knightly glory that he is due.

55 In “Laustik,” a bird is likewise employed to facilitate an adulterous relationship.

A knight and his married neighbor are in love, and speak to each through their adjacent windows at night (Cook and Tveitane 102). When questioned by her husband, the lady states that she is merely listening to the song of the eponymous nightingale— a bird which, according to the ljóð , incites lovers with its mating call (Cook and Tveitane

102­4). Angered by the woman’s explanation, the husband traps and kills the nightingale that lives outside of the window, terminating the affair literally and symbolically (Cook and Tveitane 104). The lady then has a servant deliver the dead bird to her lover enshrined in a decorated box, informing him of the end of their relationship

(Cook and Tveitane 104). Although the nightingale does not act as a messenger like

Milun’s swan until after it is dead, its song enables and incites the lovers to engage in a sexually transgressive pattern of translatio , crossing the boundaries of normative sexuality by defying the institution of marriage and beginning a relationship that should not be (and is not) sexually productive.

Referring to Marie de France’s “Laustic,” Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner points out that the physical transformation of the nightingale’s body from alive to dead, and its subsequent enshrinement in a keepsake box, parallels the transformation of the relationship (172). She likewise suggests that the enshrinement of the bird closely mimics the idea of placing the remains of a saint in a reliquary (Bruckner 173). This raises a question of what could have been: the nightingale served as a martyr for the knight, dying for the lover’s sins due to the lover’s humanity and thus his inability to physically be with his lover. Had the knight been the one to physically cross this boundary, he likely would have been killed by the husband as punishment. Both

56 “Milun” and “Laustik” demonstrate how bestial bodies are not held to the same sexual standards as human bodies, and how they are used allegorically to explore the boundaries of human sexuality in medieval literature.

Queering gender, queering humanity: Bisclaret’s shapeshifting

The eponymous character of “Bisclaret” is a lycanthropic knight. When his wife discovers that he is a werewolf, she steals his clothes one night while he is in wolf form, trapping him in his animal shape. Bisclaret is later discovered in the woods by the king who, impressed by his seemingly human behavior, takes Bisclaret in as a pet. When the wife and her new husband visit the king in his court, Bisclaret acts aggressively towards them. The king, thinking that Bisclaret must have some reason for acting this way, eventually tortures the wife into revealing what she has done. Bisclaret is reunited with his clothes and is thus able to transform back into his human form.

Bisclaret’s clothes are the key to understanding the gendered and sexualized power dynamics surrounding his metamorphosis. When Bisclaret’s wife first learns about his condition, she immediately asks whether he keeps his clothes on while in wolf form, or if he goes naked. The wife seems scared only after Bisclaret informs her that he leaves his clothes near a chapel before going into the woods as a wolf (Cook and

Tveitane 90). The wife takes a new lover, and has the man steal Bisclaret’s clothes while he is in wolf form, so “h ann mætte <æigi> ham sinu m skifta aftr” [he may not shift his shape again] (Cook and Tveitane 94). The wife does not fear his transformation from man to wolf; rather, it is his transformation from clothed to naked that is most alarming to her. Griffin sees nudity as an obvious physical manifestation of animal lack: “in not

57 being aware of their nudity, animals, projected by the human as the source of the unsettling, radically other gaze, are precisely lacking in that they are unaware that they are not lacking” (116). In short, true nudity is not the mere state of being unclothed; rather, it is the awareness of being unclothed (Griffin 116). Bisclaret going without clothes is slightly bizarre in this regard; he retains his humanity in wolf form and therefore should be aware of his nudity as a human would. Bisclaret’s clothes here represent the veneer of humanity and chivalry that covers animal instinct, as well as the power that humanity holds and that beasts lack. Thus, the wife misunderstands

Bisclaret’s nudity as a lack of humanity, when in reality he retains his human reasoning while in wolf form despite his appearance. The fragility of Bisclaret’s condition is reflective of the fragility of human dominance as a whole. The boundary between human beast is thin and porous, allowing shapeshifters such as Bisclaret to easily queer the separation between the two through their translatio of bodily shape .

Later, when Bisclaret is reunited with his clothes, he refuses to put them on and transform in public: “villdi h ann ækki til sia. er fyr ir h ann var lagðr” [he did not want to see what was placed before him] (Cook and Tveitane 96). The king’s steward subsequently points out: “aldregi man h ann her taka klæði sin. i augliti yðru. ne or ganga ham sinum fyrir sua morgu m mon n um . þer seð huat til gængr h ono m þykkir skom m ok suivirðing at skæpnu sin ni ” [never will he take his clothes here in your sight, nor will he leave his shape before so many people. You see what is at stake? It seems to him shame and disgrace to his person] (Cook and Tveitane 96). To the beast, the binary of clothed and naked is reversed, and it is shameful for a beast to become a human by putting on clothes just as it is shameful for a human body to become bestial in

58 nakedness. Therefore, Bisclaret’s transformation from naked to clothed (and beast to human) is tabooed as queer because it traverses the boundary between human and animal.

“Bisclaret” features an instance of nudity not found in the Anglo­Norman

“Bisclavret.” In both the lai and the ljóð , Bisclavret/Bisclaret attacks his wife and tears off her nose. In “Bisclaret,” he also tears off her clothing (Cook and Tveitane 94). The entire episode is a judicial equalization of power between Bisclaret and the wife. While

Bisclaret is monstrous in body, his wife is monstrous in character. He retains his human and chivalric mannerisms while in wolf form, while his wife undergoes an internal transformation of humanity finally brought to light when Bisclaret disfigures her face and removes her clothing. Bruckner points out that the wife has violated her reproductive and social obligations by betraying her husband. (177). Noah D. Guynn adds more specifically that she has transgressed feudal law; as a result, it is “easier to dehumanize a woman than a werewolf” (159). In the removal of her nose and her clothing, the wife undergoes a queer metamorphosis like Bisclaret’s that is indeed dehumanizing and thus subjugating. Unlike Bisclaret, however, her body is merely the reflection of her internal non­human reasoning. The wife is suddenly disfigured, thus monstrous, and lacking clothing, thus bestial. The wife becomes a foil to Bisclaret; he is human in mind but is monstrous because of his transformation into a bestial body, while the wife’s mind displays animal lacking and the woman undergoes a translatio of the body to reflect this internal monstrosity.

Many scholars have read the removal of the wife’s nose as castration. Having transcended her role as a woman by assuming power over her husband, she must be

59 17 emasculated. Indeed, her sex is emphasized when the narrator points out that some members of her lineage— specifically women— are born “næflausar” [noseless] (Cook and Tveitane 98). In addition to the correction of social genderqueerness through physical transformation, there are perhaps further implications of fertility in this castration. Noselessness is an element of monstrosity causing physical repulsion, effectively precluding these deformed descendants from reproducing. Having violated the expectations of her sex within the framework of chivalric society, the woman loses her right to lineage. Guynn points out the linguistic similarity between nes and nees

(“nose” and “descendants,” respectively) in “Bisclavret.” (Guynn 167). Although this double­meaning is lost in translation in “Bisclaret,” the translatio surrounding the removal of the wife’s nose nevertheless queers her otherwise reproductive sexuality by turning her descendants into monsters. The additional removal of her clothing in

“Bisclaret” reveals her true bestial form, hidden under a guise of humanity. This

“castration” is an act of translatio that queers gender and sexuality as well as the wife’s position on Oswald’s “sliding scale” of humanity, making her naked and deformed body queer in its alterity.

Bisclaret’s own transformation is queer, but in a very different way from that of his wife. The mechanics of his shapeshifting are described in two ways: “h ann skifti ham sinum” [he shifted his shape] and “h ann var i vargs ham” [he was in the shape of a wolf] (Cook and Tveitane 90). Bisclaret does not act like a wolf when he transforms. He is only in the shape of a wolf. The narrative focuses heavily on Bisclaret’s humanity rather than his bestial form; the audience learns very little about his year in the woods,

17 See Burgwinkle, Guynn, Kinoshita, Leicester, and McCracken, among several others.

60 which humanizes the werewolf even further and emphasizes the queerness of a human mind trapped in a bestial body. Upon the king’s discovery of him, Bisclaret is described so: “Sua var þat kurtæist ok hogvært ok miuklynt ok goð viliat ok alldri angraðezt þat við menn ok æn gærðe þat mæin” [it was so courteous and gentle and meek­tempered and well­intentioned, and it never became angry at people or harmed anyone”] (Cook and Tveitane 92). Bisclaret’s humanity is further demonstrated in his chivalric reverence for the king, highlighting the importance of chivalric social values in the construction of humanity. Indeed, Schneider states that the human behavior that transcends metamorphosis in both “Bisclavret” and “Yonec” (in this case, “Bisclaret” and “Jonet” as well) is primarily informed by chivalry (29).

Bisclaret’s reverence for the king is what initially captures the ruler’s attention, after the wolf bows to the king and kisses his feet. However, the queerness of a bestial body occupying the space of a knightly body quickly becomes apparent, and the relationship between Bisclaret and the king teeters on the boundary between homosocial and homosexual. The two are said to generally “un n i” [love] one other (Cook and

Tveitane 92). They become inseparable, even sleeping near each other (Cook and

Tveitane 92). Finally, when Bisclaret returns to his human form, he does so in the king’s chamber, where he is found lying on the king’s bed. The king then kisses him many times (Cook and Tveitane 301). Their lord­knight relationship cannot function as most because of the innate queerness of Bisclaret’s monstrous body. Phillip Bernhardt­House points out that canines are inherently sexual creatures from the perspective of humans because they engage in sex freely in view of humans (161). As a gendered monster,

Bisclaret plays on the fear of monstrous reproduction, which is further heightened by his

61 canine form. We never see Bisclaret marry and reproduce, but his wife does, and transmits her noselessness (Bernhardt­House 168). It is therefore reasonable to assume that if Bisclaret were to reproduce, he would also yield monstrous offspring. His seemingly homosexual relationship with the king is in place to prevent him from doing so. Although humane in his ability to reason, Bisclaret cannot fully occupy a knightly role in society because of his bodily queerness. Thus, his knightly relationship to the king must likewise be queer.

Beyond shapeshifting: lineage and sexual translatio in “Jonet”

“Jonet” also features a shapeshifting knight who brings about a queer transformation in himself and in a woman. The protagonist of the ljóð is a maiden trapped in a tower by her old and unloving husband. The maiden is cared for by her husband’s widowed sister

(Cook and Tveitane 230). One day, a goshawk arrives at her window and transforms into a beautiful knight named Muldumarec, whom she takes as her lover (Cook and

Tveitane 232­234). They are caught one day by the husband’s sister, who informs the husband; he subsequently sets a trap to kill Muldumarec (Cook and Tveitane 234­238).

The trap is successful, and the knight dies from his injuries in his home kingdom after running away pursued by the maiden (Cook and Tveitane 238). Muldumarec prophesies that the woman will bear a son named Jonet, who will eventually avenge his father

(Cook and Tveitane 238). The prophecy is fulfilled several years later when a priest informs Jonet of his lineage at Muldumarec’s tomb. The woman dies in a faint after giving Jonet Muldumarec’s sword, which he uses to kill the woman’s wicked husband

(Cook and Tveitane 244).

62 Like Bisclaret, Muldumarec is queer because of the dissonance between his bestial body and his courtly demeanor. Muldumarec’s hawk form is described in human terms that parallel the courteous Bisclaret in his wolf form. The knight is said to be of noble of lineage several times (McCracken, “Translation” 217). This emphasizes the importance of reproduction as soon as the knight arrives (Campbell 104). The knight also tells the maiden that the goshawk is a particularly noble bird, implying a hierarchy of nobility among animals. Here, courtly culture is suggested to apply to animal bodies despite the medieval insistence that animals are completely devoid of any markers of civilization (Griffin 4). Muldumarec’s nobility should conflict with his monstrous body, but it is reconciled by applying social hierarchy to animals. When the bird arrives, it has straps on its feet, showing that this is a domesticated and noble bird rather than a wild one (Cook and Tveitane 232). Perhaps this represents the dominance of his human form over his bird form as his natural state of being. If human is indeed his default form, that makes him a monstrous human rather than a monstrous beast, allotting Muldumarec more humanity within the framework of Oswald’s hierarchy of monsters.

In addition to assuring the woman of his noble lineage, he also proves his

Christianity by transforming into the shape of the woman and taking communion in her place (Cook and Tveitane 234). By transforming from bird to man, and then from man to woman, Muldumarec defies two binaries central to the medieval understanding of the world (Griffin 3). The knight’s ability to transform thus queers boundaries of gender, class, and humanity by disregarding medieval institutions of power.

Though Muldumarec undergoes a queering act of translatio every time he changes his shape, the true sexual transformation in “Jonet” is that of the protagonist.

63 Bruckner points out that Muldumarec, in animal form, is sent to remedy an affront to nature— the lady’s marriage to an old and unloving husband (178). The old man marries the young maiden for her wealth (Cook and Tveitane 230). Reproduction is a secondary motive, if it is present at all. The lady’s fertility contradicts her barren marriage, emphasized while she wishes for a knight to arrive and rescue her; outside of her window, birds are singing to each other “hveitian n de hver r annan til astar ok auca”

[inciting each other for love and procreation] (Cook and Tveitane 230). She is repeatedly mentioned to look more beautiful and healthy once her sexual relationship with the knight begins. In fact, this is why the sister becomes suspicious and is able to catch the two. The zenith of the woman’s sexual metamorphosis, however, is her pregnancy. Muldumarec informs the woman she is pregnant after she pursues him to his native kingdom (Cook and Tveitane 240). After jumping out of her window and following a trail of Muldumarec’s blood through a very dark cave, she arrives in a large walled city devoid of people (Cook and Tveitane 238­40). Finally, she finds her lover on his deathbed, where Muldumarec gives her a ring and a sword to pass onto the son she is told she will bear (Cook and Tveitane 240). Like the three knightly characters discussed in the previous chapter, the lady has completed a geographic translatio that reflects her own sexual development, yet she also undergoes a physical transformation of appearance like Muldumarec.

Despite the fertility of the relationship between the lady and Muldumarec,

Muldumarec’s monstrosity nonetheless defies the natural order of reproduction. Their extramarital affair can only exist in a narrow liminal space, before the enigmatic relationship is terminated altogether with the death of Muldumarec (Campbell 103).

64 However, the two are eventually reunited in death, and they do achieve perfect lineage.

The sword is passed onto Jonet as a phallic symbol of the linear nobility of chivalry, and the reproductive arc of the ljóð is completed when Jonet kills his mother’s husband. The transformative powers of Muldumarec’s own shapeshifting cause the woman to undergo a sexual translatio in which she escapes a queer situation that threatens her normative sexuality; thus, she is able to acquire honor through her son.

Conclusions: queerness of transformation

The human fear of monsters is a direct response to alterity. The fantasy genre allows audiences to explore the concept of monstrosity from a safe distance, as it does with other types of alterity. Because of the medieval tendency to conflate othered identities, monstrosity is often connected with other types of alterity, including queerness. Both monstrosity and queerness disrupt normative frameworks of power to the extent that the two are often applied virtually interchangeably as violations of nature. Medieval writers capitalize on the ability to compound fear of the other by sexualizing monsters, allowing monstrous bodies to disrupt sexual and gendered power structures in addition to the institution of humanity.

Shapeshifters, because of their hybrid nature, are a unique type of monster. Their shifting degree of humanity is reflected in their sexuality. Bestial bodies, unlike human bodies, are not bound to reproductive laws of society and are therefore often employed to allegorically explore transgressive human sexuality. This is visible in the ljóð

“Milun” and “Laustik,” in which birds engage in acts of translatio that facilitate

65 adulterous relationships. However, the shapeshifting knights of “Bisclaret” and “Jonet” exceed the sexual expectations of animals when the knights are in their bestial forms.

In “Bisclaret,” clothing is used as a thinly veiled metaphor for humanity.

Bisclaret’s metamorphosis is dependent on his clothing. The subsequent disrobing of his wife is a physical act of translatio by which the wife’s body transforms into a more bestial form to reflect her inner animality, creating a direct foil to Bisclaret’s shapeshifting. Additionally, Bisclaret’s removal of the wife’s nose reads as a metaphorical castration, leaving the wife’s body and those of her female descendants with a physical marker of monstrosity as an indication of an inner unwillingness to adhere to chivalric gender roles.

“Jonet” emphasizes the power dynamics of humanity by highlighting the nobility of Muldumarec’s hawk shape in tandem with his lineage. The knight’s ability to shapeshift queers power spectrums of class, gender, sexuality, and humanity, but the biggest journey of translatio in this ljóð is the sexual awakening of the protagonist.

Muldumarec’s own metamorphosis allows her body to physically transform with sexual satisfaction and pregnancy, demonstrating her newfound reproductivity and ultimately culminating in a fulfilled chivalric lineage.

Shapeshifting in both “Bisclaret” and “Jonet” highlight the parallel power dynamics of the institutions of humanity and sexuality. The dissonance between the two knights’ human dispositions and bestial bodies characterize them as monstrous, ultimately queering the two characters. Their monstrous bodies prevent them from being in properly reproductive relationships; Muldumarec is killed as a result of his, while

Bisclaret engages in a queer relationship with the king. However, the queerness of these

66 two characters is counterbalanced by the normalization they inspire in the sexuality of the main female characters in their respective ljóð. The protagonist of “Jonet” is delivered from a queer relationship into a reproductive one through a process of sexual translatio , while Bisclaret’s wife undergoes a physical metamorphosis that causes her body to reflect the queerness and monstrosity of her own incorrectly gendered behavior.

67 Conclusion:

Strengleikar ’s Queerness in Text and Context

The queer translatio of the Strengleikar extends beyond textuality. Translation and other culturally contextual factors queer the Strengleikar in ways that reflect the sexual transformations undergone by characters within the text. The process of translation causes the Strengleikar to undergo a spatial journey of queer translatio like the characters discussed in Chapter 2, as well as a disruptive metamorphosis of body that parallels that of the characters discussed in Chapter 3. Strengleikar is a thoroughly queer text both in its textuality and its cultural context.

Like other acts of translatio previously discussed, translation is a process that defies boundaries of institutional power. Sharon Kinoshita points out that the modern concept of national boundaries does not apply to the Middle Ages, so linguistic boundaries held much more political significance (Kinoshita 3). Indeed, Sif

Rikhardsdottir states that decisions surrounding the linguistic translation of texts reflect a certain imperialism through cultural hegemony (9). Through the selective process of translation, one culture can be elevated or normalized while the other is subjugated or marginalized. This process is yet another example of medieval othering through separation in that the power dynamics of translation are dependent on spatial and cultural distance.

Marie de France, queer icon

Even before the Strengleikar , the Lais of Marie de France were queer in their cultural context due in part to the queerness of the translation process. Peggy McCracken points

68 out that Marie is quite fixated with translatio in her effort to “translate” the Lais from

Breton to Anglo­Norman, from oral to written, and into a new interpretive context

(McCracken, “Translation” 206). McCracken adds that Marie is conscious of her work not just as a translation, but also as a product of translatio in its translation, metaphor, and interpretation (“Translation” 209). Indeed, as Claire M. Waters states, Marie is careful to provide linguistic explanations of different languages’ words for key terms in the Lais , demonstrating a particular awareness of the colonial significance of translation

(12). Marie’s Foucauldian preoccupations are visible in the introduction of several lais , such as her explanation of dialectal werewolf names at the beginning of “Bisclavret” and her provided translation of the word “nightingale” at the beginning of “Laustic”

(“Bisclavret ll. 3­4 and “Laustic” ll. 4­6). Marie’s interest in translatio and cultural significance is also reflected in her in­depth discussion of places and place names, as well as her repeated reminders that the Lais are originally Breton, both of which introduce an intersectional element of spatial and linguistic translatio within the text itself.

Scholarship concerning the cultural politics of the Lais is often fixated with

Marie’s gender. A female author in twelfth century England is indeed something unique, but gender as a simple element of flair does not progress scholarship in any way. What is significant, however, is Marie’s gender when considered with regard to the way social institutions are represented in the text. McCracken and Kinoshita state:

The Lais imagine ways in which women can manipulate and exploit

feudal social structures, and they imagine ways in which those structures

69 may be changed through women’s desires and even women’s agency, if

only in a limited way. (11)

Perhaps the character most relevant to this particular perspective is Marie herself. The author is not shy about self­references in her Lais , most significantly at the beginning of “Guigemar”:

Mais quant il i ad en un païs

Humme u femme de grant pris,

Cil ki de sun bien unt envie

Souvent en dient vilienie.

Sun pris li volent abeissier...

...Nel voil mie pur ceo leissier

Si gangleur u losengier

Le me volent a mal turner,

Ceo est lur dreit de mesparler!

[But when there is in a country

a man or woman of great worth,

those who envy their goodness

often say vile things about them.

They wish to diminish their esteem…

Not will I on this account leave

if babblers or liars

wish to spin it badly,

it is their right to gossip!] (Marie de France, “Guigemar” ll. 7­11, 15­18)

70 It is clear that Marie has dealt with a significant amount of institutional hardship that parallels the marginalization of her queer characters. Marie does not back down from this challenge, however. In her prologue, she praises her own ambition in staying up late to compose the Lais as well as her boldness in presenting them to the king, and is sure to repeatedly mention her own name throughout the text (Waters 11, 38). These textual elements are a product of Marie’s position as a woman in a society dominated by men.

Marie’s queer characters serve the largely same disruptive function as she does, both as a historical figure and as a character in her collection of lais . By disrupting chivalric institutions and the romance genre as a whole through queer characters and self­references, Marie critiques the masculine hegemony that dominates medieval authorship.

A discussion of Marie’s political affairs are complimented by a discussion of sexuality and authorship. Carolyn Dinshaw has noted in her book Chaucer’s Sexual

Poetics a medieval tendency to sexualize the act of writing in a way that metaphorically parallels normative sex. The phallic pen releases its ink unto the passive manuscript to produce a valuable and complex offspring, which in turn may lead to the production of other manuscripts. Other medieval female writers such as Hildegard von Bingen describe themselves as passive mediums who do not actually generate written work, instead channeling the inspiration of God and recording it on his behalf (Schibanoff 50).

Marie de France contradicts this paradigm, casting as an outsider much like the queer knights of her lais . The only thing she claims to receive from god is “[e]science”

[knowledge] and “eloquence” (Marie de France, “Prologue” ll. 1­2). A pen wielded by her hand disrupts the heterosexual metaphor of writing by assuming the masculine role

71 within the allegory. The Lais contained strong elements of queerness even before they were translated into the Strengleikar because of Marie’s textual and metatextual defiance.

Queering the translatio of the Strengleikar

The text’s translation into the Strengleikar further queers the gendered and sexualized narrative of authorship. The translator takes on a role that is simultaneously male and female and thus queer, acting both as a passive recipient and a phallic composer. It is worth noting that Strengleikar makes no mention of Marie, bowdlerizing her aforementioned self­references. Thus, the text undergoes a metamorphosis in its translinguistic translatio , like those which occur in “Bisclaret” and “Jonet.” Although the shape of the text is altered in an attempt to censor Marie’s queer predilections, in reality the text is queered even further through its increased alterity. This shift indeed fails to suppress Marie’s sentiments as they are omnipresent in the very characters and plots of the ljóð .

Perhaps this attempt is reflective of a Norwegian skepticism of female authority, rather than a disdain for queerness. If the translator credits a woman as his source, his stories may somehow be less legitimate. Additionally, the (hypothetically male) translator may not wish to reveal the queerness of his position as the passive medium of a female authority in his intimate literary affair with Marie; hence he alters the translation in a way that refuses to acknowledge the feminine and queer power of the

Lais . However, the textual queerness of the Strengleikar thwarts these efforts, and the

72 translator is left with an altered text whose queer body clashes with the translator’s intent to normalize.

Like Guiamar, Janual, and the lover in “Tveggja Elskanda Ljóð,” the

Strengleikar — at this point, still a foreign entity in the form of the Lais — undergoes an act of translatio by travelling a great distance. The spatial rift between the Lais and the

Strengleikar is emphasized textually as well; the aforementioned in­text reminders that the Lais are originally Breton are carried over into the Strengleikar , and the translator adds a prologue explaining that the text is translated from French and was originally composed by Breton poets.

The separation between the the Lais and the Strengleikar extends beyond their spatial relationship. In addition to the obvious spatial and temporal break between the

Lais and the Strengleikar , there is also a detachment of genre. The Strengleikar introduces its audience to a brand new genre. The romance genre is not native to medieval Scandinavia, and incorporates unfamiliar themes of love and fantasy which subvert Norwegian expectations. Liliane Irlenbusch­Reynard suggests that the romances translated into Norwegian were carefully selected to push a political agenda. She states that Hákon was concerned with the royal dignity of chivalry, not romance, which is why

Norse translations tend to omit features of romance such as emotions, eroticism, detailed imagery, and long speeches ( Irlenbusch­Reynard 388­90). The Strengleikar is an exception to this tradition of omission, however. The text is generally quite loyal to the Lais , displaying only brief omissions that minimally alter the romantic foundation of

73 the text’s genre.18 By generally preserving these elements of romance and emphasizing the translated aspect of the text, the translator is taking advantage of the foreign status of the text, which certainly influences audience reception of a text or genre perceived as strange or even queer. Such a strategy preserves a degree of alienation that, ironically, queers the text further in an effort to reconcile the text’s already apparent queerness through distance.

Like the characters in “Bisclaret” and “Jonet,” the Strengleikar collection undergoes a change in shape through the translator’s amendments, alterations, and omissions. Like Janual and Guiamar in Arthur’s court and a foreign kingdom, respectively, the text is clearly the product of a foreign sphere exempt from the social laws that govern sexuality due to their enigmatic status. The text’s queerness is excused because it is acknowledged to be foreign. Like the narrative and characteristic translatio found in all of the ljóð discussed above, the translation of the Strengleikar queers in its attempt to unqueer. Through translation, the exotic strangeness and ironic metamorphosis of the Strengleikar become characteristic of a text that unsettles medieval gender expectations and heteronormativity in its portrayal of queer characters.

The Strengleikar collection is thoroughly queer both in text and context. However, the

18 With the exception of an entire lai , “Eliduc,” which appears in the Lais of

Marie de France but not in the Strengleikar. While perhaps not entirely irrelevant to this thesis, it is much more integral to focus on that which is present in the Strengleikar rather than that which hypothetically could be included. Alas, there is unfortunately no space herein for discussion of the missing Norse translation of “Eliduc.” For this, see

Irlenbusch­Reynard, McCracken, Waters, and others.

74 text’s disruptive queerness is ultimately permissible in its Norwegian cultural context because of the text’s status as a literary enigma.

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