Queering Medieval Gender and Sexuality: Pre- and Postmodern Representations of Virginity

Abstract

This dissertation investigates depictions of the medieval virgin in both pre- and postmodern literature and cinema, including women who chose physical virginity as well as spiritual virginity in their quests to be sponsae Christi. I argue that unlike much modern cinema, specifically Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and Chris Newby's Anchoress, which attempts to reify the present at the expense of an Othered Middle Ages, the medieval and post-modern authors in my study use the relative safety of temporal and geographical distance in order to explore and, at times, question cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. To demonstrate the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, I include vernacular texts from different genres, including historical, hagiographical, and fictional, as well as texts such as Robert Glück's 1994 Margery Kempe that defy categorization. Using queer theory, especially Judith Butler's theory of the performativity of gender, and Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject, this project reveals the dynamic nature of virginity and gender as signifiers and shows how their implications for society change over time. While there have been a number of studies on medieval virginity in recent decades, this project expands the conversation by including medieval fiction as well as post-modern representations of the female religious in the Middle Ages.