GLR September-October 2023

ESSAY The Quest for Sex in the Middle Ages V ERNON R OSARIO

N O ORAL SEX! No anal sex! No nude sex! No sex during daylight hours! No sex on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday! Sex during Lent, Advent, or Easter week is sinful! People in medieval Europe would have con tended with countless restrictions on sexual activities to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church. A flow chart of unacceptable sex acts (summarizing medieval peniten tial manuals) is so complex that even the horniest of men would lose his erection if consulting it to avoid sin. According to sex-averse Catholic doctrine, intercourse (in the missionary position) was permitted between a married man and woman only. Minimal enjoyment was allowed — many medical experts believed female infertility might be due to a lack of pleasure — but the goal was procreation. There were fur ther taboos related to the Church calendar, female cycles, and bodily hygiene. Since the Church considered all sex outside these limits to be “ lecherie, ” or lust, I have to conclude that the vast majority of medieval adults were regularly engaging in sin ful, perverse acts throughout their lives. (That would probably ondary process, ” as opposed to the bestial, immediate gratifica tion of “ primary process. ” The literature representing that lusty, uncivil gratification is perhaps better known to scholars than to general readers: bawdy poems and farces. Elan Justice Pavlinich ’ s Erotic Medievalisms: Medieval Pleasures Empower ing Marginalized People explores the range of medieval English literature as well as modern cultural phenomena finding inspira tion in the Middle Ages. These “ medievalisms ”— from pop cul ture to poetry to BDSM sexual practices — draw upon a variety of fantasies, mythology, and even scholarship of the Middle Ages. Pavlinich ’ s monograph, a delightfully readable and theoretically savvy work of queer studies, presents Old English quotations fol lowed by modern translations. He effortlessly slides back and forth between academic queer readings of medieval texts and a medievalist ’ s interpretations of contemporary ones. “ Medievalism ” is a useful concept denoting the fancies of post-medieval people based on the culture of the Middle Ages. He points out how “ Middle Ages ” or “ DarkAges ” or the “ En lightenment ” are all labels created by later historians. All con Vernon Rosario, an associate professor in the UCLA Dept. of Psychiatry, is a child psychiatrist with the L.A. County Dept. of Mental Health. include many avowedly celibate clergy.) Some of the most familiar examples of medieval eros are of the chivalrous type: Arthurian legends, Lancelot and Guinevere, courtly love, etc. These fin ’ amor (fine love) poems idealize longing, separation, and sex postponed. In psychoanalytic terms, these self-restraints of civility are an index of “ sec

ceptions of past eras are the imagined recreations by historians inescapably influenced by contemporary cultural and political concerns. Scholarship of the past half-century has been enriched by historians “ recovering ” the history of women, non-elite, non white, and queer people, whether through discovering neglected documents or simply reading canonical ones for topics that had been overlooked. Pavlinich ’ s thesis is as politically trenchant as it is precise: “ erotic medievalisms employ sexualities to chal lenge traditional hierarchies and reclaim the medieval past for those who have been erased from historical narratives, excluded from popular representations, and marginalized by systemic op pression. ” He is adept at highlighting the white, heteronorma tive bias of past and present literatures, cultures, and scholarship. (I would quibble with the last point. Feminist, queer, postcolo nial medieval scholarship has burgeoned in the past decades, and colleagues in the field tell me that Medieval Studies conferences aren ’ t monopolized by straight white men discussing the canon ical texts. Indeed, Pavlinich ’ s work is an example of what ’ s hot in the discipline.) Pavlinich is a professor of English at Wabash College in In works: a graphic novel version of Beowulf , singer Lil Nas X ’ s music video Montero , and Patience Agbabi ’ spoem “ TheKiss. ” A fourth chapter deals with a cultural phenomenon: BDSM practices, imagery, and paraphernalia. I haven ’ t struggled with Beowulf since AP English, yet its presence on the syllabus is an index of its canonical status. The epic poem was probably written around 1000 CE. It recounts the heroic deeds of its protagonist in 6th-century Scandinavia. There are bloody battles with the monster Grendel, his mother, and a dragon. J.R.R. Tolkien is just one of many translators of the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf into modern English and scores of other languages. It has been adapted into movies and multiple graphic novels; as such, it is a logical place for Pavlinich to begin his analysis of medievalisms. He relies on a 2017 graphic novel version by Spanish authors Santiago García and David Rubín. Their work is gorgeous and gory, cleverly using multiple insert panels to convey differing perspectives and time sequences. Pavlinich especially relies on two pages in which Grendel sneaks into the great hall where Beowulf and his men are asleep, intent on killing them. Instead, Beowulf battles the impenetrable, scaly-skinned monster and tears off his arm: “ Licsar gebad atol æglæca; him on eaxle wearð syndolh diana. His 2019 doctoral dissertation was a queer reading of Old and Middle English lit erature. His publications range from the se riously philological to more approachable readings of Disney ’ s medievalisms; prin cesses and castles are, after all, at the center ofDisney ’ s empire. Erotic Medievalisms has three chapters examining specific artistic

“ Medievalism ” isauseful concept deno ti ng the fantasies of post medieval people based on the culture of the Middle Ages.

TheG & LR

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