Disorienting masculinity: movement, emotion and chivalric identity in Partonope of Blois

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Jane Bonsall considers how action and mobility are gendered in medieval romance by exploring the quality and impact of the hero’s movement in the fifteenth-century Middle English Partonope of Blois. Focusing on the emotional landscape of romance, Bonsall invokes queer theorist Sara Ahmed to examine the queer potential of Partonope’s emotional and physical journey through fairy spaces. Reading romance conventions of masculinity and madness in dialogue with theories of queer orientation and disability, this chapter explores the subversive potential of knightly emotionality, stasis and movement. She determines that the multivalent readings of Partonope’s movement through this text—as queered, as feminised, as representing a breadth of masculine potentialities in romance—reveals an underlying tension with gendered expectations of the genre.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMedieval mobilities
Subtitle of host publicationgendered bodies, spaces, and movements
EditorsBasil Arnould Price, Jane Bonsall, Meagan Khoury
Place of PublicationCham
PublisherPalgrave
Chapter8
Pages139-164
Number of pages26
ISBN (Electronic)9783031126475
ISBN (Print)9783031126468, 9783031126499
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Jan 2023

Publication series

NameNew Middle Ages (Palgrave (Firm))
ISSN (Print)2945-5936
ISSN (Electronic)2945-5944

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