Title: Courtly desire and medieval homophobia : the legitimation of sexual pleasure in cleanness and its contexts /
Authors: Keiser, Elizabeth B.
Publisher: Yale University Press,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Purity (Middle English poem); Homosexuality Religious aspects Christianity History; Pleasure Religious aspects Christianity History of doctrines; Sex Religious aspects Christianity History of doctrines; Christian poetry, English (Middle) History and criticism; Homosexuality and literature England History.; Civilization, Medieval; Courtly love in literature.; Homophobia in literature.; Gay men in literature; Desire in literature.; Literature, Medieval English.; Sodom (Extinct city) In literature.
Abstract: In the first comprehensive study of Cleanness and its medieval contexts, Elizabeth B. Keiser shows how this fourteenth-century religious poem legitimates erotic pleasure as natural apart from procreative justification and thus represents a unique moment in Western culture. She argues that Cleanness sacralizes heterosexual erotic play while condemning male homosexual love as profaning the Creator's workmanship and his nature.