Homoeroticism and Chivalry

Zeikowitz explores both affirming and denigrating discourses of male same sex desire in diverse 14th-century chivalric texts and describes the sociopolitical forces motivating those discourses. He attempts to dethrone traditional heteronormative views by drawing attention to culturally normative "queer" desire. Zeikowitz articulates possible homoeroticized spectatorial interactions between male readers and imagined or actual model knights, dramatized accounts of same sex unions, and mutually stimulating or competing forces of homosocial and heterosexual desire in chivalric texts, such as "Charny's Book of Chivalry", "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", and "Troilus and Criseyde". He also examines how intimate male bonds are rendered sodomitically inflected, dangerous attachments in chronicle narratives of the reigns of Edward II and Richard II.