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Chapter 1 - Passing over Queerness

Sexual Heterodoxy in Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2023

David Townsend
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

A thirteenth-century gloss on Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis dutifully approves the author’s omission of incriminatory detail as in line with the poem’s declared panegyric aims, even as it expounds a phrase in the text that alludes obliquely to Alexander’s scandalous behavior. What the glossator fails to register is that if Walter really wants to praise Alexander, he’s here been singularly incompetent at it. But a reader who has a rather more positive view of the possibility of world conquerors mixing it up with Persian toy-boys has ample space here to imagine it happening. Such a reader can plausibly seize precisely on the poem’s general celebration of Alexander in their reading of the supposedly derogatory allusion. Perhaps, to the mind of such a reader, Walter is suggesting that what Alexander gets up to in the privacy of the royal tent is nobody else’s business.

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Queering Medieval Latin Rhetoric
Silence, Subversion, and Sexual Heterodoxy
, pp. 19 - 41
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Passing over Queerness
  • David Townsend, University of Toronto
  • Book: Queering Medieval Latin Rhetoric
  • Online publication: 15 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009206860.002
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  • Passing over Queerness
  • David Townsend, University of Toronto
  • Book: Queering Medieval Latin Rhetoric
  • Online publication: 15 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009206860.002
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Passing over Queerness
  • David Townsend, University of Toronto
  • Book: Queering Medieval Latin Rhetoric
  • Online publication: 15 January 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009206860.002
Available formats
×