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IMC 2022: Sessions

Session 118: The Queerness of Early English Drama

Monday 4 July 2022, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Medieval & Renaissance Drama Society
Organiser:Jeffery G. Stoyanoff, Department of English, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania
Moderator/Chair:Jeffery G. Stoyanoff, Department of English, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania
Paper 118-aBreaking the Law of Identity: Re-Examining Lydgate's Dramatic Corpora
(Language: English)
Matthew E. Davis, Lewis & Ruth Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship, McMaster University, Ontario
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Performance Arts - Drama
Paper 118-bThe Governor, the Wife and the Cock-Blocking Constable: Spatial Policing and Heterosexual Parody in the York Pageant The Dream of Pilate's Wife
(Language: English)
Daisy Black, Department of English Language, TESOL & Applied Linguistics, Swansea University
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Performance Arts - Drama, Sexuality
Paper 118-cEveryman's Queer Failure
(Language: English)
Matthew W. Irvin, Department of English, University of the South, Tennessee
Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Performance Arts - Drama, Sexuality
Abstract

Over 20 years ago, Robert Clark and Claire Sponsler asked, 'why should we assume that medieval spectators could not ask: "What if?"'' (341), referring to a question of interpretive possibility vis-a-vis queer potentiality in medieval drama. Since then the field of queer studies has expanded and continues to seek out queerness in early dramatic texts. Most recently, Tison Pugh writes, 'The word queerness alludes to an ambiguous yet highly productive mode of critical inquiry, pertaining to disruptions of social, ideological, and sexual normativity that allow repressed, subversive, "sinful", or otherwise unexpected gendered and erotic identities to become visible' (11). This panel hopes to explore the ability of queer studies to question borders of all sorts - especially the body and time - and the borders that dramatic texts may breach by their nature in standing in for or representing performances.