Kiss My Relics: Hermaphroditic Fiction of the Middle Ages

Author / Editor
Rollo, David.

Title
Kiss My Relics: Hermaphroditic Fiction of the Middle Ages

Published
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Physical Description
vii, 250 pp.

Description
Explores the relationship between textuality and sexuality in various texts, including Martianus Capella's "De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii," Jean de Meun's "Roman de la rose," and PardT, particularly the Pardoner's invitation to the Host to kiss his relics. Chaucer's Pardoner is a figurative hermaphrodite who resists gendered and sexual categorizations, comparable with Bel Acueil of "Roman de la rose" and sharing in a degree of creative and poetic freedom increasingly associated in literature with the hermaphrodite.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and LIterary Relations