Queering Sponsalia Christi: Virginity, Gender, and Desire in the Early Middle English Anchoritic Texts

Abstract David Halperin’s classic essay asks the question: ‘Is There a History of Sexuality?’ and answers in a qualified affirmative: the alterity of the sex of ancient society is such that the term ‘sexuality’ may not be sufficient to discuss it.1 The study of sexual history thus demands an examination of the possibility that sexuality, gender, and desire may appear in unfamiliar configurations in different historical moments. It is becoming commonplace to observe that medieval sexualities, and medieval sex, are not necessarily identical to the modern versions. The distinction between modern sexuality identities and premodern sexual acts, derived ultimately from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, has been much debated and qualified, with the result that both periods are revealed to have a range of ways of conceptualizing sexual pleasures.2 Caroline Walker Bynum observes that medieval categories of the sexual appear to have differed from modern ones; that, for example, representations of genitalia may not have primarily signified sexuality.3