Queer Chivalry: Medievalism and the Myth of White Masculinity in Southern Literature

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Southern History, Mythic White Masculinity, and Queering the Medieval Chivalric Ideal 1 2 Dialectical History, White Indians, and Queer Anxiety in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 26 3 Medieval Masculinity, Southern Chivalry, and Redemptive Homosexuality in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction 53 4 “It’s prolly fulla dirty stories”: Queer Masculinity and Masturbatory Allegory in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces 83 5 “I am the Lost Cause”: Queer History, the Southern Phallus, and the Quest for Medieval Timelessness in Robert Penn Warren’s A Place to Come To 112 6 “The Sir Walter Disease” and Queer Quests for Masculinity in Walker Percy’s Novels 138 7 Conclusion: Ellen Gilchrist’s The Annunciation and the Queer Future of Chivalric Masculinities 176 Notes 185 Bibliography 203 Index 219 This page intentionally left blank ...