| Queer Chivalry : Medievalism and the Myth of White Masculinity in Southern Literature For the U.S. South, the myth of chivalric masculinity dominates the cultural and historical landscape. Visions of white southern men as archetypes of honor and gentility run throughout regional narratives with little regard for the actions and, at times, the atrocities committed by such men. In Queer Chivalry, Tison Pugh exposes the inherent contradictions in these depictions of cavalier manhood, investigating the foundations of southern gallantry as a reincarnated and reauthorized version of medieval masculinity. Pugh argues that the idea of masculinity -- particularly as seen in works by prominent southern authors from Mark Twain to Ellen Gilchrist -- constitutes a cultural myth that queerly demarcates accepted norms of manliness, often by displaying the impossibility of its achievement. Tison Pugh is the author of Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature; Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature; and Queering Medieval Genres. He is a professor of English at the University of Central Florida, where he specializes in medieval, children's, and southern literature. |