The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature, 1000-1400

An investigation of the motif of the unspeakable as manifested in a wide range of medieval texts, from the Exeter Book to Chaucer. Amid saints and sinners, open secrets and queer codes, the mechanisms of confession and the infliction of torture, what is unspeakable in the Middle Ages - and who decides? Aspiring to the ineffable glories of heaven or plunging down to the murky depths of "unmentionable sin", this very functional concept becomes attached to the very good and the very bad in medieval