Queer Medieval Outing with Nicola Griffith: A Public Humanities Event
By María Bullón-Fernández and Sarah Faulkner
Award-winning novelist Nicola Griffith writes in the Author’s Note to her Arthurian-inspired novel Spear that, although Arthurian stories are more the stuff of legends than history, she wanted “the details [in the novel] to be historically grounded.”[1] She then adds that for the story to be historically accurate,
this could not be a story of only straight, white, nondisabled men. Crips, queers, women and other genders, and people of colour are an integral part of the history of Britain—we are embedded at every level of society, present during every change, and part of every problem and its solution. We are here now; were there then. So we are in this story. (176)
Griffith’s remarks point to an enduring and crucial question about history. How do we recover the voices of those throughout history who have not been in positions of power and who, therefore, have been either left out of records or only represented in partial or stigmatizing ways? Additionally, how do we include those whose stories have not been told? Could contemporary fiction set in historical times play a role in recovering those voices and stories, challenging notions of who belonged in the past and, consequently, who belongs in the present and in the future?
These questions were at the center of a highly successful public humanities event that took place in Seattle on June 11, 2024: “The Queer Medieval with Nicola Griffith.”[2] Sponsored by Humanities Washington, a non-profit organization funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and co-produced with Town Hall Seattle, a cultural center and event space, “The Queer Medieval” was intentionally scheduled during Pride month to bring the queer and the medieval together in both a celebratory and a reflective mode. With this event, we—Sarah Faulker, until recently Program Manager at Humanities Washington, and María Bullón- Fernández, a medieval literature scholar—aimed to bridge the gap between scholarly and public discussions of medieval history and its representation in popular culture. While the main event centered on Griffith’s talk and a Q&A with Bullón-Fernández and the audience, we saw an opportunity too to make the event unique and memorable, setting it apart from the other many ‘book talk’ style lectures offered in Seattle.
Griffith writes on her website: “The image is of Christian martyr-saints, Maurice and Theofredus, third-century CE soldiers of the Sacred Band of Thebes in North Africa. They were both Egyptian, but of course that fact got white-washed over time. QSpirit has more information, including some images of Maurice depicted as a Black African in High Medieval armour. Still wrong but, hey, at least not lily white.”
In this piece we will reflect on Griffith’s talk, on her work, and on why we believe her talk and the Q&A were compelling to the public. We also discuss the event as an instructive example of ways in which the humanities, and particularly medievalism, can engage general audiences and strive to make a difference. Griffith’s fiction offers us a way to reflect on how history and literature can help us bring about a more inclusive and just present and future.
Griffith’s novels are best understood in the context of recent work on medievalism. As Louise D’Arcens has put it, medievalism is “the reception, interpretation or recreation of the European Middle Ages in post-medieval cultures.”[3] Such creative reimaginings of the Middle Ages have been generated for hundreds of years. Medievalism has traditionally been distinguished from medieval studies, the scholarly study of the Middle Ages, a field that also has a long history. In the last few decades, though, scholars of the Middle Ages, including D’Arcens herself, Carolyn Dinshaw, Bruce Holsinger, Stephanie Trigg, Jonathan Hsy, and many others, have recognized and analyzed the overlap between medievalism and medieval studies. Some of these scholars have also raised questions about how medievalism can intervene in the present.[4] Dinshaw’s 2012 book, How Soon Is Now? and Hsy’s 2022 book Antiracist Medievalisms are particularly relevant for our purposes as they explore medievalism in the context of queer and antiracist approaches to the Middle Ages, raising important questions about time, history, and inclusion.
Intentionally, creatively, and on the basis of meticulous research, Griffith engages both medieval studies and medievalism through a queer and inclusive lens in three novels set in the Middle Ages. The first one, Hild, and its sequel, Menewood, recreate the early life of St Hild, whose story we know primarily from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.[5] The third, Spear, is a short novel based on the story of Perceval, whom Griffith calls Peretur, the Old Welsh version of Perceval’s name. In all three works, Griffith’s main characters feel and act upon their queer desires. Hild has both heterosexual and same-sex relations, while Peretur, unlike Perceval, is not a male, but a female character who becomes a knight and has sexual relationships with other women.
The question of how and why Griffith includes queer characters in her historical fiction were central to the keynote she gave at Town Hall Seattle, “Queer Medieval.” When she was young, she reflected during her talk, she was an avid reader and, as she realized she was queer, she started wondering why there were no stories about people like her. Later on, in her early twenties, she visited Whitby Abbey. Feeling a deep, sensory connection with the place and with those who, although long passed, had inhabited it, she decided to read numerous books about the Early Middle Ages, including Bede’s brief account of the life of Hild, the Abbess and founder of Whitby Abbey (4.23–24).[6] Griffith’s desire in her younger years to see people like herself in books coalesced with this moment of deep connection with the Abbey. Reading between the lines of Bede’s description of Hild and questioning received ideas about the past and who belongs in it, she saw an opportunity to imagine the saint as a queer character.
Griffith’s literary intervention decenters both the male and heteronormative perspective of Bede’s history and most other medieval texts, as well as the stories that are typically the focus of medievalist fiction. Medievalist reimaginings have primarily satisfied the desire of white heterosexual men to see themselves in the past and are often used to justify their power in the present—the figure of King Arthur, for instance, epitomizes this dynamic. By incorporating queer characters into medievalist novels, Griffith provides a similar mirror for queer people. In addition, she challenges received ideas about both the past and the present. As Tison Pugh argues in an essay titled “Queer Medievalisms: A Case Study of Monty Python and the Holy Grail,”
the act of creating medievalist texts . . . invites opportunities to reformulate past and present visions of gender and sexuality from a queer perspective. In this realm of meta- construction and meta-analysis, the decisions made in constructing a medievalist text can imbue it with a queer sensibility by questioning the meaning of modern genders and sexualities.[7]
Griffith reformulates the past from a queer perspective by going beyond simply including queer people in her novels, but by also questioning traditional portrayals of queer people and of queer identity as a source of suffering in the Middle Ages. Against the grain of most medieval depictions of same-sex desire as sinful and of the persecution and punishment of queer people in medieval texts, Griffith portrays characters who enjoy their queerness and are neither negatively affected nor overdetermined by it. In her novels, characters who are queer feel their queer desires and act on them, but those desires are never portrayed or perceived by others as either positive or negative. They just are.[8] They live and fight, make good choices and make mistakes, all independently of their sexual orientation. As she put it in her keynote,
The plot never revolves around being queer—no one ever suffers or is marginalised for being queer or Black or disabled; if we suffer it's because of choices we've made, things we've done or not done, not for being who we are. In my novels we're just ordinary folk living in extraordinary times.
While one of Griffith’s goals as a writer is to create empathy for those who may be different from us, in her novels, whether or not a reader empathizes with a character is not dependent on the characters’ sexual orientation.
Griffith’s novels also reformulate the present. As an audience member at “The Queer Medieval” noted in a question they posed in the chat, associating queerness with pain is expected in contemporary literature as well: “Frequently, literature—particularly queer stories—is praised as high art when it portrays pain. As someone whose work is so wedded to joy, how do you work to show the nuance and transcendence of brighter emotions?” We did not have time to pose this question to Griffith, but as she discussed her most recent novel, Spear, Griffith declared that in her fiction she intentionally works against this association by “retaking queer joy.”
Griffith’s work is queer not only because it gives voice to unheard or unwritten queer stories, but also because she queers some traditional features of the genres she draws from. Queer theorist Sarah Ahmed has remarked on “the threat that homosexuality poses to the continuation of the family line, as a line of descent” from the father.[9] This threat is most evident in Spear, which troubles the straight and masculine directionality of epic and romance, with their promotion of patriarchal lines of descent. In Spear, Peretur and her lover Nimue have the opportunity to give Gwen (or Guinevere) water from the lake to make her whole (163), that is, to enable her to become pregnant (157). Peretur, however, decides not to give her the water because “If Artos had a son or daughter to pass the sword to, all the vows in the world would not persuade him to give it up when it was his time” (165). In taking away the possibility that Artos (or Arthur) might have a descendant, Peretur intentionally troubles the patriarchal line of descent. Additionally, there are several moments in Spear when masculine conceptions of power, which appear formulated as “Always take, have, own” (122), are questioned and critiqued. At the end of the novel, Peretur—unlike the typical romance or epic hero—decides not to acquire the power of the Tuath, male and female figures of Celtic mythology with god-like powers.
In the introduction to Antiracist Medievalisms, Hsy warns us: “Affective bonds with the past are never innocent nor neutral; they can be fraught and perpetuate harmful ideas and practices—or they can set the stage for transformative futures” (9). In his book, Hsy goes on to “explore[ ] divergent strategies of claiming or disidentifying with a medieval past (whatever ‘medieval’ means in any given context) to question received notions of history and to pursue racial justice” (9). Griffith’s work starts from a sense of affective bonds with the past, her deep sensory connection with Whitby and Hild, but, like the authors Hsy studies, Griffith’s bond does not become an opportunity to perpetuate harmful ideas and practices, but is a starting point to enact a justice-oriented transformation in the present and in the future.
One of the authors Hsy studies, novelist Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, has called for “restorying” the past or, as Hsy puts it, “for a proliferation of ‘stories [narrated] from the perspectives of readers, writers, fans, and audiences who are racialized’ as people of color to counter this longstanding imagination gap” (6). Thomas, Hsy continues, “emphasizes the importance of ‘restorying the imagination itself’ by centering people of color as protagonists within fictive worlds and also as the creators and audiences of such stories” (6). By including queer characters in her novels, Griffith similarly centers queer people as protagonists within fictive worlds, and as creators and audience. By writing characters who are not tormented by their queer desires, she also challenges history’s (and current) imagination gaps regarding queer people.
Griffith’s approach to queering the Middle Ages raises at least two important questions. First, it could be argued that Griffith idealizes the Middle Ages, portraying it as some kind of queer utopia, where there was no homophobia, and that, in overlooking the deep and structural roots of discrimination, this portrayal could have negative consequences for queer people in the present. As she did in her keynote, this is one of the reasons Griffith often insists on clarifying that her work is set in the Early Middle Ages, during a time of transition from pre-Christian Germanic beliefs to Christianity, a time when we have few records about daily life and attitudes about sexuality. Griffith asks why we need to read the absence of evidence about queer people in the Early Middle Ages through the lens of Christian views of homosexuality and make harmful assumptions to fill in the gaps. As she put it in her talk, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” A second question might be raised that portraying queer characters who behave mostly like heterosexual characters, except for their choice of sexual partners, suggests a queer politics of normalization or mainstreaming, one that numerous queer theorists and activists might object to on the grounds that, in their view, the aim of queer politics needs to be one of radical transformation. Griffith argued during the Q&A that her aim is not to “normalize” but to “naturalize” the queer by showing that queer desires are “natural” and should be seen as such, challenging both past and present ideas about homosexuality. A response Griffith gave to a question from an interviewer from “UK Lesbian Fiction” in 2013 also addresses these questions:
Adrienne Rich said, “We must use what we have to invent what we desire.” (What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics). That’s what I’m doing with Hild: I’m inventing what I desire. I desire a vision of the world in which the woman I had imagined (after years of research) might have existed, in which she might have been able to live her life as a human being: as subject not object. I wanted to believe that the Hild I imagined was possible. To look at where we come from–the past–and believe we could have survived there as ourselves. By making Hild possible, I wanted to recast what people today think might be possible and so make it possible. In other words, I’m recolonising the past. Recasting it. Retelling it. And by so doing, I’m recreating the present and so steering the future.[10]
As she indicates here, through restorying the past Griffith constructs new possibilities for inclusion and justice in the present and in the future.
The audience’s response to “The Queer Medieval” suggests that the event took one, even if small, step toward enacting this vision. Close to 300 people attended the event in person, while another 100 watched it online and, as of September 2024, over 700 have viewed the recording on YouTube. The joy was palpable among the in-person audience; it was captured in photos, audience questions, the 100+ person book-signing line, and the audience feedback gathered after the event, all of which was enthusiastically positive. Some examples of the comments we received include the following:
“Nicola's talk was one of the best speaking events I've attended in my life. Her storytelling, humor, and insights were profound and touching.”
“This was such an amazing way to celebrate Pride month! Nicola is an incredible speaker and the additional programming of community group tablers and the medieval choir were a perfect addition.”
“Wonderful to know how she created a world in which everyone is seen and has agency, one to which we can aspire. NG's presentation showed the Humanities at their fullest best!”
The success of “The Queer Medieval” event showcases what is possible when medievalism and medieval studies collaborate and when they are highly attuned to urgent contemporary questions, local resources, and views of the Middle Ages influenced by popular culture. Due to the event’s intentional link with Pride Month, we contacted several LGBTQ organizations and collaborated with a new local LGBTQ bookstore, Charlie’s Queer Books. We also advertised the event in social media and in other bookstores, as well as contacted faculty and students from local universities and high schools. As a result, we had a diverse audience who attended for different reasons. Additionally, we did not shy away from public enthusiasm for spectacle and fun, but in fact fostered it by featuring a performance by the Medieval Women’s Choir as well as festival-style tables with different activities, from crossword puzzles to medieval riddles. We sought to create the kind of playful atmosphere that surrounds Society for Creative Anachronism meetings and medieval and Renaissance fairs, while also providing a thought-provoking, rigorous exploration of literature and belonging.
At a time when the humanities, whether in or outside of academia, are often perceived as unnecessary, superfluous, or “stodgy,” public humanities events like “The Queer Medieval” belie such a perception. The event demonstrates that there is a desire among the general public for thoughtful and engaging discussions about history, literature, identity, and justice, both in the past and in the present. There is especially a desire for conversations that challenge received ideas about who belonged in the past and provide a nuanced prism through which to reflect on and imagine how to bring about a more inclusive and just present and future. And when such conversations take place in a joyful and creative setting, they are able to engage new publics in the humanities.
Author Bios:
María Bullón-Fernández is an English Professor at Seattle University. A specialist in Middle English Literature and feminist and queer theory, her publications include a book and articles on John Gower's Confessio Amantis, articles on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and an edited collection of essays on England and Iberia in the Late Middle Ages, among others.
Sarah Faulkner received her PhD in English from the University of Washington; she focuses on British women's writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as print culture studies and the public humanities. Previously the Program Manager for Humanities Washington, she now teaches English at Bishop Blanchet High School in Seattle.
Notes:
1 Nicola Griffith, Spear (New York: Tom Doherty, 2022), p. 174.
2 A recording of the event can be viewed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/3ZnK1XPpt88.
3 Louise D’Arcens, “Introduction: Medievalism: Scope and Aesthetic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. Louise D’Arcens, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 1–13; p. 1.
4 See Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now?: Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Jonathan Hsy’s Antiracist Medievalisms: From “Yellow Peril” to Black Lives Matter (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2021); and a special issue of postmedieval, “Novel Medievalisms” 7.2 (2016), ed. Bruce Holsinger and Stephanie Trigg. See also D’Arcens, Companion to Medievalism, for essays on medievalism from different perspectives and for a helpful bibliography on medievalism.
5 Nicola Griffith, Hild (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2013) and Menewood (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2023).
6 In her blog Griffith includes, with permission of the translator, the chapters on Hild in Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, trans. Roy M. Liuzza, Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1 (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006), https://nicolagriffith.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/hild-bede.pdf (accessed July 10, 2024).
7 Tison Pugh, “Queer Medievalisms: A Case Study of Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. D’Arcens, pp. 210–23; p. 216.
8 While the normalization of queer desires is most developed in Menewood and Spear, a significant normalizing moment comes mid-way through Hild. When Hild’s mother notices her daughter’s sexual awakening, spurred in part by Hild’s feelings for her companion Begu, she recommends that Hild start masturbating. However, because she knows that won’t be enough for Hild, she also suggests: “You need a person to anchor you. Someone whose smell and touch will keep your feet on the ground” (379). This person could be either a man or a woman, but she recommends Hild’s “bodywoman” Gwladus for this anchoring task.
9 Sarah Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 73.
10 Cari Hunter, “Exclusive Interview with Nicola Griffith,” UK Lesbian Fiction, November 14, 2013, https://uklesfic.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/nicolagriffith/ (accessed July 10, 2024).
