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‘Hair Cut Short like a Mediæval Page’: Queer medievalisms in Gwen Lally’s historical pageants and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928)

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Published
Publication date31/03/2025
Host publicationStudies in Medievalism XXXIV: Tribal Medievalisms
EditorsKarl Fugelso
PublisherBoydell and Brewer
Pages1-25
Number of pages25
Volume34
ISBN (electronic)9781805435600
ISBN (print)9781843847380
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Publication series

NameStudies in Medievalism
PublisherBoydell and Brewer
ISSN (Print)0738-7164

Abstract

'Scholarly discussion of medievalism is no longer limited to hetero- and androcentric approaches. However, at the intersection of these two concerns, there remains a neglected area of inquiry: how do women, whose cultural productions can be profitably understood within a “lesbian” and/or “queer” framework, respond to medieval texts and tropes? In reply, this chapter presents two case studies from 1928: Gwen Lally’s medievalist pageant held at Wroxton Abbey and (John) Radclyffe Hall’s novel “The Well of Loneliness”, sometimes referred to as the “bible of lesbianism”. Hall’s identification with the medieval period can be illuminated by examining the “pageant fever” in her cultural context. The pageant world provided writers like Hall with a plethora of cross-gender performances, many of which evinced a lesbian erotics, such as the figure of the female page with her hair “cut short” accompanying her female knight. Despite such influences, the queer medievalisms of Hall's novel sit in tension with its conservative medievalisms, those uses of the medieval past that conserve established power structures rather than question, subvert, or reimagine them.'