As someone who works in pre/early modern lit, this is a good post and the real key I think is here:
However, the way you're talking about the story makes it sound like an explicitly homosexual text, which it isn't.
I haven't read OP's essay, but in general this is the big thing with gender/sexuality and pre modern texts. Noncery aside, reminds us that these things are historically determined. If you want to read homosexual desire into a pre modern texts you need to basically do the work to explain how that desire fits into the material conditions of the medieval period.
Btw, this is actually rooted in a Marxist approach - sex and desire are not trans-historical but always determined by the material conditions of the historical moment. If you're gonna read same sex desire into Bisclarivet (which, as you note, is actually a commonplace) you have to do the work to read it into the text and articulate how we see something like same sex desire in a period where this didn't really have a systematic/ideological/cultural sanction.
As someone who works in pre/early modern lit, this is a good post and the real key I think is here:
I haven't read OP's essay, but in general this is the big thing with gender/sexuality and pre modern texts. Noncery aside,
reminds us that these things are historically determined. If you want to read homosexual desire into a pre modern texts you need to basically do the work to explain how that desire fits into the material conditions of the medieval period.
Btw, this is actually rooted in a Marxist approach - sex and desire are not trans-historical but always determined by the material conditions of the historical moment. If you're gonna read same sex desire into Bisclarivet (which, as you note, is actually a commonplace) you have to do the work to read it into the text and articulate how we see something like same sex desire in a period where this didn't really have a systematic/ideological/cultural sanction.