Stacy S. Klein

It is a long-standing truism that Old English literature rarely discusses sexual difference or erotic life, and is instead obsessed with chronicling blood feuds, heroic battle-quests, and inter-familial strife. By examining the lexical and thematic intersections between war and sexual difference within literary, historical, and religious writings produced in England between 700-1100 AD, this project provides a new conceptual framework for understanding long-occluded questions of gender and sexuality within Anglo-Saxon studies. This project offers a fresh perspective on the complex relationships between cultural conceptualizations of sexual difference, violence, and the gendered distribution of power and privilege, in both the Middle Ages and our own culture.