ABSTRACT
In combining these terms-queer and movie medievalism-we take as a premise that modernity is a “condition” (to borrow from Lyotard), a condition characterized by an elaborate and conflicted preoccupation with the past, and therefore deserving of interrogation.2 Building on this premise, we hope to make two points: that queer theory is a useful mode by which to begin such an interrogation, in part because queer theory has the power to disrupt our notions of linearity and of a differentiating temporality (that is, how difference might
be experienced as past/present/future); and second, that we see the cinematic Middle Ages as an especially rich and even singular site for queer/ing study, in part because moderns so often construct the medieval period as emphatically opposed to modernity.
