ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that sexual identity can sometimes function as an identity marker by helping to define a relationship of paradoxical identity between two characters. This may seem an unlikely thought at first, since sexual difference would seem to be a given in a story of courtly love. The idea can be illustrated by a juxtaposition of two popular medieval romances, each of which plays out a relationship based on paradoxical identity. In the first, the roman idyllique Floire et Blancheflor, the young lovers may be of opposite sexes but they resemble each other so closely that at times this distinction seems almost a technicality. In the second example, the chanson de geste Ami et Amile, the courtly doubles are both male and yet the dynamic of their relationship is substantially the same as that in Floire et Blancheflor.
