Medieval romance, fanfiction, and the erotics of shame

My dissertation uses fan studies theories of fanfiction to reframe later medieval romances as works that were not only reread and rewritten, but transformed through affective reading and rewriting strategies, especially through desire and shame. I explore the erotics of shame through fanfiction tropes seen in a variety of canonical and non-canonical medieval romances, both Arthurian and otherwise, from the twelfth century to the fifteenth. I use elements that function as major motifs in fanfiction, in spite or even because of their embarrassing nature, including fanfiction's predominantly female authorship and its catering to queer desires, the prevalence of male/male romantic storylines (slash), the focus on rendering male bodies vulnerable through hurt and comfort, and fanfiction's embrace of a variety of erotic kinks which may remain fantasy desires only. By locating fanfiction desires and shames in medieval romance, I reveal modes of resistance to structures of hegemony through the tactic of finding personal pleasure in the culturally shameful. The ways in which fanfiction challenges heteronormative ideologies of gender and sexuality highlights ways in which medieval romances press on these boundaries, too.