Medieval Literature, Gay Werewolves and Porn

Caught your interest with that title, didn't I? And, yes, I meant that without the Oxford comma.

Well, hopefully you won't be disappointed.

For those of you who haven't read my introduction (or have already forgotten) I am a university student. I study English/Creative Writing so many of my classes are English classes (duh). One of my favorite places to collect ideas is from my classes.

Today I had my medieval British literature class. We are currently reading The Lais of Marie de France and were laughing hysterically over the bird men that apparently live in Wales and the werewolves that bite noses off their wives. In my mind, these tales are the equivalent of porn-y fanfiction. Seriously, Marie goes on about God telling her to write them and then obsesses over adulterous naked men for half the book. It's like Medieval Fifty Shades of Grey. (There was also brief mention of Canterbury Tales pornography, but that's something else altogether!)

Now, you have to admit, it's not a huge leap to gay werewolves with the bromance going on between the king and the wolf in "Biscalavret" and I started wondering if those mightn't be some good stories to do retellings of (since retellings are my favorites to write) with LGBTQ+ themes. On that same note, after reading The case of Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun, an instance of two men accused of being werewolves, my professor said "I think that they were doing something else with that oil and then, when they were caught, just said: 'oh, yeah, we're werewolves . . . that's what the ointment is for <.<  >.>'"

In the same class we talked about the (apparent) power granted to women in these stories. We viewed images of medieval depictions of them, noting the positioning of the men on their knees praising beautiful women. Of course, my mind went to Medieval BDSM, dynamics, and Femdoms. I realize that this is a leap, but that's the thing about writing: it doesn't have to be realistic.

Well, those are my ideas for today, I hope you enjoyed reading them!


Recap of Ideas and Prompts:

1. Retellings of the Lais of Marie de France 
2. LGBTQ+/MOGAI themes in classical tales (such as The Canterbury Tales and The Lais of Marie de France)
3. Medieval BDSM and Femdom