More "Groping" in the Summoner's Tale

Abstract

This article challenges the idea, advocated in previous scholarship, that the friar's groping down Thomas's backside in the Summoner's Tale, represents, figuratively, a subversion of an imposed and monolithic orthodoxy, especially by exposing an alternative polysemy of practice, both theological and sexual. While erotic and homosexual elements are undoubtedly evident in the Tale, certain crucial words and gestures, particularly those surrounding the friar's ill-fated grope, do not unambiguously have the homosexual charge that has been claimed. Moreover, intrusiveness generally and more specifically groping, even physical groping with an implicit sexual charge, were probably often associated, in the minds of those subject to confession, with the orthodox practices of confession of the institutional Church. The 'targets' of the Summoner's Tale are diffuse; the text is more open than has been suggested.