This project explores literary attitudes toward non-normative sexuality, primarily female homoeroticism and gender-nonconformity. These issues are afforded exemplary treatment within the story of Iphis, in Metamorphoses 9. Here Ovid obliquely but irrefutably shows the situation of the protagonist—a maiden in love with a member of her own sex—to be in no way more deviant than broadly accepted patterns of sexual normativity; normativity is understood by Ovid as gender-asymmetrical couplings, no matter how excessive (such as the one between Pasiphae and the bull). Moreover, the tale represents a readily recognizable "code," a signpost for the presence of a discourse on issues of sexual normativity and identity formation in subsequent works.

After establishing the code in my treatment of Ovid, I then focus my analysis on the manner in which authors such as Dante, Boccaccio and Ariosto engage the ideological content of the Iphis story. I show that, despite his established familiarity with multiple medieval elaborations of the tale, Boccaccio's treatment of the material is superficial at best. Ariosto's conspicuous yet little-studied imitation of Iphis's lament in Canto 25 of the Furioso integrates the Ovidian ideology on non-normative sexuality far more successfully, albeit rather obliquely. Conversely Dante, whose use of the Metamorphoses tale is less immediately evident, tackles the same set of issues head-on. Perhaps counter-intuitively to many readers, Dante's approach demonstrates a consummately Ovidian willingness to question the legitimacy of conventional standards of normativity in matters of gender, sexuality, and, ultimately, love itself.

The project as a whole is best described as a diachronic study of attitudes toward specific instances of non-normative sexuality as reflected in a number of prominent works of Italian literature spanning the late-thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. My work advances feminist and queer scholarship by bringing to the fore the insufficiently studied issue of female homoeroticism, while complicating traditional gender discourse with a socio-historical perspective. It also brings a necessary contribution to the area of Dante studies, where the need for a sustained gender approach to the Commedia has recently become apparent. Finally, investigating "normativity" as an acceptable criterion for the assessment of acts, behaviors, and identities opens up the interpretative discourse beyond the area of sexual identity and practice. This foray into the establishment, policing, and social negotiation of absolutely-defined norms challenges the validity—the possibility even—of assumed standards of normality, and points to novel and rich avenues of research.