Converting Saracen women were whitened in medieval texts to express authorial desire.

Evidence

Medieval literature includes other types of female Muslim characters, many of whom figure prominently in conversion narratives. Saracen females who convert to Christianity are usually represented as white, a reversal of the dark-skinned or Black Saracen male monster. White Muslim females do not represent “a realistic portrayal of the medieval French view of the Saracen body but illustrate desire on the part of the white male authors of the text.” These characters are not realistic portrayals, but rather expressions of desire for the exotic Other, which was often situated in fantasies about racial and sexual difference. As Robert Young argues, “The identification of racial with sexual degeneracy was clearly always overdetermined in those whose subversive bronzed bodies bore witness to a transgressive act of perverse desire.” Numerous cases exist in medieval literature that combined fantasies about Muslims and Africans, such as the Muslim idol of Venus with a huge mouth and red tongue and the black-skinned Saracen giants whose strength is located in their sexual organ or navel. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 200

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the manufactured image shifting: fear of the dark monster vs. desire for the white convert, both projections of the male author.
• SEED: The whitening of converts is a strong angle: how conversion narratives plotically erase the racial otherness the monster needs.
• DEEPTHINKING: The dichotomy of desexualized dark monster vs. whitened desirable convert reveals the projection machinery as a whole system of racial and sexual fantasy.