Creeping Desires: Queer Masculinity in "The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is" (ATU 326).

The article discusses a queer reading of the folktale type ATU 326, "The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is," analyzing how masculinity is constructed through male desire, intimacy, and the recurring motif of the bed as a liminal space. Topics include homoerotic and nonnormative male encounters within the tale; the tension between queer desire and enforced heterosexual endings through marriage; and the performance of masculinity as alternatives to hegemonic, compulsory heterosexual norms.