Synopses & Reviews
In 13 studies of representations of rape in medieval and early modern literature by such authors as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Spenser, this innovative book argues that some form of sexual violence against women has always served as a foundation of Western culture. The book has two purposes: to explore the resistance these pervasive representations generate for readers--especially for female readers--and to explore what these representations tell us about the relationships between men and women. Rose and Robertson focus in particular on the way depictions of rape make manifest a cultures understanding of the female subject in society.
Synopsis
Thirteen papers, from a series of meetings held during the 1990s, argue that Western culture was founded on persecution and violence against women. Their evidence for this is the large amount of sexual violence against women that can be found in literature between the 14th and 16th century. Subjects include: medieval readers of Ovid; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; the brutal story of Philomena; rape and mutilation in Chaucer and Shakespeare; Titus Andronicus; Sidney; Spenser; feminine readers and patrons. The papers include numerous extracts which are accompanied, where applicable, by an English translation. Four papers have been previously published.
Synopsis
In thirteen studies of representations of rape in Medieval and Early Modern literature by such authors as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Spenser, this volume argues that some form of sexual violence against women serves as a foundation of Western culture. The volume has two purposes: first, to explore the resistance these pervasive representations generate and have generated for readers - especially for the female reader- and second, to explore what these representations tell us about social formations governing the relationships between men and women. More particularly, Rose and Robertson are interested in how representations of rape manifest a given culture's understanding of the female subject in society.
About the Author
Christine Rose no bio
Elizabeth Robertson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is founder editor of The Medieval Feminist Newsletter.
Table of Contents
Introduction *
Part One: Reading and Teaching Rape * Reading Chaucer Reading Rape--Christine Rose * Rape and Silence: Ovid’s Mythography and Medieval Readers--Mark Amsler * Translating Rape in
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight --Monica Brzezinski Potkay *
Part Two: The Philomel Legacy * Raping Men: What’s Motherhood Got to Do With It?--E. Jane Burns * The Daughter’s Text and the Thread of Lineage in the Old French
Philomela --Nancy Jones * O Keep Me From Their Worse Than Killing Lust: Ideologies of Rape and Mutilation in Chaucer’s
Physician’s Tale and Shakespeare’s
Titus by Robin Bott * Rape and the Appropriation of Progne’s Revenge in Shakespeare’s
Titus Andronicus, Or, ‘Who Cooks the Thyestean Feast?’--Karen Robertson
Part Three: Law, Consent, Subjectivity * Rape in the Medieval Latin Comedies by Anne Schotter * Chaucer and Rape: Uncertainty’s Certainties by Christopher Cannon * Private Bodies and Psychic Domains:
Raptus, Consent, and Female Subjectivity in Geoffrey Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde --Elizabeth Robertson * Rapt From Himself: Rape and the Poetics of Corporality in Sidney’s England--Amy Greenstadt
Part Four: Reading Rape: The Canonical Artist, the Feminist Reader, and Male Poetics * Of Chastity and Rape: Edmund Spenser Confronts Elizabeth I in
The Faerie Queene --Susan Frye * Spenser’s Ravishment: Rape and Rapture in
The Faerie Queene --Katherine Eggert * Afterword--Christopher Cannon Christine Rose * Mark Amsler * Monica Brzezinski Potkay * E. Jane Burns * Nancy Jones * Robin Bott * Karen Robertson * Anne Schotter * Christopher Cannon * Elizabeth Robertson * Amy Greenstadt * Susan Frye * Katherine Eggert