Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England
- Author / Editor
- Saunders, Corinne J.
Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England
- Published
- Cambridge : D. S. Brewer, 2001.
- Physical Description
- ix, 343 pp.
- Description
- Surveys modern and postmodern theorizing of rape and addresses rape in medieval England. Topics include secular, legal notions of rape; rape in canon law, theology, and confessional manuals (especially vernacular ones); rape motifs in hagiography (especially St. Lucy); classical paradigms of rape (Lucretia and Helen of Troy) in medieval English narratives; rape in romance, especially Malory's "Morte Darthur"; and rape in Chaucer's works (pp. 265-310). Chaucer's various depictions of rape reflect a very "modern" awareness of "issues profoundly relevant to female experience." He employs classical paradigms and romance motifs, but his work never "loses a sense of the real gravity of rape."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.