The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature.
- Author / Editor
- Edwards, Suzanne M.
The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature.
- Published
- New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
- Physical Description
- xvii, 183 pp.
- Series
- The New Middle Ages.
- Description
- Investigates the "discourses of [rape] survival" in medieval literature and its historical contexts, addressing the aftereffects of rape as they are depicted in saints' lives, anchoritic literature, accounts of raped wives (particularly Lucretia in Gower and Heurodis in "Sir Orfeo"), and WBT. Argues that, in light of the 1382 Statute of Rape, WBT "diagnoses how masculine distinction and privilege underwrite their own impossibility" and how the presentation of desire in WBPT warns "against overvaluing gender difference as an interpretive scheme."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations