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.

'Overall the collective intention to address this highly problematic issue of rape from a medieval and early-modern perspective is very laudable, and all authors challenge our traditional understanding of the some of the key texts in Middle English and Old French literature. This provocation proves to be stimulating and will engender future studies of this topic...Elizabeth Robertson and Christine Rose have a made a valid contribution to future investigations of rape in the Middle Age.' - Professor Albrecht Classen, Mediaevistik

Autorentext
CHRISTINE ROSE is Associate Professor of English at Portland State University and has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.

ELIZABETH ROBERTSON is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is founder editor of The Medieval Feminist Newsletter.

Inhalt
Introduction PART ONE: READING AND TEACHING RAPE Reading Chaucer Reading Rape by Christine Rose Translating Rape in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Monica Brzezinski Potkay PART TWO: THE PHILONEL LEGACY Raping Men: What's Motherhood Got to Do With It?; E.J.Burns The Daughter's Text and the Thread of Lineage in the Old French Philomela; N.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 Andronicus; R.Bott Rape and the Appropriation of Progne's Revenge in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Or, 'Who Cooks the Thyestean Feast?'; K.Robertson PART THREE: LAW, CONSENT, SUBJECTIVITY Rape in the Medieval Latin Comedies; A.Schotter Chaucer and Rape: Uncertainty's Certainties; C.Cannon Private Bodies and Civic Domains: 'Raptus,' Consent, and Female Subjectivity in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde ; E.Robertson Rapt From Himself: Rape and the Poetics of Corporality in Sidney's England; A.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; K.Eggert