Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Late Medieval Literature: With an Edition of Middle English and Middle Scots Pastourelles

Published by Penn State University Press 2022

Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Late Medieval Literature

With an Edition of Middle English and Middle Scots Pastourelles

Edited by: Sarah Baechle , Carissa M. Harris and Elizaveta Strakhov

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271093055

Overview
Contents

About this book

Centering on the difficult and important subject of medieval rape culture, this book brings Middle English and Scots texts into conversation with contemporary discourses on sexual assault and the #MeToo movement. The book explores the topic in the late medieval lyric genre known as the pastourelle and in related literary works, including chivalric romance, devotional lyric, saints’ lives, and the works of major authors such as Margery Kempe and William Dunbar. By engaging issues that are important to feminist activism today—the gray areas of sexual consent, the enduring myth of false rape allegations, and the emancipatory potential of writing about survival—this volume demonstrates how the radical terms of the pastourelle might reshape our own thinking about consent, agency, and survivors’ speech and help uncover cultural scripts for talking about sexual violence today.

In addition to embodying the possibilities of medievalist feminist criticism after #MeToo, Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Late Medieval Literature includes an edition of sixteen Middle English and Middle Scots pastourelles. The poems are presented in a critical framework specifically tailored to the undergraduate classroom.

Along with the editors, the contributors to this volume include Lucy M. Allen-Goss, Suzanne M. Edwards, Mary C. Flannery, Katharine W. Jager, Scott David Miller, Elizabeth Robertson, Courtney E. Rydel, and Amy N. Vines.

Author / Editor information

Baechle Sarah :

Sarah Baechle is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. She is a coeditor of New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall.Harris Carissa M. :

Carissa M. Harris is Associate Professor of English at Temple University and the author of Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval Britain.Strakhov Elizaveta :

Elizaveta Strakhov is Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University. She is the author of Continental England: Form, Translation, and Chaucer in the Hundred Years’ War and a coeditor of John Lydgate’s “Dance of Death” and Related Works.

Reviews

“Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Late Medieval Literature is a timely, cutting-edge collection of essays that contains some of the most forward-thinking work on sexual violence, consent, and agency in the field of medieval literary studies. These essays chart a new, invigorating direction for feminist work that will shape the field for years to come.”
—Holly A. Crocker, author of Chaucer’s Visions of Manhood

“Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Late Medieval Literature brings a new focus on the sexual violence of the pastourelle genre, which, as the authors note, has often been erased or sidelined in mainstream scholarship. The essays offer a unique contribution by showing how the responses of women to sexual violence in the literature is mirrored by the responses of real women to similar events in our time.”
—Alison Gulley, editor of Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Recovering the Pastourelle Sarah Baechle, Carissa M. Harris and Elizaveta Strakhov Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1 Essays
1. Reassessing the Pastourelle: Rape Culture, #MeToo, and the Literature of Survival Sarah Baechle, Carissa M. Harris and Elizaveta Strakhov Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2. “You and Me, Baby, Ain’t Nothin’ But Mammals”: Animal Metaphors and Sexual Consent in the Poetry of William Dunbar Mary C. Flannery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
3. Voicing Violence: Reading Rape Survival in Premodern Lyrics Carissa M. Harris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
4 Gentrifying the Pastourelle in the Visual Arts of the Valois Courts and Christine de Pizan’s Dit de la pastoure Scott David Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
5. Dismembered Memories: Philomela in Chaucer and Gower Lucy M. Allen-Goss Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
6. The Many Wives of Potiphar: Rape Culture in Medieval Romance Amy N. Vines Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
7. Legendary Resistance: Critiquing Rape Culture in Virgin Martyr Passions Courtney E Rydel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
8 Rape, Rapture, and Writing The Book of Margery Kempe Suzanne M. Edwards Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
9. “And sok his fille of þat licour”: Maternity, Sovereignty, and Song in the Marian Lyrics of London, British Library, MS Sloane 2593 Katharine W. Jager Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
10. Response: A Telling Difference; Sexual Violence, Consent, and Literary Form Elizabeth Robertson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Part 2 English and Scottish Pastourelles and Rape Songs
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Throughe a forest as I can ryde Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
Come over the woodes fair and grene Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
When that byrdes be brought to rest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196
Be pes, ye make me spille my ale Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Quhy so strat strang go we by youe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Hey troly loly lo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
I can be wanton and yf I wyll Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Beware my lytyl fynger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
All to lufe and nocht to fenyie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Commonyng betuix the Mester and the Heure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
I met my lady weil arrayit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	220
I saw me thocht this hindir nycht Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
In somer quhen flouris will smell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
Ane fair sweit may of mony one Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Still undir the levis grene Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Nay pish, nay pew Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 9
- Images: 9
- Other: 9 illustrations
Keywords: Study of medieval rape culture; Consent in theMiddle Ages; Sexual Violence; #MeToo Movement; Survivor speech; Lyric; Female Subjectivity; English and Scottish pastourelles; hagiography; Margery Kempe; William Dunbar

eBook

Published: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 9780271093055