The afterlives of rape in medieval English literature

Resource Information

The work The afterlives of rape in medieval English literature represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The afterlives of rape in medieval English literature

Statement of responsibility

Suzanne M. Edwards

Creator

• Edwards, Suzanne M., 1975-

Author

• Edwards, Suzanne M., 1975-

Subject

• English literature -- Middle English
• English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism
• History
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- Medieval
• Rape in literature
• Rape in literature
• Spirituality in literature
• Spirituality in literature
• To 1500
• Women and literature
• Women and literature -- England -- History -- To 1500
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• England

Genre

• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

"From devotional literature that idealizes wives' submission to unwanted sex to political narratives that frame women's survival of sexual violence as a model for a just monarch, medieval texts propose that survivors of sexual violence have privileged moral, ethical, and spiritual insight. The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature explores these discourses of survival in a wide range of medieval English texts, including letters of spiritual advice, legal statutes and cases, saints' lives, romances, theological summae, and legendary histories. In these eleventh- through fourteenth-century texts, the ethical and epistemological dilemmas that survival poses capture the difficulty of reconciling spiritual and civic ideals with an unjust, fallen world. Edwards argues that understanding the literary history of survival as distinct from the history of rape, can help us to weigh the ethical importance of attending to violence against women against the costs of reifying gender difference and its traumatic identifications - both in our study of the past and in contemporary feminist politics"--

Member of

• New Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

820.9/001

Index

index present

LC call number

PR275.R37

LC item number

E39 2016

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

The new Middle Ages