Representations of Rape and Consent in Medieval English Laws and Literature

Author: Cooper Mariah L.
Publisher: Arc Humanities Press

ABOUT BOOK

How did legal, literary, and scientific discourses intersect to define sexual non-consent in the Middle Ages? How did popular cultural assumptions about sexuality and gender influence actual medieval criminal proceedings? And how far have we really come today? ~ ~This book explores medieval English understandings of rape, consent, and the assumed mind-body dichotomy of rapists and rape victims. It demonstrates how laws, trial records, popular romance, and ecclesiastic and medical texts defined sexual consent and non-consent, and the consequences of such ideologies. By comparing episodes of rape and consent across diverse primary sources, it considers important medieval English rape myths and victim-blaming stereotypes. Significantly, it also highlights the cultural trepidation associated with believing women’s accusations of rape and questions how much “progress” we have made since then.

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