The Language of Ravishment in Medieval England
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10788865 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caroline Dunn (0000-0002-4108-9545, Clemson University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 79-116 |
| Publication date | 2011-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Speculum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-7134 • E-ISSN: 2040-8072 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0038713410003490 |
| PMID | 21465837 |
| OpenAlex | W2053002082 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 13 |
Two pillars of medieval English literature, Chaucer and Malory, stand accused by posterity as criminals, yet scholars remain perplexed about the nature of their crimes over five centuries later. Some convict them of the heinous offense of sexually assaulting a woman against her will, while others believe them guilty of no more than seduction or consensual sex. The allegation against Malory has even been reframed to portray him as a knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel (or wife) in distress; thus instead of seizing a woman in order to rape her, this author of Arthurian legends “stole” Joan Smith away from her abusive husband when Joan departed with Malory consensually. Keen to illuminate the personal lives of the authors whose Canterbury Tales, Morte Darthur, and other works opened up the world of the Middle Ages for posterity, contemporary researchers have seized upon medieval English legal sources to clarify these authors' own stories. The crime in which Chaucer and Malory have been implicated, of seizing a woman, confounds those historians and literary scholars seeking to explore these authors' late-medieval milieu because the word most frequently employed to record the misdeed is one of the most ambiguous legal terms in medieval England, and indeed Europe. When an individual seized (Latin rapuit) a woman or stood accused of her seizure (raptus), the term's multivalent connotations mean that the offense might conform to either or both of our modern legal categories of rape and abduction
Adultery · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Chivalry · Convict · Knight · Literature · Medieval Latin · Medieval Literature · Middle Ages · Middle English · Order (exchange · Political science · Romance · Wife · Classics · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History
History Matters
Settlement and the Decline of Private Prosecution in Thirteenth-Century England
Free consent and marriage of feudal wards in medieval England
Abduction Marriage in Antiquity
Documenting Sir Thomas Malory
Raptus in the Chaumpaigne Release and a Newly Discovered Document Concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer
Chaucer, Alice Perrers, and Cecily Chaumpaigne
Ravishment, Legal Narratives, and Chivalric Culture in Fifteenth-Century England
The Imaginary Society
Runaway Wives
Sir Thomas West and the Statute of Rapes, 1382
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2023 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |