Incest And The Medieval Imagination

Incest is a remarkably frequent theme in medieval literature; it occurs in a wide range of genres, including romances, saints's lives, and exempla. Historically, the Church in the later Middle Ages was very concerned about breaches of the complex laws against incest, which was defined very broadly at the time to cover family relationships outside the nuclear family and also spiritual relationships through baptism. Medieval writers accepted that incestuous desire was a widespread phenomenon among women as well as men. They are surprisingly open about incest, though of course they disapprove of it; in many exemplary stories incest is identified with original sin, but the moral emphasizes the importance of contrition and the availability of grace even to such heinous sinners. This study begins with a brief account of the development of medieval incest laws, and the extent to which they were obeyed. Next comes a survey of classical incest stories and their legacy; many were retold in the Middle Ages, but they were frequently adapted to the purposes of Christian moralizers. In the three chapters that follow, homegrown medieval incest stories are grouped by relationship: mother-son (focusing on the Gregorius legend), father-daughter (focusing on La Manekine and its analogues), and sibling (focusing on the Arthurian legend). The final chapter considers the very common medieval trope of the Virgin Mary as mother, daughter, sister and bride of Christ, the one exception to the incest taboo. In western society today, incest has recently been recognized as a serious social problem, and has also become a frequent theme in both fiction and non-fiction, just as it was in the Middle Ages. This interdisciplinary study is the first broad survey of medieval incest stories in Latin and the vernaculars (mainly French, English and German). It situates the incest theme in both literary and cultural contexts, and offers many thought-provoking comparisons and contrasts to our own society in terms of gender relations, the power of patriarchy, the role of religious institutions in regulating morality, and the relationship between life and literature.

Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance focuses on the incest motif as used in numerous medieval narratives. Explaining the weakness of great rulers, such as Charlemagne, or the fall of legendary heroes, such as Arthur, incest stories also reflect on changes to the sacramental regulations and practices related to marriage and penance. Such changes demonstrate the Church's increasing authority over the daily lives and relationships of the laity. Treated here are a wide variety of medieval texts, using as a central reference point Philippe de Rémi's thirteenth-century La Manekine, which presents one lay author's reflections on the role of consent in marriage, the nature of contrition and forgiveness, and even the meaning of relics. Studying a variety of genres including medieval romance, epic, miracles, and drama along with modern memoirs, films, and novels, Linda Rouillard emphasizes connections between medieval and modern social concerns. Rouillard concludes with a consideration of the legacy of the incest motif for the twenty-first century, including survivor narratives, and new incest anxieties associated with assisted reproductive technology.

This holistic study demonstrates the interconnected nature of early medieval origin legends and traces their growth over time.

Children and Sexuality probes the hidden relations between children and sexuality in case studies from the Greeks to the Great War. The lives reconstructed here extend from Greek Alcibiades to Lewis Carroll and Baden-Powell, each recounted with scrupulous vigilance to detail and nuance.

Providing new and challenging ways of understanding the medieval in the modern and vice versa, this volume highlights how medieval aesthetic experience breathes life into contemporary cinema. Engaging with the subject of time and temporality, the essays examine the politics of adaptation and our contemporary entanglement with the medieval.

Essays; medieval romance; Arthurian Iiterature; Elizabeth Archibald.

A wideranging and groundbreaking investigation of the sibling relationship as shown in European literature, from 500 to 1500.

This book examines the intricate and unusual relationship between the sacred and secular spheres of English medieval culture, positing that the assimilation of sacred and secular motifs could be in either direction, or even in both directions. That is, medieval English writers could appropriate biblical paradigms to express secular themes, and vice versa. Codicological, psychoanalytic, feminist, and new historicist insights inform readings of Beowulf, Middle English lyric poetry, the Gawain-poet, Chaucer, and Malory, among others. Besserman elucidates the structural and thematic complexity of the integration of biblical and biblically derived sacred diction, imagery, character types, and themes in the works under consideration, identifying within them new biblical sources and analogues and providing fresh insights into the contextual meaning and significance of the biblical paradigms they deploy. This book highlights the shaping influence of biblical and biblically derived sacred paradigms on exemplary literature produced in the middle Ages.