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.
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. 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. Elizaveta Strakhov is Associate 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.
Acknowledgements Introduction: Recovering the Pastourelle Sarah Baechle, Carissa M. Harris, and Elizaveta Strakhov Part 1: Essays 1. Reassessing the Pastourelle: Rape Culture, #MeToo, and the Literature of Survival Sarah Baechle and Carissa M. Harris, with Elizaveta Strakhov 2. "You and Me, Baby, Ain't Nothin' But Mammals": Animal Metaphors and Sexual Consent in the Poetry of William Dunbar Mary C. Flannery 3. Voicing Violence: Reading Rape Survival in Premodern Lyrics Carissa M. Harris 4. Gentrifying the Pastourelle in the Visual Arts of the Valois Courts and Christine de Pizan's Dit de la pastoure Scott David Miller 5. Dismembered Memories: Philomela in Chaucer and Gower Lucy M. Allen-Goss 6. The Many Wives of Potiphar: Rape Culture in Medieval Romance Amy N. Vines 7. Legendary Resistance: Critiquing Rape Culture in Virgin Martyr Passions Courtney E. Rydel 8. Rape, Rapture, and Writing The Book of Margery Kempe Suzanne M. Edwards 9. "And sok his fille of ?at licour": Maternity, Sovereignty, and Song in the Marian Lyrics of London, British Library, MS Sloane Katharine W. Jager 10. Response: A Telling Difference; Sexual Violence, Consent, and Literary Form Elizabeth Robertson Part 2: English and Scottish Pastourelles and Rape Songs Edited by Carissa M. Harris Throughe a forest as I can ryde Come over the woodes fair and grene When that byrdes be brought to rest Be pes, ye make me spille my ale Quhy so strat strang go we by youe Hey troly loly lo I can be wanton and yf I wyll Beware my lytyl fynger All to lufe and nocht to fenyie Commonyng betuix the Mester and the Heure I met my lady weil arrayit I saw me thocht this hindir nycht In somer quhen flouris will smell Ane fair sweit may of mony one Still undir the levis grene Nay pish, nay pew Bibliography Contributors Index
"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 "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
