CENTRE FOR MEDIEVAL STUDIES
&
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & RELATED LITERATURE
Medieval Literatures Research Seminar
"That it had been to late for to crie":
Rape and Patriarchy in Middle English Texts
Dr Rachel Moss
Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford
& Centre for Medieval Studies PhD graduate
Chaucer’s The Reeve’s Tale is a frenetic fabliau, filled with slapstick and bawdy comedy. It is also a story about rape. Many readers have denied
that the miller’s daughter and wife are both sexually assaulted, claiming evidence of their pleasure or at least capitulation. In this paper, I will
argue that Chaucer follows a well-established tradition of using rape as a punchline in fabliaux, where disorder is paradoxically used to restore
patriarchal norms, and will illustrate this with a discussion of Middle English texts, including the romance Sir Degare.
Tuesday 21 April
5:30pm – King’s Manor KG/33
(wine afterwards in KG/84)
Image: The Hague, KB, 66 B 13 fol. 289r. Rape of Lucretia: Sextus Tarquin threatens her with a sword