In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature by Suzanne M. Edwards
  • Vickie Larsen
Suzanne M. Edwards. The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. vii, 193. $95.00.

Suzanne Edwards's The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature is not about rape, but about having been raped, about living on within the dominant epistemology of the European Middle Ages as a survivor of sexual assault. Edwards's challenging, deeply troubling—and also supremely timely—introduction challenges her readers to acknowledge [End Page 465] how their own investments in condemning rape and in calling for justice may come at the expense of accompanying survivors in their survival. It opens with a passage from City of God, in which Augustine offers theological consolation to the rape victims of invading Visigoth soldiers during the siege of Rome in 410 ce. For Augustine, Edwards tells us, rape is "an extreme bodily experience of dispossession" that "reorganizes embodiment around the knowledge that one has never been as self-possessed as one might have thought." Augustine defends the "moral, ethical and material" integrity of the rape victim and claims that any shame that a survivor might feel results not from guilt, but from "a consciousness of the self as constitutively dispossessed" (7). Regardless of how others might view the victims of 410, Augustine attributes to them a "painful—but spiritually valuable" knowledge of human limitation (8).

I read and I rage at Augustine's homage to the survivor, and at Edwards's investment in it, and perhaps even at her willingness to work through it—carefully and disinterestedly—for her readers. In an age (like every other) when people of all gender identities suffer from sexual violence, some of it inside Christian spaces, Augustine's commitment to seeing victims as they live on after rape—rather than simply averting his eyes—is hardly consoling, and the supreme knowledge of "dispossession" that he accords to rape victims—with its implications of a universal powerlessness against predation—stings like salt in a wound.

In Chapter 1, Edwards examines Thomas Aquinas's determination in Summa theologiae that suffering rape in obedience to God counts as martyrdom. Edwards patiently untangles Aquinas's "strained" negotiation of the problem that martyrdom must be chosen willingly while rape is, by definition, a violation of the will (23). She uses Aquinas's understanding of fear in rape narratives—fear of the loss of virginity and fear of surviving the separation of the self from the will—to frame her comparison of Ambrose's and Goscelin of St. Bertin's hagiographic retellings of the life of the Virgin of Antioch. In De virginibus, Ambrose narrates the story of the virgin's double bind: a traditional martyrdom is off the table; the virgin must choose between worshipping idols and being sent to work in a brothel. She chooses the brothel in obedience to her god, and in so doing chooses her own rape. Her first client helps her escape, and they both end up properly martyred, but not until she has consented to rape. According to Edwards, Ambrose's version emphasizes the virgin's understanding of rape as martyrdom, her rescue from it [End Page 466] being convenient for readers, but not essential to her own progress toward martyrdom. Goscelin's telling of the same tale in his Liber confortatorius emphasizes instead the virgin's fear of rape and its shameful aftermath. Goscelin's survivor will not so much be dead to the world, martyred through rape, but will live out whatever remains of her life in penitent humiliation as a whore. Edwards closes this chapter by mapping the links between rape and death in the pseudo-hagiographic Life of Christina of Markyate. Christina is not a martyr, but her pursuit of sanctity requires her to live in fear of rape and repeatedly escape from impending sexual assault. Edwards's partnering of Christina's vita with the hagiographic narratives is not entirely satisfying, insomuch as martyrdom by death or rape do not factor into the narrative (Christina valiantly rescues her virginity for her chosen spouse, Jesus). The hagio-graphic narratives might have been more...

pdf

Share