EVELYN BIRGE VITZ
Rereading Rape
in Medieval Literature
In the past few years, the academy, even more perhaps than the culture at
large, has had rape on its mind; every scholarly conference now devotes a
session or two to the topic. Much of this scholarship is plagued by a ten–
dency toward naive, anachronistic, and inappropriate readings of literary
works, high levels of indignation and self-pity, and a pervasive hostility to
men. While we can all agree that rape itself must be strongly condemned,
I believe that there is room for serious debate on the scholarly handling of
the theme of rape in literature. As a student of medieval French literature
I will focus on the tradition I know best and then draw out a few points
on the implications of this tradition, as I see them, for the contemporary
scene.
Many feminists take the view that literary depictions of rape should
not distract attention from its ugly reality. Kathryn Gravdal, whose views
are at once typical and highly influential, asserts that the "act [of rape] is
systematically erased, elided, displaced, naturalized, and rationalized" in
Western literature. Rape is too often "troped": the reader's "ordinary re–
sponse" is suspended and refocused onto "formal or thematic elements."
The poet may make the representation of rape "tolerable" by troping it as
"moral, comic, heroic, spiritual, or erotic." In short, according to such
feminists, the theme of rape should not be poeticized or joked about; rape
should be presented seriously, honestly, straightforwardly.
Such demands, however, ignore fundamental features of medieval lit–
erary esthetics. Few genres were committed to high seriousness, and
many poets dealt lightly with the entire array of human suffering. War,
humiliation, illness, and death, like rape, all essentially serious themes,
were often referred to casually or comically. Other serious themes, from
marriage to the miracles of the saints, were also trivialized, "troped," and
turned to comic purposes. In short, the Middle Ages laughed even at its
most basic values. This comic spirit was directly related to the entertain–
ment function of works, destined above all to make people laugh in social
gatherings - and men and women have in the past laughed at things that
we may not find funny today. The medieval sense of humor was, by our
standards, sometimes harsh and cruel.
