Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100-1500

ISBN-13: 9781107017009 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 274 str.

Caroline Dunn

Opis

This study of illicit sexuality in medieval England explores links between marriage and sex, law and disorder, and property and power. Some medieval Englishwomen endured rape or were kidnapped for forced marriages, yet most ravished women were married and many 'wife-thefts' were not forced kidnappings but cases of adultery fictitiously framed as abduction by abandoned husbands. In pursuing the themes of illicit sexuality and non-normative marital practices, this work analyses the nuances of the key Latin term raptus and the three overlapping offences that it could denote: rape, abduction and adultery. This investigation broadens our understanding of the role of women in the legal system; provides a means for analysing male control over female bodies, sexuality and access to the courts; and reveals ways in which female agency could, on occasion, manoeuvre around such controls.

Recenzje

'Stolen Women offers exceptional thoroughness, subtlety, and precision and will be hard to replace as the new standard work on ravishment in later medieval English law.' Kim M. Phillips, Speculum

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Laws and legal definitions; 2. Rape; 3. Abduction and forced marriage; 4. Elopement abductions; 5. Adultery; 6. Retaliatory abductions and malicious legal proceedings; Conclusion; Appendix I: ravishment legislation; Appendix II: sources of ravishment cases; Bibliography.