Chris' Fish Place

As anyone who has studied medieval literature can tell you, we should be careful about bringing our own tastes and morals to the literature because it was a different time period after all.  They didn't, so we are told, feel or see rape the same way.

But after reading things like the first two poems in this collection I wonder.

Caradoc, the first story, is one that will kill any woman's desire to read any more medieval romances about Arthur.  A shame really, considering there are some really good ones out there. You see, Caradoc's mother gets enchanted so she sleeps with the wizard who makes her husband sleep with various animals.

So she's raped.

And that makes her a slut, so when her son finds out about his true parentage he tells her husband, makes her get locked up in a tower where the only one who remembers her is her rapist.

And yet I wonder about that whole acceptance thing because we have, we know this, like de Pizan who wrote in reaction to works like this.  And even de France's romances are different.

Hell, Gawain and the Green KNight, which seemed a source for Caradoc is different.

Hell, so is de Troyes.

And then there is the whole folklore issue.

So I wonder.  

Worth reading to see what de Pizan was writing in reaction to.  The last story is the only one that really isn't anti-women.  It's just a bit too long.