Relative identities: father-daughter incest in Medieval English religious literature【翻译】

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ABSTRACT
Medieval tales of father-daughter incest depict more than offensively dominant
fathers and voiceless, victimized young women: these stories often contain moments of
surprising counternarrative. My analysis of incest narratives foregrounds striking
instances of feminine resistance, where daughters act independently, speak
unrestrainedly, adopt masculine behaviors, and invert masculine gazes. I argue that
daughters of incestuous fathers participate in a complex back-and-forth of attraction and
rejection that thrusts the fraught nature of the incest into sharp relief, revealing the ways
in which medieval families—as well as the medieval church and state—constructed and
deconstructed identities and sexualities. Extending Judith Butler’s insights on how incest
tales interrogate state and kinship networks, I show how the liminal position of daughters
in the family destabilizes the sex/gender system as it functioned in both the family and
the larger world, secular and sacred. My dissertation thus relocates daughters from the
periphery to the center of the medieval family. Christian thematics likewise provide a key
framework for both my argument and medieval audiences: biblical translations and
retellings, saints’ lives, and moral exempla offered familiar points of reference. By
revealing how authors and artists employed well-known religious stories to impart
political readings of sexuality and of the family, the four chapters of my dissertation
assert daughters’ key role in medieval Christian culture. I examine both Anglo-Saxon
texts—the biblical epic Genesis A and the prose Life of Euphrosyne—as well as the late
medieval poem Cursor mundi and Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. My readings are enhanced by
recourse to the medieval visual record offered by three manuscripts that illustrate the Lot
story—British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, the Old English Hexateuch, and Oxford
Bodleian Library MSS Junius 11(the Genesis A manuscript) and Bodley 270b, a Biblé
moralisée. Artistic renderings of father-daughter incest are no less unsettled than their
literary counterparts, and demonstrate that the position of daughters was so
2
fundamentally unstable that it often varied not only within an era, but also within a single
manuscript. I argue that authors and artists radically reimagined the fundamental texts of
the Middle Ages, including the Old Testament, to establish new narratives of sin and
salvation, self and other, and power and submission.
Abstract Approved: ____________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________
Title and Department
____________________________________
Date
____________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________
Title and Department
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Date
RELATIVE IDENTITIES: FATHER-DAUGHTER INCEST IN MEDIEVAL
ENGLISH RELIGIOUS LITERATURE
by
Erin Irene Mann
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
July 2011
Thesis Supervisors: Professor Jonathan Wilcox
Associate Professor Kathy Lavezzo
Copyright by
ERIN IRENE MANN
2011
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________
PH.D. THESIS
_______________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Erin Irene Mann
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in English at the July 2011 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ___________________________________
Jonathan Wilcox, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________
Kathy Lavezzo, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________
Claire Sponsler
___________________________________
Matthew Brown
___________________________________
Kathleen Kamerick
ii
For
Katherine Hathaway Crain
(1920-2003)
and
Janice Frost Kennedy
(1936-2009)
iii
Hast thou daughters? Have a care of their body, and shew not thy countenance gay
towards them. Marry thy daughter well, and thou shalt do a great work,
and give her to a wise man.
Sirach 7:27
Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear:
and forget thy people and thy father’s house.
Psalms 44:11
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people were essential to the completion of this dissertation, and I wish to
offer my heartfelt thanks for their contributions. This project was immeasurably shaped
and improved by the guidance of directors Jonathan Wilcox and Kathy Lavezzo. Jon was
the epitome of generosity as a director; his extraordinary willingness to read anything and
discuss everything gave me a model of scholarship and mentorship that is unparalleled.
Kathy’s role as my most challenging reader pushed me to think more incisively and more
insightfully, which I appreciate as much as her genuine belief in the project and in me.
Both were giving of their time, their expertise, and their patience. My grateful thanks as
well to the members of my committee—Claire Sponsler, Matt Brown, and Kathleen
Kamerick all made vital contributions to the development and execution of this project.
Other mentors who deserve credit for my development as a scholar include Joyce
Mitchell, Matthias Henze, Terrence Doody, Dennis Huston, and Cheryl Jacobsen.
This project was completed with the generous financial support of a University of
Iowa Graduate Presidential Fellowship. Research at the British Library was made
possible by the Valerie Lagorio Dissertation Prize from the University of Iowa English
department. A Newberry Library Old English Literature seminar on the Junius 11
manuscript provided the opportunity to develop my ideas for Chapter 1 on Genesis A, and
Chapter 2 was the direct result of a lively discussion in our Old English Reading Group,
for which I owe Jon, Chris Vinsonhaler, and Joseph Rodriguez thanks. Chapter 4
benefited from a thoughtful reading and clear critique by Sarah Stanbury. My writing and
study partners, Stephanie Norris and Wanda Raiford, were ready listeners and buoying
cheerleaders throughout— kindest friends to both me and my work.
Finally, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to everyone who supported me in
ways tangible and intangible throughout this process: Lindsey Row-Heyveld, Matt
Haynie, Travis Johnson, Sarah Karabelski, Kate Krueger, Erin Sandler, and Holly Savage
v
all provided vital comradeship, encouragement, amusement, and distraction. Nolan
Waugh was beyond constant in friendship and faith, as were my sisters, Emlyn and
Elysia. Most of all, love and gratitude to my parents, Les and Debbie Mann, who were
my first readers and always my best.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................... viii
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1
Theories of Incest, Medieval and Modern ........................................................6
The Case Studies .............................................................................................15
CHAPTER ONE: HARMS AND A MAN: LOT’S FAILED MASCULINITY IN
GENESIS A .....................................................................................................20
Feminized in Mambre .....................................................................................27
Hypermasculine in Sodom ..............................................................................42
Ambiguity in Segor .........................................................................................60
Conclusion ......................................................................................................72
CHAPTER TWO: CONFLICTING VOICES, CONFLICTING SELVES:
INCEST IN THE OLD ENGLISH HEXATEUCH AND LIFE OF
EUPHROSYNE ...............................................................................................76
Envisioning Lot’s Daughters in the Hexateuch ..............................................82
Erasing Euphrosyne ........................................................................................97
Conclusion ....................................................................................................128
CHAPTER THREE: “SO FASTE HIT DRAWEÞ TO DOUN HELDE”:
BLAME, AGENCY, AND REVISION IN THE LOT NARRATIVE ........135
Imagining Incest in the Early Fourteenth Century .......................................144
Reading Incest in Cursor mundi ...................................................................151
Guilt in a Contemporary Biblical Text .........................................................169
Images of Blame in Bibles moralisées ..........................................................175
Conclusion ....................................................................................................183
CHAPTER FOUR: WALTER’S WIVES: INCEST IN THE PUBLIC EYE IN
THE CLERK’S TALE ...................................................................................187
Walter’s First Marriage and Its Historical Contexts .....................................198
Fatherhood and Its Discontents ....................................................................212
Return and Revision in the Second Marriage ...............................................229
Conclusion ....................................................................................................246
EPILOGUE ......................................................................................................................249
WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................256
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1. Oxford Bodleian Library MS Junius 11, page 84. Abraham leads his family
into Haran .................................................................................................................75
2. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, fol. 32r. Angels lead Lot and his
family from Sodom; Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt. ................................130
3. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, fol. 32v. The destruction of Sodom .....131
4. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, fol. 33r. Lot’s grieving daughters;
the escape from Segor to the cave ..........................................................................132
5. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, fol. 33v. Lot’s intoxication and the
incestuous encounter with each daughter ...............................................................133
6. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, fol. 34r. Lot’s daughters with their
sons, Moab and Ammon .........................................................................................134
7. Oxford Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, fol. 15v, detail. Lot’s incestuous
encounter with his daughters and allegorical commentary. ....................................185
8. Oxford Bodleian Library MS Bodley 270b, fol. 15v. The story of Lot,
illustrated literally and allegorically .......................................................................186

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