Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 2430
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Potkay , Monica Brzezinski.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: The Violence of Courtly Exegesis in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
  • Source: Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature.  Edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose.  The New Middle Ages Series. Palgrave, 2001.  Pages 97 - 124.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Chivalry Courtly Literature Jerome, Theologian and Saint Literature- Verse Rape in Literature Romance, Literary Genre Sexual Violence in Literature Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Middle English Poem
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 14
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exposes courtly discourse's potential for sexual violence, attributes that violence to a hermeneutic that imagines reading as rape, and responds to linguistic violence by declaring its own textual integrity. The poem warns that those who violate texts or women will themselves be violated. [Reproduced by permission of Palgrave].
  • Table:
  • Abstract:
  • Author's Affiliation: College of William and Mary
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2001.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0312236484