Reading Incest: Tyranny, Subversion, and the Preservation of Patriarchy.
- Author/Editor
- Summers, Karen Crady.
- Title
- Reading Incest: Tyranny, Subversion, and the Preservation of Patriarchy.
- Published
- Summers, Karen Crady. Reading Incest: Tyranny, Subversion, and the Preservation of Patriarchy. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2011. v, 162 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A73.04. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and at https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/listing.aspx?id=8321.
- Review
- From Summers' abstract: "This dissertation explores usage of the incest theme in the medieval and early modern literary periods, and into the mid-eighteenth century," assessing Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Malory's "Morte Arthure," Shakespeare’s "Pericles," Beaumont and Fletcher’s "A King, and No King," Webster’s "The Duchess of Malfi," and Walpole's "The Mysterious Mother" and "The Castle of Otranto" to show how "writers and storytellers appropriate [the incest taboo] to reflect some of the anxieties attendant upon their times," with recurrent attention to "a common desire to preserve, uphold, and defend patriarchy." Summers' finds CA to be "filled with tales of incest" (10) which "analogize incest to tyranny, and prove that personal lives or social institutions built upon a foundation of incest tend not to stand" (11), comparing and contrasting it with Malory's treatment, and commenting on relations between Gower's tales and later literature, especially Shakespeare's "Pericles." [MA]
- Date
- 2011
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Influence and Later Allusion