Contagion, Sexual Violence, and Communal Healing in Chaucer's "The Physician's Tale" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Author/Editor
- Friedman, Sarah.
- Title
- Contagion, Sexual Violence, and Communal Healing in Chaucer's "The Physician's Tale" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Published
- Friedman, Sarah. "Contagion, Sexual Violence, and Communal Healing in Chaucer's 'The Physician's Tale' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Essays in Medieval Studies 37 (2022): 65-80.
- Review
- In this carefully argued essay, Sarah Friedman takes on the question of sexual violence against women in which she juxtaposes Chaucer's Physician's telling of the tale of Virginia with Gower's Confessor's telling of the Tale of Lucretia to unveil the "intersubjective nature of suffering" (65). In a more broadly cast reading than is typical of those who address the raping of women in medieval literature, Friedman focuses on the decentering of "the psychological effects of violence brought to the female body" (65) and the use of the violated female body "to facilitate communal healing and positive political change" (65). While at first glance it is difficult to see any connection between the violence done to Virginia and that done to Lucretia OR even the shame/blame that drives each woman to her death (the former by beheading, the latter by suicide), there are points of convergence that illuminate each tale, nonetheless. Especially jarring at first is a seemingly sympathetic take on an illness medieval physicians took very seriously, i.e. lovesickness or "amor heroes" and its effects on the two lascivious and rapacious men in these tales, Appius [sic] and Tarquin. The "inborn suffering" thought to be "love" (at least in Andreas Capellanus's "De Amore") changes Appius's "herte and mood" (l. 126), making him a "victim of Virginia's beauty even though he is the one plotting to capture her" (67). In Gower's tale, Cupid's "fyri dart" robs "Tarquin" [i.e., Aruns, his son, in the CA] of his reason, and he suffers a "blinde maladie to which no cure of surgerie can helpe" (VII, 4852-57). This is a component of intersubjective suffering that infects these male bodies with an illness that is both physical and moral, not theirs alone, but rather a malady of the community at large. Friedman's use of "contagion" in her title is a reference to the bubonic plague raging in the historical background, acknowledged by Chaucer when he uses the term "sovereyn pestilence" (l. 91) as a metaphor for the "diseased" (emphasis mine) betrayal of Virginia's innocence. For Gower, this is a contagion in need of purgation afforded by confession, which like bloodletting, brings the body/soul back into a state of homeostasis. While much attention appears to be focused on the suffering of these two men in Friedman's discussion, the women do come back into the conversation, especially in relation to the impact their dead bodies have on their respective communities. As in the theological discourses underpinning medieval notions of sexual violence against women, which the author builds into her argument along with selected medical authorities, "Chaucer and Gower set up links between sexual violence and illness to forge a connection between the tragedy of rape and positive forms of community formation and healing" (70). That said, the dead bodies of two women still lurk in the background. [ES. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations