The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400.
- Author/Editor
- Blud, Victoria.
- Title
- The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400.
- Published
- Blud, Victoria. The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. ISBN 9781843844686.
- Review
- "This book has a broad historical remit and its theoretical affiliations are likewise diverse," Blud notes in her introductory chapter (13). Essentially, the volume's title identifies her two areas of concern: by "the unspeakable" she means both a combination of the apophatic--the concept of the inexpressibility of the Divine, borrowed from Eastern Orthodox and mystical traditions--and "the suppression of same-sex eroticism" (3). The latter concern, with particular focus on women's same-sex desire, occupies most of the book, the theoretical grounding of which "crystallise[s] around the legacy of Foucault and Lacan's work on silence, language, and power" (13), punctuated throughout with appropriate ideas drawn from Giorgio Agamben, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Karma Lochrie, and Diane Watt. Her interest in Gower is confined to two tales in the Confessio Amantis: "Iphis and Iante" from Book IV and "Tereus" from Book V. Of the former, she says "The tale serves as an example of how female same-sex desire in medieval writing can be denied or undeclared, both in the text and by its readers. It is presented as both natural and unnatural, as both problematic and unproblematic; it is not punished, but nor [sic] is it permitted to go uncorrected" (89). Blud acknowledges that "the same-sex female couple . . . are not said to engage specifically in unspeakable acts [but] this union 'is' [emphasis hers] deemed to be untenable by the narrative and by nature (or 'kinde'). For Gower and for Cupid, it is a relation that should not be preserved and cannot be written unproblematically" (89). She cites the Latin gloss "in which Iphis is troubled by an inability to fulfil her desire" as "presenting a different story" from the English (90), apparently finding in "Set cum Yphis debitum sue coniugi unde soluere non habuit" indication of Iphis's intentions alongside her inability. She finds Ianthe's desire for Iphis provoked by the latter's presenting as male, noting that "the transformation seems to valorize the phallocentric discourse and access a missing phallus that will make the relationship intelligible" (92). For Blud, the tale is thus "a test case for Gower's (a)morality; in this framework, the 'Confessio' is particularly interested in 'transgressive' gendered identities, and not simply negative exemplars" (92). The central message of the "Tale of Tereus," Blud observes, is that "Tereus's performative bodily inscription of unspeakability on Philomela fails to silence her" (152). For much of her interpretation Blud relies on Watt's reading of Gower's version as an effort to "reinstate women as the real victims of rape, and to counter the misogyny so common in this sort of narrative" (157). She contrasts Gower's version more or less favorably with Chaucer's in the "Legend of Good Women," citing Chaucer's own suspect past as suggested by the Cecily Chaumpaigne case (157-58). Unlike Chaucer's, "Gower's account of Tereus's crime engages with its challenges to masculinity, rather than femininity. Here the narrative exposes . . . the boundary-crossing excess of rape" (158). Gower, in Blud's view, is "judicious" in his "treatment of the revenge scenario Chaucer omits [i.e., serving Itys to Tereus]" (159). Gower negotiates "infanticide, cannibalism, and metamorphosis" as well as--throughout the tale--rape and incest to present in its closing scenes the emasculation and diminution of Tereus, " . . . thus made less than natural, less than a king, less than a man . . . unceremoniously cut off by the intervention of the gods, who transform him into a bird" (164). And pointedly a silent one: for Blud (leveraging Cixous here), it is significant that Gower--again unlike Chaucer--describes the "voices" of the sisters transformed into birds, but by making Tereus a lapwing, a bird with no song, (171) he depicts a silence that speaks volumes. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2017
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations