Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction: The Revel, the Melodye and the Bisynesse of Solas
- ‘So wel koude he me glose’: The Wife of Bath and the Eroticism of Touch
- The Lady's Man: Gawain as Lover in Middle English Literature
- Erotic Magic: The Enchantress in Middle English Romance
- ‘wordy vnthur wede’: Clothing, Nakedness and the Erotic in some Romances of Medieval Britain
- ‘Some Like it Hot’: The Medieval Eroticism of Heat
- How's Your Father? Sex and the Adolescent Girl in Sir Degarré
- The Female ‘Jewish’ Libido in Medieval Culture
- Eros and Error: Gross Sexual Transgression in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
- Perverse and Contrary Deeds: The Giant of Mont Saint Michel and the Alliterative Morte Arthure
- Her Desire and His: Letters between Fifteenth-century Lovers
- Sex in the Sight of God: Theology and the Erotic in Peter of Blois' ‘Grates ago veneri’
- A Fine and Private Place
- Erotic Historiography: Writing the Self and History in Twelfth-century Romance and the Renaissance
- Index
How's Your Father? Sex and the Adolescent Girl in Sir Degarré
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction: The Revel, the Melodye and the Bisynesse of Solas
- ‘So wel koude he me glose’: The Wife of Bath and the Eroticism of Touch
- The Lady's Man: Gawain as Lover in Middle English Literature
- Erotic Magic: The Enchantress in Middle English Romance
- ‘wordy vnthur wede’: Clothing, Nakedness and the Erotic in some Romances of Medieval Britain
- ‘Some Like it Hot’: The Medieval Eroticism of Heat
- How's Your Father? Sex and the Adolescent Girl in Sir Degarré
- The Female ‘Jewish’ Libido in Medieval Culture
- Eros and Error: Gross Sexual Transgression in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
- Perverse and Contrary Deeds: The Giant of Mont Saint Michel and the Alliterative Morte Arthure
- Her Desire and His: Letters between Fifteenth-century Lovers
- Sex in the Sight of God: Theology and the Erotic in Peter of Blois' ‘Grates ago veneri’
- A Fine and Private Place
- Erotic Historiography: Writing the Self and History in Twelfth-century Romance and the Renaissance
- Index
Summary
MY FOCUS IN THIS ESSAY is ignorance and its converse, knowledge: most particularly I want to look at adolescent knowledge about sex and the body. In this essay I shall be focussing on the development of women. There is an important distinction to be made, however, between what is privately known and what can be articulated publicly: society dictates not what can be done (sexual practices remain largely the same, the results remain the same), but what may be said to be done. This is particularly problematic for the adolescent; how is the developing awareness of sexual identity, sexual desire, to be understood? How do girls find out about their bodies and their desires in a culture where practices such as masturbation are typically subject to prohibition and remain unvoiced? The unspeakable has to obtrude itself into narratives (consciousness?) in some way other than the verbal. One of the most telling forms of communication is through the use of body language, and body language is most eloquent on the subject of sex.
The story of Sir Degarré is as follows.
The widowed king of Brittany, who will not allow his eligible daughter to marry anyone unless the suitor is able to defeat him, is met riding with his daughter to a ceremony held each year to commemorate his dead wife. On the way, the princess declares that she must leave the retinue to answer a call of nature and while subsequently lost in the forest she is violently raped by a fairy knight who declares himself her lover and the father of the son she will bear from this union.
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- The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain , pp. 82 - 93Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007