'Deep clerks she dumbs': The Learned Heroine in Apollonius of Tyre and Pericles

Abstract

It is not often in real life that a liberal arts education saves a girl from rape, and it must be even rarer in medieval and Renaissance romance. But in the case of the daughter of Apollonius of Tyre, Tarsia called Marina in Pericles education pays off, quite literally. 1 After the apparent death of her mother in childbirth, the infant Tarsia is entrusted by her father to the care of his friends Stranguillio and Dionysias in Tarsus, to be brought up with their daughter, while he goes off to Egypt (chap. 28). At the age of five the two girls are sent to school to study the liberal arts (chap. 29): it seems to be accepted as quite normal that girls should be educated away from home. When Tarsia is abducted by pirates and sold to a brothel-keeper in Mityleně, she manages to preserve her chastity by telling the sad story of her adventures to her would-be clients and to the pimp's servant (chaps. 33-36). The servant is sympathetic to her desire to avoid prostitution, but points out that the pimp is extremely avaricious. This is where Tarsia's