Negotiating Incest and Exogamy in La fiyla del rey d'ungría

Abstract

One of the most widely circulating stories of medieval Europe is set in motion by the threat of father-daughter incest. This threat, leveled at a virtuous, beautiful, and long-suffering heroine, unleashes a series ofmarital adventures that dramatize the advantages and perils of exogamy. The basic structure ofthe tale is as follows: A king eidier promises his dying wife or vows after her death diat he will remarry only ifhe can find someone as beautiful as his beloved wife. The only viable candidate who closely resembles the deceased wife is their only child, a daughter. To avoid the incestuous union the princess cuts off one or both ofher hands (in the case ofbodi hands, she has a servant perform the maiming). The king orders her to be killed, but, instead, she is abandoned in a forest or set adrift at sea. She is found by anodier nobleman who marries her despite her mutilation and the objections of his mother. The heroine gives birth to a son when her husband is absent and the modier-in-law forges letters to and from the absent husband, first announcing the birth of a monster or a black child insinuating that she is an adulteress and then ordering the execution ofmother and child. The handless princess is once again abandoned or set adrift. The husband returns, punishes his mother, and, after a long search, finds his wife, whose hands have been miraculously reattached. Throughout the Middle Ages, many variants of the Flight from the Incestuous Father/Handless Maiden story circulated in different genres and languages, transmitted through oral folktale, hagiographie legend, verse romance, and prose fiction. The first known written version, the English Vitae Duorum Offarum, appeared in the diirteenth century. The story often converged widi other widespread tale-types,