“O, Keep Me From Their Worse Than Killing Lust”: Ideologies of Rape and Mutilation in Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus

Abstract

The telling and retelling of the sensational tale of Virginius and Virginia in the literature of Medieval and Early Modern England indicates this society’s concern with the social and political consequences of sexual access to women. Recorded first by the Roman historian Livy, the story of Virginius and Virginia is a tale of political intrigue intertwined with an additional tale of threatened rape and subsequent murder. Apius, a corrupt judge, desires Virginia, the chaste daughter of Virginius, who murders his daughter to counter Apius’s plot to obtain her. When Apius tries to punish Virginius, the Roman people rise up and overthrow Apius, who commits suicide.1 This version of the story provides the text of Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale and other medieval works. By the sixteenth century, however, there are two versions of the Virginius and Virginia story, Livy’s version in which Virginius kills his daughter before she is defiled, and an alternate version, in which Virginius murders Virginia after she is raped.2 Medieval and Early Modern accounts of this story are almost always told as an exemplum of evil government; the moral is that men who use their authority for evil purposes are always punished.3 In these redactions of the tale, however, as the Virginiuses who have helped to restore a righteous reign step to the forefront, the Virginias who have endured unspeakable harms fade into the background.KeywordsFemale BodyPhysical BodySexual AccessEarly Modern PeriodSocial BodyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.