Incestuous Marriage Research Articles

Why Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex Is So Inoffensive

ABSTRACT I read Jeffrey Eugenides' 2002 novel Middlesex as a book that endorses a narrative of heteronormativity and ethnic assimilation. Ethnocentrism is critiqued through irony, first with an incestuous marriage and then by parodying the Nation of Islam. But on the question of homosexuality, the text appears to stage the impasse of sexuality and gender, only to resolve its complexities as a coming of age narrative that affirms heterosexuality.

Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III

As Professor Hicks admits in his preface, in attempting a biography of Anne Neville he has taken on a seemingly impossible task. Yet, with the very meagre sources available, the result is impressive. The book is aimed principally at the general reader, although academics will find some food for thought, particularly in Hicks's controversial representation of Anne's second marriage. Ricardians will be disappointed by a vehemently negative portrayal of Richard III, which includes the suggestion that Richard was ‘perhaps even a hunchback’. Inevitably the work involves considerable speculation, but Hicks is scrupulous in pointing out which elements are conjectured. Time and again he admits ‘we cannot really tell’. The book begins with an attempt to justify Anne's importance for who she was, if not for what she did, and then gives a detailed account of her family's place in late medieval England, providing a context which helps to make sense of her life. The third chapter examines the 1469–71 rebellions of her father, Warwick the Kingmaker, from Anne's perspective. This period included Anne's marriage to Prince Edward of Lancaster, and Hicks emphasises the great efforts taken by all parties to ensure that the proper dispensations were acquired. This marriage ended with Edward's death at Tewkesbury, and Hicks argues that Richard duke of Gloucester may have been more directly involved in killing the prince than is generally assumed. In the immediate aftermath of the failed Lancastrian readeption Hicks describes George duke of Clarence as Anne's ‘guardian angel’, but admits that ultimately their interests clashed. He claims that the fifteen-year-old Anne herself chose Richard of Gloucester as her second husband because he was the only man capable of securing her family's lands for her. In marrying without the proper dispensations, Hicks argues that both were aware that they were marrying illegally. His thesis that this was an ‘incestuous marriage’ is central to the biography and has already provoked vigorous denials from Ricardians. He also suggests that Anne was complicit in the unattractive land-grab at her mother's expense which accompanied this marriage. Thereafter, however, he argues that Anne's absence from historical records indicates that she ‘lacked even the normal influence that fifteenth-century ladies had with their husbands’. She played no obvious role in Richard's usurpation of his nephew's throne and her great failing as queen was that she produced only one child, a son who predeceased his parents. Her lack of children rendered her ‘past her sell-by date’. Under this heading Hicks argues that Richard intended to become a ‘serial incestor’ by marrying his niece, Elizabeth of York, and that Elizabeth was complicit in these plans. Hicks concludes with the claim that for Anne the shame of an impending divorce (and the decade of unmarried illicit fornication that that implied) was probably a greater trauma than all the tragic family deaths she had endured. Hicks has convincingly made his case that Anne Neville is a worthy subject for biography. His assessment of her life is entertaining, enlightening, comprehensive and contentious. While this book will certainly inspire further scholarship, it is hard to imagine anyone else producing a more effective biography in the foreseeable future.

Jocasta’s kinsfolk: Marx, Freud and Oedipus among contemporary antiphilosophers

The text deals with the recently renewed issue of ?antiphilosophy? in the self-understanding of some prominent contemporary continental philosophers but not only them, such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, both referring to the psychoanalyst and theoretician of discourse Jacques Lacan. Starting with a metaphorical analysis of the verdict made by Marx of ?merely interpretive? character of philosophy in relation to ?the study of real world? and with his comparison of philosophy with ?masturbation?, the text addresses new appeals to ?antiphilosophy? as samples of a token or rather, as cases of a syndrome connected with Jocasta?s rationalization of Oedipus? curse. It was her discourse based on general rules of rationality with which she unconsciously attempted to avoid the confrontation with the truth of an event (incestuous marriage) which had already occurred. In the text, presuppositions and consequences of such an analogy between ancient and contemporary philosophical material are discussed in order to show-on the basis of arguing that the unconscious is located within (and not beyond) rational processes that subjects undertake in order to respond to rational needs (viz. impulses of the Ego)-that contemporary discussion about ?antiphilosophy? by left-wing philosophers bears unacknowledged tendencies to unconsciously reduce Marx? algorithm of ?realization of philosophy? to the Hegelian negation of the negation and to integrate it into the discourse of academic philosophy.

The Power of Excess: Royal Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty

The Greco-Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemies, which ruled Egypt from 322 until 30 BCE, established early on a practice of incestuous marriage in the royal house. This cus tom, which may have had a number of pragmatic functional pur poses, was on a more profound level symbolic of royal power. But royal incest, as practised by the Ptolemies, was only one of a larger set of behaviours, all of which were symbolic of power, and all of which were characterized by lavishness, immoderation, excess and the breaching of limits in general.

Docticity Fecundity Interiority in Pleonastic Pacuvian Psychology

In Marcus Pacuvius' playAntiopa, the title character is reunited with her twin sons Amphio and Zethus, whom she had previously abandoned on Mt Cithaeron. Such is her state of unkemptness that Zethus, it appears, did not recognise her:inluuie corporiset coma prolixa impexa conglomerata atque horrida(Pac.Antiopa13f. W)In dirtiness of bodyAnd hair unkempt, matted, compacted and bristled.Many of Pacuvius' plays deal with mother-son recognitions, often at crux moments of incestuous marriage or unholy kin murder; here it is the physicality of dirt that perverts the perceptions of the mind. The language wallows in this filth, with asyndeton and assonance and homoeoteleuton and vowel elision that runs all the adjectives into each other, such that their pronunciation smacks of the hairball, spluttering for breath, a noisy mastication with an unpleasant grating from those last staccato syllables. The focus on the physical accumulation of detritus betrays a psychological distaste and an inability to unravel a personality and identity from behind this rotting palimpsest of decay. The language reflects this distaste, compacting thought and knowledge in a filth unspeakable. Thus we might conjecture that this is even asublimedirt(!), in the sense that Burke implies, one that terrifies, stuns and shuts down logical capacity. The awkward convolutions of the language mimic this inability to comprehend, and actually recognise, this awesome picture of the unwashed. Pacuvius thus uses linguistic ingenuity effectively to convey psychological disturbance by foregrounding its manifestation through a distorted apprehension of a physical phenomenon, one that reveals its very distortion as the language is matted and glued back into itself, denying the sort of clarity that recognition requires.

Emergent properties in small-scale societies.

A multi-agent simulation is used to explore the relationship between the micro and the macro levels in small-scale societies. The simulation demonstrates, using an African hunter-gatherer group (the !Kung san) as a case study, the way in which population stability may arise from culturally framed, micro-level decision making by women about spacing of births. According to the simulation, population stability as an emergent property has different implications, depending on resource density. Data on Australian hunter-gatherer groups are presented that support the implications of the simulation. !Kung san micro-level cultural rules on incestuous marriages are shown to have macro-level consequences in the form of marriages between residential camps. Between-camp marriages have significant implications for access to resources and thereby for population dynamics of the group as a whole.

The marriage of Childeric II and Bilichild in the context of the Grimoald coup

The marriage of the Neustrian prince Childeric II to his Austrasian first cousin Bilichild, consummated in 662, is the only known union between blood-related members of the Merovingian ruling houses. It is not, however, as unique in its contravention of custom and canon law as it may first appear, but is merely one of several instances in which a Merovingian ruler made use of controversial marital politics in order to respond to sudden shifts in the power currents of the Frankish regna. Given that Childeric and Bilichild’s common ancestry lends an extra dimension to a comparison with earlier incestuous marriages within the Merovingian family, it seems likely that their union was conceived in response to a hitherto unprecedented challenge to Merovingian authority. Rooted in the unusual circumstances of the late 650s, it may therefore have been directly connected with the Merovingian need to re-establish control over Austrasia in the wake of the so-called Grimoald coup.

Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine, Edited from Paris BNF fr. 1588 and Translated ed. by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (review)

86ARTHURIANA (of warrior types, of the heroic 'life grid,' of the trickster and others) that suggest themselves both as useful teaching tools and as heuristics for further investigation. The first chapter, on the other hand, is the longest, the most dense with academese and learned quotations, and the most off-putting. The reader moves with difficulty through unhelpfully subtitled sections, reductivist history, and the occasional dubious claim. For example, Lucan's Pharsalia did not 'set the pattern' for imagining the East in signs of 'threatening and unmanning femininity' (17). The Aeneid had already set that pattern firmly, following hints as early as the Iliad itself. This last, however, leads to serious questions about the editing ofthis long book. One might excuse Louis Carroll, rather than Lewis Carroll or Charles Dodgson, dropping his Alice down a rabbit hole (156). Or the odd surfacing ofancient chivalry in European 'cavalry regiments as late as the ninth century,' rather than the nineteenth (13). But we also discover strange characters like 'the "proud maiden" Oryo in Beowulf (112). Perhaps Modthryth is the character meant, but, like the references to five columns in a table that has only four columns (48-49), it is the kind oferror which leads us to question other aspects of the scholarship. Perhaps I ask too much. The Epic Hero may adjust the terms of our struggle, but we are still left to wander with our dragons in the dark. JEREMY M. DOWNES Auburn University barbara N. SARGENT-BAUR, ed. and trans., with contributions by alison stones and Roger middleton. Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine, Editedfrom Paris BNFfr. 1588 and Translated. Faux Titre No. 159. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999. Pp. x, 675. isbn: 90-420-0614-5. After over a hundred years of relative neglect, suddenly we have two editions, each with facing English translations, of Philippe de Remis Roman de la Manekine. This, the second, while acknowledging considerable debt throughout to Hermann Suchier's 1884-85 SATF edition, only mentions Irene Gnarra's 1988 edition/translation for Garland in the bibliography. The present review will address two considerations: a) what is the interest ofthis text for Arthurians? And, b) should this edition replace its predecessors? La Manekine relates in 8590 octosyllabic lines the tale of the Hungarian princess, Joie, who cuts offher own hand to avoid an incestuous marriage with her father. She then flees Hungary for Scotland, where she marries the young king, incurring thereby the queen mother's enmity. La Manekine is betrayed by the latter and set adrift with het infant son. She lands in Rome, where a senator rescues her. After seven years of searching, the king ofScotland reaches Rome and the couple is reunited. Meanwhile, the king of Hungary repents of his behavior toward his daughter and journeys to Rome to seek absolution from the pope. Miraculously, Manekine's severed hand appears in a well and is reattached by the pontiff. Eventually the king and Manekine return to rule happily in Scotland. REVIEWS87 Nothing here is particularly Arthurian, although certain motifs (e.g., the rash boon) and episodes (Manekine's meditation on her name is similar to Soredamors's in Chrétien deTroyes's Cligés) have vaguely Arthurian parallels. However, as the editor has shown at length in a contribution to Philippe Ménard's Meknges ('Echos de Chrétien de Troyes dans les romans de Philippe de Rémi,' 1998: 1193-1201), the thirteenth-century poet was intimately familiar with his by then illustrious predecessor's five Arthurian romances, employing many precise verbal echoes and paraphrases. Lines 4-29 of Philippe's prologue, for example, seem to harken back to Yvain, 150-74. This edition is considerably more attractively printed than Gnarra's and provides, in addition, a detailed analysis of the manuscript's illuminations by Alison Stones (pp. 1-39) and a useful 'History of BNF fr. 1588' by Roger Middleton (pp. 41-68). Sargent-Baur herself contributes information on Philippe's life, his language usage, dating, a summary and chronology of the poem, and an exposition of its principal themes (pp. 69-127). This material is both more detailed and more authoritative than that provided by Gnarra...

A new model for royal penance? Helgaud of Fleury's Life of Robert the Pious

This article studies the theme of penance in writings about early medieval kingship through a case study: in his eleventh‐century vita of Robert the Pious, Helgaud of Fleury described how the king did penance for his incestuous marriage in terms taken directly from Ambrose's Apologia David. This article, therefore, examines the influence which Ambrose had both on Helgaud and on earlier writers on kingship.

Die Inzestgesetzgebung der merowingisch-fränkischen Konzilien (511-626/27) by Paul Mikat

BOOK REVIEWS 511 Greek). See Boletín de la Sociedad Arqueológica Luliana, 31 (1953-1960), 512. J. N. HlLLGARTH Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies, Toronto Die Inzestgesetzgebung der merowingisch-fränkischen Konzilien (511626 /27). By Paul Mikat. [Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Görres-Gesellschaft, Neue Folge, Band 74.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1994. Pp. 149- DM 36,-.) Expanding on his earlier work on incest legislation in the Merovingian age, Paul Mikat focuses attention in this study on what he characterizes as the highpoint ofthat legislative effort, Canon 22 (21) ofthe Council ofTours in 567. The work begins with a highly condensed introduction tracing the evolution of a Christian position on degrees of kinship permissible in valid marriage unions down to the fifth century. Mikat then proceeds to a detailed analysis of Canon 22 (2 1) structured in a way that allows him to bring into consideration not only the canons treating incest enacted in all Burgundian-Frankish councils between 511 and 626/27 but other kinds of texts, especially those treating specific cases where ecclesiastical authorities sought to deal with incestuous marriages. After describing the unsettled political and religious situation in which the Council ofTours took place, Mikat argues on the basis of a close look at the introduction to Canon 22 (21) that the major intention of the bishops at Tours was to provide their world with a precise statement of the fundamental teachings of the Church on incest as established in the past. The need for such a reiteration arose from a widely prevalent tendency among important elements of a society in the process of conversion to disregard or flout the Church's regulations on consanguineous marriages that conflicted with entrenched Germanic political, social, and economic practices and mind-sets affecting marriage. To leave no further excuse for claims of ignorantia iuris or for neglect of pastoral duties on the part of the clergy, the bishops at Tours thus incorporated into their enactment a series of texts that provided the essential definitions of incestuous relations: passages from the Old Testament (Lev. 18:5-18, 18:20; Deut. 27:15-20, 22-24); two texts derived from the Codex Theodosianus; canons from three Burgundian-Frankish councils (Orleans I [51 1], c. 18, Epaon, [517], c. 30, and Clermont [535], c. 12); and a New Testament passage (I Cor. 4:21-5:5 and 11:1). Mikat subjects each of these texts to rigorous scrutiny in search of its precise meaning, its historical precedents, and its relationship to existing marriage practices as revealed in specific cases involving efforts to dissolve incestuous marriages and to punish the guilty parties. Against the background provided by the sanctioning of the key texts on incestuous marriage, Mikat then completes his study with a brief treatment of the legislation relative to incest enacted by six Merovingian councils held between 577 and 626/27, 512 BOOK REVIEWS legislation that ,witnessed an increasing tendency to put the authority of the state behind the Church's position but at the same time reflected continued tension between the Church's legislation and existing custom. Mikat's study provides a sound picture solidly rooted in the sources and in modern scholarship of what the substance of the Church's law on incestuous relationships had become by the beginning of the seventh century and a persuasive assessment ofthe forces which gave shape to that body oflaw. His work will be especially useful to scholars interested in the evolution of canon law treating marriage practices. But it also has much to say about the creative utilization of tradition to reshape basic aspects of society during that alleged "dark age" marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages in western Europe. Richard E. Sullivan Michigan State University (Emeritus) Armagh and the Royal Centres in Early Medieval Ireland:Monuments, Cosmology , and the Past. By N. B. Aitchison. (Rochester, New York: Boydell & Brewer for Cruithne Press. 1994. Pp. x, 356. $71.00.) In Armagh and the Royal Centres, N. B. Aitchison manages to blend an archaeologist 's understanding ofmaterial remains with a historian's critical use of the textual evidence for early medieval Ireland, and to come up with a synthesis...

The Family and Religious Ideologies in Medieval Europe

The medieval Christian Church was slow in developing a comprehensive theology or canon law of marriage, but it did establish certain principles of great significance in social life. Sexual morality was the same for both sexes, all classes and all nations. Marriage was monogamous, and close or incestuous marriages were forbidden. A uniform sexual morality worked to create uniform or commensurable household units. The requirement of monogamy and the incest prohibition prevented powerful males from monopolizing women. And monogamy and a stricter sexual morality were precon ditions for the formation, from the eleventh century, of agnatic lineages. Finally, religious writers of the period, particularly the authors of saints' lives, made frequent use of familial images. The article contends that these images can be used in investigating the emotional life of medieval families.

Ludwig Tieck's “Der Blonde Eckbert”: A Psychological Reading

Bertha's warning to Walther that her narrative not be taken for a Mdrchen provides a clue to an “intrinsic” Freudian psychological reading of “Eckbert,” a work which, like a dream or a fairy tale, has a “latent” as well as a “manifest” level. Bertha's narration is interspersed with compulsive confessions that point to her own repressed awareness of the symbolic meaning of her acts. On its latent level, her story is that of a narcissistic child's failure to attain the norm of productive social adaptation explicitly prescribed for her in the world of the work. Only in the fantastic “Waldeinsamkeit” does she approximate, briefly, “normal” socialization. Her theft of the jewels and killing of the two animals, in the context of her psychosocial and sexual development, is her definitive rejection of what they represent–the possibility of a productive life as wife and mother. The incestuous marriage symbolizes the fruitless union of two narcissistic characters who in the other love only themselves. Approached on a level other than that of logical causality, the story appears to have an inner coherence not previously appreciated.

Artificial Insemination and the Frequency of Incestuous Marriages

Artificial Insemination and the Frequency of Incestuous Marriages

Comments on the Question of Incestuous Marriages in Old Iran

Comments on the Question of Incestuous Marriages in Old Iran