Editorials Editor
Incest portrayed in literature is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon, according to Kathryn Gravdal, a professor of French and the director of Graduate Studies for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University. Gravdal spoke about incest in the Middle Ages in her lecture, "The Medieval invention of incest," held in DeTamble Auditorium on March 21.
According to Gravdal, the concern with incest in the Middle Ages was initially marriage between people who were closely or distantly related. The obsession with sexual incest present in our culture today was not found in literature until later in that period.
In 1215, a French scholar described incest as marriage with any person up to the fourth degree of relation: either a fourth cousin of the person or the fourth cousin of a godmother's cousin.
The greatest concern with incest stemmed from the legal ramifications of inheritances. "A great deal of scholarship has described the legal concern with incest in the Middle Ages," Gravdal said.
"(There was) an explosive proliferation of stories about incest in 13th century French literature," Gravdal said.
This proliferation grew from the instruction manual for new priests that the Christian priests developed. They described the sin of incest and what the penance would be for those who confessed to this sin. In this context, incest was considered to be nuclear family sexual incest. The regulation was based upon the teachings of the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament.
The instruction manuals described the penalties against mothers, sons and daughters should incest occur, but did not list any penalties against the father because at that time he was the official head of the family.
Eventually incest was mentioned less in church manuals. At the same time, legal records about northern France from the 13th century show no cases of nuclear family sexual incest, only incest arising from marriages between relations deemed too close by authorities.
By this point, however, authors had become interested in incest and it became a popular literary topic. "Poetic discourse was obsessed about nuclear family incest, while the legal discourses said little about it," Gravdal said.
The literature of the time portrayed incest as a sin, but also showed it to be socially productive. "These romances show incest to be socially productive ... incest is the problem, but also the solution," Gravdal said.
For example, many times a young woman would flee her home after a father or brother had attempted to rape her. The young woman would often then marry a prince or a king, making the incestuous encounter socially productive.
Many times, though, the victim of the abusive incestuous attempt was too young to be considered a young woman. "The sexual abuse of children did occur in the Middle Ages," Gravdal said.
Gravdal later said the sexual abuse of children was a concern common to that found in our present-day society. She said the legal system's treatment of the sexual abuse of children -- and its attempts to ignore it -- are reminiscent of the same attitude in the Middle Ages.
Gravdal has written several books and articles on the subject of rape and incest in the Middle Ages. Her initial book Ravishing Maidens: Rape in Medieval French Literature And Law led to her later research and writing on the subject of incest.