Author: Personal Website

Abstract: »In ‘“Resistence Makyng”: Resisting Rape in Premodern England and Scotland’, Carissa M. Harris opens the section with an exploration of the various ways resistance to sexual coercion was imagined in medieval British literary and religious texts. Harris shows how these texts’ portrayals of both coercion and resistance were far more varied and nuanced than those in medieval law, with its more rigid and narrow expectations of signs that evidenced the infliction of force. This chapter therefore establishes both the legal and literary paradigms of gendered violence, resistance, and consent upon which much of the rest of the volume will build, while also opening the way to a more capacious understanding of coercion and resistance to it.« (Source: Bonsall, Jane, and Hannah Piercy. »Introduction: Why Reconsider Medieval Consent and Coercion? Why Now?« Reconsidering Consent and Coercion: Power, Vulnerability, and Sexual Violence in Medieval Literature. Edited by Jane Bonsall et al. Turnhout 2025: 29-30)

Contents:

	Defining Resistance, Then and Now (p. 37)
	The Coercive Force of Resistance Scripts: The Law (p. 39)
	Catalogues of Resistance: Premodern Pastourelles (p. 46)
	Collective Complaint in Peter Idley’s Instructions to His Son (p. 49)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of England / England in the Late Middle Ages | History of Europe: History of Scotland / Scotland in the Middle Ages | Literature: Scottish literature / Pastourelle | Sex and the law: Rape / Rape in England, Rape in Scotland