Speaker: -

Abstract:
»This paper takes as its starting point the following lines, as flippant as they are troubling, from Jean Vauquelin de La Fresnaye’s Art poétique (1607):

La Comedie est donc une Contrefaisance,
D’un fait qu’on tient meschant par la commune usance Mais non pas si meschant, qu’à sa meschanceté
Un remede ne puisse estre bien aporté:
Comme quand un garçon, une fille a rauie,
On peut, en l’espousant luy racheter la vie.
(III, vv. 143–48)

The unsettlingly close relationships the poet draws between vice and virtue, morality and comedy, the ravissement of a young woman and marriage as a “remede,” compel us to rethink sexual violence in French humanist comedy. In this paper I propose to focus on the rape plot as it appears in Les Napolitaines (1584) by François d’Amboise and Les Escoliers (1589) by François Perrin. How do these playwrights twist the idea of rape in a theatrical genre purported to teach the public moral lessons? To try and answer this question, this paper reconsiders the educational, dramaturgical, poetic, and social stakes of sexual violence and the comedic genre in late 16th- century France.« (Source: Online Program)

Publication: -

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of France / France in the early modern period | Literature: French literature / François d’Amboise | Sex and the law: Rape