The Semiotics of Rape in Renaissance English Literature

Book excerpt: The Semiotics of Rape in Renaissance English Literature traces the development of laws regarding rape in pre- and early modern England, including Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Tudor changes to the legal code and how legal code, societal expectations of virtuous women, and medical theory interact to coerce silence from early modern rape victims. These forces come to play in the literary texts under examination, including poetry from Sir Philip Sidney and George Gascoigne and drama by William Shakespeare and Thomas Heywood. By examining the narratorial slippage, the gaps between the original Roman myth and the Elizabethan retellings of the narrative, this study seeks to tease out the sites of particularly English forms of misogyny and discover how this misogyny affects all women, not just those who are rape victims.