| This dissertation considers how early modern descriptions of rape addressed problems of identity and representation that were also central to an emerging concept of authorship. In recent years, scholars have argued that Renaissance writers envisioned the material text as a feminized body whose 'chastity' or loyalty to the author's intentions was safeguarded by the mark of his phallic pen. My research suggests instead that in the late Renaissance, English writers began to identify with a feminine position---that of the virtuous woman threatened with violation. Examining literary, legal, philosophical, medical, and religious writings from the period, I show that while chastity was associated with the suppression of female speech, at the same time the chaste female psyche was imagined to be a hidden realm of pure intentionality. Renaissance writers. I argue, attempted to claim this version of subjectivity while at the same time challenging the stereotype of the silent, virtuous woman. Thus while English law courts typically discounted female testimony and rarely convicted accused rapists, fictional works often depicted chaste women capable of mastering the arts of verbal persuasion as they successfully protected their bodies from, or proved accusations of, sexual violence. In this way, authors constructed the fantasy that their own virtuous intentions could be expressed and perpetuated in the bodies of their texts. While much of the dissertation examines male-authored literature, including Sidney's Old Arcadia, Shakespeare's Lucrece, and Milton's Comus, the penultimate chapter focuses on Aemilia Lanyer---one of the first female authors to publish her writing in England. I interpret these literary works in relation to a range of sources including women's testimony from rape trials, law and rhetoric manuals, anti-misogynist tracts, broadsides on crime, sermons, and letters. In analyzing these literary and nonliterary sources, I trace how changes in concepts of textual representation corresponded to the development of a vision of society as a set of relations between autonomous individuals, and consider how images of authorship challenged, complicated, or promoted the idea that these purportedly unmarked individuals were inherently masculine. |
