A Most Critical Choice

By choosing to see themselves as survivors instead of victims, says Suzanne Edwards, women and men who have experienced sexual assault can reclaim the power to negotiate the terms of their own lives.

Edwards, an associate professor of English, examines this topic, and its long history in literature and law, in The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature. The book, her first, was published earlier this year by Palgrave Macmillan.

In Afterlives, Edwards analyzes a variety of texts written in England between the late 11th century and the end of the 14th century. These include the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and others, and texts such as saints’ lives, legendary histories, legal documents and spiritual biographies.

Writers in the Middle Ages, says Edwards, were influenced by the ancient legend of Lucretia, and by historical figures such as St. Augustine, who argued against suicide in the aftermath of rape, and St. Jerome, who counseled suicide as a way to prevent rape while preserving one’s virtue.

The history of social attitudes and thinking about rape, Edwards argues, continues to have relevance to modern controversies about sexual violence on college campuses and in international human rights law.

A more in depth version of this story appeared on the Lehigh News Center.