SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
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20<br />
an idea familiar to Gower’s medieval audience. Humans exist in a realm between the<br />
heavenly and the bestial, or between the spiritual and physical. Like all creatures, man<br />
must fulfill the bodily needs of hunger and sexual drive but at the same time he alone has<br />
the facility of reason, which makes him akin to God. In other words, man encapsulates<br />
the entire cosmos by containing both spirituality and materiality. This philosophy<br />
appears in the Prologue of Confessio Amantis:<br />
Forthi Gregoire in his Moral<br />
Seith that a man in special<br />
<strong>The</strong> lasse world is properly;<br />
And that he proeveth redely;<br />
For man of Soule ersonable<br />
Is to an Angel resemblable,<br />
And lich to besste he hath fielinge,<br />
And lich to Trees he hath growinge;<br />
<strong>The</strong> stones ben and so is he:<br />
Thus of his propre qualite<br />
<strong>The</strong> man, as telleth the clergie,<br />
Is as a world in his partie<br />
(Pr. 945-56)<br />
<strong>The</strong> analogy of man as microcosm may be naturally expanded to incorporate other<br />
aspects of life; for example, husband is head of the family as Christ is head of the<br />
Church; king is head of the “family” of the nation as the pope is head of the Church and<br />
the clergy are Christ’s representatives on earth. This analogy is adapted in early modern<br />
works as well as the Gothic works I will analyze in later chapters. <strong>Incest</strong>, then, can be<br />
harmful to the individual as represented by the king, or to the family, represented by the<br />
kingdom.