Consent

Consent affected medieval women’s lives and engagement with literary culture in a variety of ways. Consent was invoked within the contexts of marriage and sex, whether upheld as crucial for a valid marriage or violated through rape or abduction. The significance of consent varied depending upon regional, temporal, and cultural factors. Whether as writers or readers, medieval women engaged with the idea of consent through literary representations as well as in legal contexts and their own experiences. Literature offered a means through which women could articulate desire and volition, voice dissent to patriarchal representations of violent sexuality, or express rage at sexual assault. This entry surveys the representation of consent in marriage and rape law within Christian, Islamic, and Jewish contexts and explores how medieval women’s literary culture engaged with these ideas. Finally, it includes two case studies of consent and coercion in medieval women’s writing from Japan and Korea.