|
|
Article: Sexual consent and the art of love in the early modern English lyric.
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Rice University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The Lawes Resolvtions of Womens Rights, an early seventeenth-century legal guide for women, offers an analysis of rape unique for the period: "So drunken are men with their owne lusts, and the poyson of Ouids false precept, uim licet appellant, vis est ea grata puellis. That if the rampier of Lawes were not betwixt women and their harmes, I verily thinke none of them, being aboue twelue yeares of age, and vnder an hundred, being either faire or rich, should be able to escape rauishing." (1) Few other texts of the period represent rape as a widespread social problem, and no other, to my knowledge, cites cultural influences. For the anonymous author of the Lawes, it is not ...