MeToo: The Lady's Trial in John Milton's A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle
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While John Milton’s A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle has already been symptomatically interpreted as a trial of the Lady’s chastity that may indicate rape, scholarly literature does not question why the Lady, despite being the victim, takes sole responsibility and blame, or why the men are not tried and the perpetrator even exonerated. This paper attempts to answer these questions by reading Comus and related scholarship in comparison to the narrative of MeToo rape trials, particularly in how the burden of chastity is placed only upon the female victim, while the brothers express a “just world hypothesis” of victim-blaming culture. Despite the Lady’s persuasive testimony against Comus, her silence reflects the stigmatization and abandonment rape victims undergo while their perpetrators are exculpated. Likewise, Milton’s references to a patriarchal earth and the lack of (poetic) justice seems to allude to social foundations that have been revealed through the MeToo rhetoric.
Abstract
While John Milton’s A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle has already been symptomatically interpreted as a trial of the Lady’s chastity that may indicate rape, scholarly literature does not question why the Lady, despite being the victim, takes sole responsibility and blame, or why the men are not tried and the perpetrator even exonerated. This paper attempts to answer these questions by reading Comus and related scholarship in comparison to the narrative of MeToo rape trials, particularly in how the burden of chastity is placed only upon the female victim, while the brothers express a “just world hypothesis” of victim-blaming culture. Despite the Lady’s persuasive testimony against Comus, her silence reflects the stigmatization and abandonment rape victims undergo while their perpetrators are exculpated. Likewise, Milton’s references to a patriarchal earth and the lack of (poetic) justice seems to allude to social foundations that have been revealed through the MeToo rhetoric.
참고문헌 (16)
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