Gold in the Dungheap: Incest Stories and Family Values in the Middle Ages

Abstract

This article discusses the remarkable fashion for incest stories in the later Middle Ages, and the differences between such stories in the classical world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. It speculates about the surprising enthusiasm of medieval ecclesiastical writers for tales of incest, and argues that these stories of characters who commit incest (or try to), and then either repent and renounce the world or die violently, allowed Christian writers to insist on the virtues of celibacy and the dangers of the secular, domestic world of the family.