My Mother’s Sorrow: Sir Degaré and the Foundling Conceived in Rape

ABSTRACT

The foundling romance Sir Degaré is unusual in having its central protagonist conceived in an act of rape. While much criticism has argued that the poem marginalizes the mother’s traumatic experience of rape, this article argues that her experiences are structurally and thematically central to the narrative. The poem centers her affective experience and showcases the possibilities of, as well as the constraints upon, a young woman’s ability to navigate her life after rape. This article also examines the way that a nobleman’s violent disregard of a woman’s will shapes not only the foundling’s development but also his very identity as a defender of women. Degaré’s heraldic device aligns him with his female kin and performs a public disidentification with his father—a stunning departure from the genre’s prioritization of the son’s patrilineal blood relations in his achievement of a place within chivalric society.