Chivalric schism : the man who occupies the masculine and the feminine

Abstract

"Designated male and female gender roles have created a certain set of expections that shape the lives of men and women, with benefits and drawbacks for each of the sexes. This paper examines two major medieval themes across three texts of the time to illlustrate the dichotomy, the armophous concepts of rape and shamfastnesse. It appears as though the ambiguity surrounding the word rape is a trait that is shared by the word shame, though their implications are the opposite for females and males, or the feminine and the masculine."