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Father-daughter incest was a disturbingly popular motif in medieval literature; it is the most common form of incest in extended medieval narratives. The oldest version is the late classical Apollonius of Tyre, popular throughout the Middle Ages and dramatized by Shakespeare as Pericles. Brief exemplary versions usually involve consummated incest, and the father dies damned. In longer narratives, the daughter usually escapes in time, sometimes minus a hand; after many vicissitudes, she may be reconciled with her father at the end, as well as with her estranged husband. The main example here is Beaumanoir's La Manekine. The mutilation motif is discussed; both it and the adventures of a daughter fleeing from incest are rare in classical literature. It is suggested that the victimized daughter may be an allegory of Christian Virtue in a fallen world; medieval writers seem more interested in the heroine's adventures than in drawing morals from the initial incest.

This chapter explores the topic of father‒daughter incest. After general comments on how the topic has been discussed in biblical and especially feminist biblical scholarship, cultural variability in defining incest is made clear. Next, investigation of apparent omission of the daughter in the incest laws of Leviticus 18 and 20 concludes that no explicit mention does not indicate sexual licence for fathers. The narrative of Lot and his daughters in Genesis 19 is then discussed, demonstrating the widespread claim of feminist interpreters that contemporary findings on father‒daughter incest apply also to antiquity. The narratives of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 and of Boaz and Ruth in the book of Ruth are brought into the discussion also. Finally, modern scientific findings on incest among humans and other higher primates are described to argue that the notion that first-degree incest in antiquity was as widespread as in the contemporary West is untenable.

The introduction provides an overview of White’s significance to literary studies and the ways in which her illness and identity narratives have shaped her critical reception. It outlines and historicises the medical, psychoanalytic and religious contexts within which White’s experiences of illness unfolded. It also provides an overview of White scholarship and shows how the failure to address the role of illness in White’s life and work characterises that scholarship. It shows how scholars have often interpreted symptoms of illness—including White’s protracted psychotic episode—as signs of incest trauma.

This chapter analyzes child sex abuse as both a real and phantasmatic phenomenon in the West that has become prominent in the last 40 years. It theorizes the secular ritual of rehabilitation of child molesters in its relation to the changing legal and social regulation of adult child relations. Arising from this relatively new phenomenon are a set of significant issues: defining and diagnosing paraphilia, transforming taboos into illegalities, including sex in anthropological concepts of incest, understanding anew the significance of parricide in the Oedipal complex, redefining intimacy and perversion in the changing lifecourse of men, recognizing disgust in the transference with the phenomenon of child sex abuse, overcoming obstacles to knowledgeability about child sex abuse and child sex molesters, creating untouchability in definitions of transgressive sex, acknowledging evidence of the efficacy of treatment of child sex offenders.