Neophilologus (2013) 97:215–229

DOI 10.1007/s11061-011-9291-z

The Erotics of Amplification in the Pamphilus de Amore

Alexandra Cook

Published online: 4 November 2011

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The Pamphilus de Amore, a twelfth-century comedy that recounts the

seduction and rape of the virgin Galathea by the youth Pamphilus, has generated a
critical controversy about whether Galathea is sincere in her protests of the rape.
The Pamphilus exacerbates the difficulty of distinguishing between love from afar
and sexual coercion, I argue, by exploiting the concealment inherent to the rhe-
torical techniques of circumvention and periphrasis. I show that Galathea does
indeed try to separate violation from sex, an effort flagged most clearly when she
tries to break from the text’s stylistic investment in circumlocution. If this implies
that Galathea wants to call attention to the difference between sex and rape, it is also
the case that her request is refused, by Pamphilus, by the Old Woman who acts as
his pander, and by the text itself. In the end it is sexualized violence, rather than sex
itself, that is the unnarratable center of the Pamphilus.

Keywords Amplification
Pamphilus de Amore
Periphrasis
Rape

Rhetoric

The Pamphilus de Amore, a twelfth-century Latin comedy that recounts the

eponymous character Pamphilus’ courtship and rape of the virgin Galathea, has
magnetized scholars of medieval representations of rape. Struck by the fact that the
Pamphilus was a standard textbook in the medieval classroom, we wonder, did this
text teach boys lessons in seduction and rape as well as rhetorical lessons? How was
the explicit rape scene at the center of this text received by courtly audiences of the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, which included women as well as
men? In seeking to address these questions, critics have read the Pamphilus either as

A. Cook (&)
English Department, University of Alabama, Box 870244, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
e-mail: acook@bama.ua.edu

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breaking from or participating in patriarchal literary traditions. Elliott (1984) and

Schotter (1992, 2001) praise the Pamphilus as a rare ‘‘realistic’’ portrayal of rape
from the vantage point of a young virgin. Given the rarity of such portrayals,
Schotter and Elliott characterize the Pamphilus as a medieval anomaly. In contrast,
Thompson and Perraud (1990), Woods (1996) and Minnis (2001) read the
Pamphilus as continuous with classical representations of rape. For example, Woods
argues that in the tradition of Achilles’ rape of Deidamia, the rape marks Pamphilus’
initiation into manhood,1 while Minnis reads Galathea’s refusal as a seduction ploy
that illustrates the truth of Ovid’s axiom, ‘‘[women] often wish to give unwillingly
what they like to give.’’2 For these critics, the real focus of the Pamphilus must not
be on Galathea’s pain but on Pamphilus’ sexual triumph. To assert otherwise, they
warn, is to risk imputing modern sensibilities to medieval audiences.
To summarize the debate thus far, the rape would have been read by medieval
audiences as a story about the violation of an unwilling woman, which can be
interpreted in terms of contemporary feminist methodologies and should indeed be
prized as a rare medieval acknowledgement of the consequences of sexual violence.
Or, it would have been read as a story about the production of masculinity and
should not be interpreted in light of a contemporary feminist methodology that
focuses on the perspective or pain of women. Yet in arguing that medieval
audiences would have read the Pamphilus one way or the other, both sides overlook
one of the most fascinating formal components of the text: the circumlocutions that
allow for both interpretive possibilities. The Pamphilus represents sexual desire by
indicating it through artful avoidance. The rhetorical stylings that facilitate such
ellipses also help to make fundamentally ambiguous the moment when Pamphilus
takes Galathea (apparently) against her will.
In pointing out the ambiguity that the Pamphilus amplifies rather than resolves,
I do not mean to dismiss or diminish the political stakes that have thus far informed
critical inquiry into this medieval account of forced sex. Instead, I want to map out a
new way of thinking through the problem of sexual violence in the Pamphilus by
offering a rhetorical analysis of the text’s skillful deployment of the erotic trope.
Unlike the majority of the bawdy Latin comedies, the Pamphilus treats the subject
of cupiditas in the circuitous fashion prescribed by the medieval ars poetriae for
authors who want to avoid overly-direct references to the ‘‘unseemly.’’ In the
section of the Ars Versificatoria (c. 1170) devoted to amplification, Matthew of
Vendôme urges composers to circumscribe sex with a proliferation of words. He
advocates periphrasis (allegorical paraphrase) when authors wish to ‘‘avoid the foul
with roundabout statement’’ (‘‘sententiae foeditas circuitu evitatur’’),3 and he offers
two examples that show readers how to paraphrase intercourse such that it is
represented verbus decentibus (‘‘in decent terms’’)4: ‘‘He sought rest/sinking on the
bosom of his mate’’ and ‘‘The paramour smiles at her suitor for his gifts. Love/eager

1
Woods (1996, p. 60–65).
2
Minnis (2001, p. 183).
3
Ars Versificatoria, IV.21. Translation in The Art of Versification, trans. Aubrey E. Galyon (1980,
p. 105). Text in Les Arts poetics du XIIe sie`cle, ed. Edmond Faral (1962, p. 185).
4
Ars Versificatoria, IV.21. Faral (1962, p. 185); Galyon (1980, p. 105).

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for favor gains admittance between modesty’s gates.’’5 As Matthew’s examples

show, paraphrase that circumvents sex has the concomitant effect of mystifying and
aggrandizing sexual consummation. The result is that sex is amplified, both literally
(periphrasis involves increasing the number of words used to describe a given thing)
and also figuratively in terms of its titillating mystery.
The Pamphilus’ sex scene is rendered in a monologue rather than an allegorical
narrative: it is depicted via a speech from Galathea that simultaneously narrates and
protests the act. Thus its clerical author can avoid an overly-direct description of
the sex act without having to resort to an allegorical turn away from it. Nevertheless,
the principle inherent to Matthew’s recommendation to ‘‘trope’’ sex is very evident
in the Pamphilus. Sex is the locus of that-which-cannot-be-said, and as such it is
profoundly generative, the source not only of much of the Pamphilus’ psychological
tension and clever wordplay but also of an entire medieval tradition of erotic
writing.
The Pamphilus’ circumlocutionary style does not make it easy to tell the
difference between amor de lonh (love from afar) and sexual coercion. Indeed, one of
the hallmarks of the Pamphilus is that it exacerbates the difficulty of distinguishing
between these categories precisely by exploiting the concealment inherent to the
technique of not-naming. Pamphilus refers to his love and his sexual desire as secrets
he cannot reveal, using a series of stock metaphors that both mystify the nature of his
desire and foreshadow the forced sex to come. He asks Galathea to promise that when
the time is right, they will ‘‘embrace, kiss and caress’’6 but does not include in this list
the final gradus of love (sexual consummation). Just as Pamphilus never overtly
acknowledges that his primary goal is sex, Galathea’s refusal of sex is likewise
ambiguous. Her protests code the act as rape insofar as rape is defined as a lack of
consent. However, if her ‘‘no’’ can be taken to mean ‘‘yes,’’ then that definition of
rape may not hold. For, rape threatens to become completely illegible in the context
of the Ovidian literary tradition that characterizes resistance as sly allurement. Then
again, the style of Galathea’s vehement response to Pamphilus’ possession of her
body opens up the possibility that her refusals are sincere. At this moment, Galathea
presses Pamphilus to admit something that cannot be stated. That Galathea’s speech
assays a departure from the Pamphilus’ sexual circumventions indicates a break in
the mode through which sex and sexual desire have thus far been narrated. In staging
an attempted break from circumlocution at this point, the text foregrounds two
provocative questions: is there a difference between sex that cannot be named
explicitly and rape that cannot be named explicitly? What is the relationship between
these two lacunae which are clearly linked, though not equivalent?

5
Galyon (1980, p. 105). The first example is from Aeneid VIII, 406: ‘‘Placidumque petivit/Conjugis
infuses gremio…’’. The second reads ‘‘Moecho moecha datis favet; intra claustra pudoris/Impetrat
hospitium munere freta Venus’’; Faral (1962, p. 185).
6
In the original Latin, ‘‘complexus, basia, tactus.’’ Latin citations of the Pamphilus are from Pamphilus:
Comoedia Elegiaca Medioaevalis, ed. Jacobus Ulrich (1893). Translations, unless otherwise indicated,
are from Thomas Garbáty’s ‘‘Pamphilus, de Amore: An Introduction and Translation’’ (1967). I have
chosen Garbáty’s translation of the Pamphilus for its faithfulness to the structure of the Latin poetry
(Elliott’s translation [1984] is lively and colloquial but as she acknowledges, a bit more free).

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The Pamphilus ultimately recounts Galathea’s effort to separate violation from

sex, an effort flagged most clearly when she insists on the specificity of a brute
sexual act that the text doggedly resists naming. If this implies that Galathea wants
to call attention to the difference between sex and rape, it is also the case that her
request is refused by Pamphilus and by the Old Woman who acts as his pander, as
well as by the text itself. In the end it is sexual violence, rather than sex itself, that is
the unnarratable center of the Pamphilus.

Periphrasis as Poetic Invention

The Pamphilus is often characterized as the most important and influential of the
comoedia (Garbáty goes so far as to claim that it was ‘‘quoted by every man of
learning from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance’’7; to its vast circulation we
owe the term ‘‘pamphlet’’). Recent criticism on the Pamphilus speculates that its
tremendous popularity may have been linked to its audiences’ reactions to its sexual
politics: that its depiction of Pamphilus’ sexual initiation into manhood might have
appealed to the boys of the twelfth-century medieval classroom (Woods 1996;
Minnis 2001; Adams 2005), or that its ‘‘realistic’’ depiction of rape from a woman’s
point of view may be why the comedy found especial favor among courtly
audiences which included men as well as women (Elliott 1984). I propose that the
Pamphilus was popular in part because it so artfully demonstrated the literary
potentialities of sexual troping; further, that to reassess its impact we need not
confine our studies to speculations about medieval reader reception. We can also
look to those medieval romances which, following the Pamphilus, further amplified
the range of generative possibilities inherent to moving around rather than naming
directly, sex and sexual desire.
In illuminating the Pamphilus’ investment in rhetorical techniques of ‘‘turning
away’’ from an explicit naming of sex, I will extend and build upon criticism that
claims that the ‘‘troping’’ of rape was habitual to medieval texts. Both Gravdal
(1991) and Rose (2001) have argued that medieval texts tend to trope rape as a way
of allowing readers to ignore the real consequences of sexual violence against
women. As Gravdal explains in her book Ravishing Maidens:
By ‘‘trope’’ I mean a literary device that presents an event in such a way that it
heightens figurative elements and manipulates the reader’s ordinary response
by suspending or interrupting that response in order to displace the reader’s
focus onto other formal or thematic elements. The mimesis of rape is made
tolerable when the poet tropes it as moral, comic, heroic, spiritual, or erotic.8
Gravdal and Rose find their chief opponent in Vitz (1997), who retorts that
contemporary arguments about the medieval troping of rape are motivated by an
anachronistic ‘‘high tone of moral indignation,’’9 which cuts such representations loose
7
Garbáty (1967, p. 457).
8
Gravdal (1991, p. 13).
9
Vitz (1997, pp. 25–26).

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from their proper historical, lexical, and literary contexts. Vitz points out that medieval
authors troped many things, and characterizes as arbitrary the focus on rape.10
By grounding the discussion of the sexual trope more firmly within the rhetorical
tradition of the medieval ars poetriae, we can see that there is in fact a medieval
mandate that recommends authors ‘‘turn away’’ from references to sex—though not
specifically from references to rape. Such troping therefore appears to be motivated
by literary and formal expedients rather than political ones. Matthew’s recommen-
dation to use periphrasis, one of the ten allegorical tropes associated with the high
style, in order to ‘‘avoid the foul,’’ implies that overly-direct references to sex
are vulgar. But as a commentator on Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova points
out, periphrastic tropes are created for two reasons: ‘‘to avoid the unseemly and to
adorn.’’11 Periphrastic treatments of erotic desire function to dis-associate noble
characters from the vulgarity of cupiditas and to suggest their affinity to higher
emotions. Just as sex in the literature of the high style should not be named too
directly, noble love should not be reducible to sexual desire. Courtly love elevates
itself by focusing on the capacity to endure suffering, not on the physical capacity to
take sex when it is not given freely. Such pain is depicted through the stock
metaphors that analogize being stricken by love to attack by arrows, imprisonment,
and being struck by illness or madness. But as Gravdal points out, this courtly
narrative also seems to solicit a turning of the tables: males struck by the ravishing
beauty of maids may feel justified in ravishing that beauty in return.12
Guillame de Lorris’s early thirteenth-century allegory the Roman de la Rose
(c. 1236) is a poem that has frequently been associated with the courtly investment
in elevating noble love above corporeal sexuality. This poem, which recounts the
dream vision of a young man who falls in love with a rose, ends not with the
allegorical equivalent of sexual consummation (‘‘plucking’’ the rose) but with a kiss
and then a rebuff.13 In its use of allegory to circumvent overly-direct references to
sexuality, Guillame’s poem suggests that noble love is inaccessible through literal
description precisely because literal description would turn that love into common
love—i.e. into something that it is not. In contrast, Jean de Meun’s continuation of
Guillame’s poem (c. 1275) ends with a tongue-in-cheek, exaggeratedly euphemized
sex scene that exposes what Jean seems to have judged as the hypocrisy of
Guillame’s earlier poem: Jean reveals the fact that while courtly lovers talk about
love—at length and in the most elevated terms—what they really want is sex.14

10
Vitz (1997, pp. 2–3).
11
Woods (1985, p. 43).
12
Gravdal (1991, p. 5).
13
Because Guillame’s Lover does not achieve sexual consummation, some critics have assumed that the
poem is an unfinished fragment. In 1986, David Hult argued convincingly that the poem is indeed
finished, and that Guillame deliberately refrains from recounting consummation, because the poem is a
seduction of the implied reader—the Lover’s lady (p. 8). For Hult, and for many subsequent scholars
including Noah Guynn (see ‘‘Le Roman de la rose,’’ 2008, pp. 49–53), Guillame’s poem makes a virtue of
incompletion, by linking it to ‘‘the larger question of the poetic expression of human desire’’ (Hult 1986,
p. 261).
14
Jean’s sex scene has been characterized as a rape, by those struck by the violence of Jean’s metaphors
of ‘‘besieging’’ and ‘‘plucking’’ (see Cahoon 1986, p. 271) and Jean’s analogy of the Lover’s assault on

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The Pamphilus anticipates the dialectic between the amplification and abbrevi-
ation of erotic desire that is later staged so masterfully in the two parts of the Roman
de la Rose. As I mention above, its manner of avoiding a direct description of sex
is enabled by dialogue rather than allegory (indeed, it is written almost entirely
in dialogue; the exception is a half-line of narration, ‘‘then Venus said,’’).15 The
Pamphilus cultivates in its readers a constant awareness that speech can be
deceptive. Like many of the other comedies, it slyly suggests that the persuasive
rhetoric taught in the classroom is highly adaptable to the personal context of a love
affair. But the Pamphilus is deeply informed by the principle of rhetoric as an
amplificatory techne as well as a persuasive one. Amplification becomes a way
for the Pamphilus’ clerical author to double down on the ambiguity inherent to
speech—always potentially deceptive or insincere—by adding to the mix a series of
modes of amplifying love and sexual desire through verbose and artful circumven-
tion. Part of the work that the Pamphilus does so masterfully is to make visible the
structural principle of periphrasis, when applied broadly to the topic of cupiditas:
circumventions may seem to adorn the love professed—but they may also hide
something unseemly.
In medieval texts such as the Pamphilus or Jean de Meun’s continuation of the
Roman de la Rose, periphrasis enables medieval authors to use a seeming adherence
to propriety against itself, insofar as it facilitates a constant movement toward as
well as a deflection of sex and sexual desire. Periphrasis illuminates the styles of
representing desire and sex common to both the Pamphilus and the Roman de la
Rose. It also encapsulates the very principle of poetic invention that suggests both
that a closer relationship exists between these texts than has yet been acknowledged,
and that more extended study of this amplificatory techne promises to yield new
insights into medieval intertextuality. Three of the most influential ars poetriae,
including Matthew’s Ars Versificatoria, Geoffrey’s Poetria Nova (c. 1208–1213),
and also John of Garland’s Poetria Parisiana (c. 1234), all assert that allegorical
paraphrase is a useful technique for inventing new texts by translating preexisting
texts into allegories. This conception of periphrasis as a resource for poetic
invention is a medieval innovation.16 Matthew, Geoffrey, and John all depart from
classical rhetorical handbooks in their valuation of periphrasis not only as a discreet
trope but also as a style of ‘‘amplification’’ that can lead to the production of new

Footnote 14 continued
the fortress to Hercules’ assault on the cave of Cacus (Gravdal 1991, pp. 68–69). The broader critical
consensus seems to be that Jean’s sex scene can not be classified as rape per se. Still, many hold Jean
accountable for the degree to which he ‘‘celebrates and legitimates the violent seizing or capturing of
women’s bodies ‘tout a force’’’ (Guynn 2007, p. 167). While Poirion and Bloch once noted approvingly
that Jean breaks free from the ecclesiastical and courtly restrictions imposed in Guillame’s earlier poem
(see Poirion 1973, p. 207; Bloch 1983, pp. 140–41), more recently Minnis, Teskey and Guynn have
emphasized the ways in which Jean exploits allegory, not just to champion sexual liberation, but also to
disavow responsibility for sexual violence (see Minnis 2001, p.178; Teskey 1996, p. 21; Guynn 2007,
p. 153).
15
Garbáty (1967, p. 71).
16
Though to my knowledge no critic has yet focused on the specific role of periphrasis in medieval
theories of poetic invention, both Kelly (1997) and Leupin (1989) have explored the degree to which the
ars poetriae treat translation, restatement, and amplification as the very bedrock of literary creation.

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material.17 While various critics have speculated that aspects of the Pamphilus
influenced and informed both versions of the Roman de la Rose, these elements are
usually content-oriented: Langlois hypothesized that Guillame borrowed from the
Pamphilus the idea to create a poem around characters who conform to the rules
elaborated in classical and medieval love handbooks,18 Garbáty that the Old Woman
of the Pamphilus is a precursor to the Old Woman who speaks at length in Jean’s
Roman.19 Most recently, A. J. Minnis invokes the Pamphilus to point out that the
violence of Jean’s forceful sex scene was not historically anomalous.20 But none
have examined the implications of the fact that the Romans translated portions
of the Pamphilus into allegory. Though Guillame and Jean have chosen to adapt
and amplify different elements of that precursor text—Guillame edits out the
culminating sex scene and much of the Pamphilus’ emphasis on strategic deception;
Jean reintroduces both—each author seems to have treated the Pamphilus as a
preexisting text ripe for creative amplification. The translation of many of the
elements of the Pamphilus into allegory, suggests that both Guillame and Jean may
have been working in the mode of periphrastic invention. In acknowledging this
line of influence, we are given an intimation of how much the comedy had to teach
later writers about the expediency of a characterization of sex as a productive,
proliferating-over and non-named operation.

The Pamphilus de Amore

The Pamphilus’ thematization of sexual mystery as inhering in the euphemistic and

elliptical speech of its characters sets this text apart from many of the other Latin
comedies. In the other comoedia, which so frequently center on seduction, that
seduction is often accomplished by means of a trick, such that characters are led to
misperceive or misunderstand the evidence of their senses.21 For example, in Lidia,
Lidia’s husband Decius is tricked into believing that the ground around a certain
pear tree produces the optical illusion that those who climb into it are having sex,
17
Matthew and Geoffrey treat periphrasis as a highly valued rhetorical techne. Matthew delays his
treatment of periphrasis, relocating it from the discussion of the tropes to ‘‘the section where rearranging
material is treated’’ (Galyon 1980, p. 95). Geoffrey likewise emphasizes periphrasis as a technique for
invention. His description captures the dialectic of revelation and concealment that lends itself so well to
amatory poetry: ‘‘[n]either plainly lay bare, but rather intimate a thing through little clues; do not let your
expression march squarely through the subject, but, circumscribing it with long roundabout routes, circle
what was on the point of being said, and retard your tempo, so giving an increase of words’’ (Kopp 1971,
p. 42).
18
Langlois (1970, pp. 27–31).
19
Garbáty (1967, p. 109).
20
Minnis (2001, p. 193).
21
Roy J. Pearcy argues that fabliau plots often center around the misapprehension that occurs in the gap
between ‘‘perception of the data of sense experience’’ and ‘‘the knowledge of external reality those data
are supposed to generate… in the mind of the perceiver’’ (1977, p. 68). Given both the trickery and the
sexual explicitness associated with the Latin comedies, Faral and others have drawn strong parallels
between them and the vernacular French fabliaux. My own contention is that the Pamphilus is at least as
interested in borrowing from the courtly romance as it is in imitating the sexual epistemology of the
fabliaux.

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222 A. Cook

even when they supposedly are not—hence providing Lidia and her lover Pearus the
opportunity to cuckold Decius before his very eyes. In Geta, Jove seduces Alcmena
by appearing in the guise of her husband Amphitryon. In Alda, Pyrrhus convinces
the ignorant maiden Alda to sleep with him by pretending to be his sister, and saying
that she (he) wants to teach Alda a lesson she (he) learned from their nurse. When he
initiates Alda into the pleasures of lovemaking, she has no idea that she is having
sex; when she becomes pregnant, she laughs at her father’s mendacity in supposing
that she has been touched by a man. The Pamphilus differs from these other texts
because the sexual misunderstanding is not based on a trick that involves characters
who willfully or ignorantly misrecognize sense data. Instead, the possibility for
misconstruing Pamphilus’ meaning turns entirely on his ability to use language that
alternately hides and reveals his intentions. This strategy of circumvention also
provides the means through which to interrogate the text’s differentiation of sex and
rape.
In his opening soliloquy, Pamphilus performs the paradoxical act of revealing
a secret that he claims he cannot reveal, and in the process all but revealing it.
Euphemizing love-longing as a secret agony that inflicts terrible pain on the lover,
Pamphilus uses metaphors that are so conventional as to make clear what is
ostensibly hidden. He declares himself to be vulneror (‘‘wounded’’) and carrying an
arrow enclosed (clausum) in his breast (1). He dares not name the aggressor (3), nor
indicate in his expression the pain inflicted by the one who bears arms (armaque)
against him (14), for if he reveals the cause of his sorrow, he might destroy any hope
for a cure. And yet, if he conceals his pain too well, he fears the onset of even
greater evils, speculating that the agony he is currently suffering may eventually kill
him (19–20). He concludes that it will be better to show his pain, since conditus
ignis (‘‘stored fire’’) burns ever more fiercely, while a pouring forth of emotion
(effusus) reduces that fire (21–22). Here Pamphilus uses a series of physical
metaphors—he has been wounded, attacked, burned—that suggest Galathea has
inflicted dire pain upon him, despite the fact that they have never spoken and that
she does not know him. Galathea’s beauty is figured as violently penetrating her
male admirer, a figuration that foreshadows and may aim to justify the reversal
through which he violently penetrates her in return.
While Pamphilus claims himself rendered artless and speechless by pain, in the
course of the comedy he proves himself artful, eloquent, and resourceful. His
interaction with Venus pointedly reveals the duplicity of his claims of artless
speechlessness. Venus advises Pamphilus to frequent places where Galathea can be
found, to announce his love without further delay, to persist even when rebuffed, to
pretend to be what he is not—rich, merry, etc.—to obtain a go-between, and if he
can get her alone, ‘‘in mock violence to assail her’’ (109) (‘‘illi jocundis viribus
insta’’). His initial response is that ‘‘it is easy for the healthy to solace the sick/but
the infirm will not less feel the presence of woe!’’ (143–144) (‘‘Incolumis leviter
aegro solacia praebet/Nec minus infirmus sentit adesse malum’’). Thus he claims
that Venus’ advice has not done anything to ameliorate his suffering. However, in
the course of the poem he uses her advice to great advantage. He approaches
Galathea, confesses his love while at the same time bragging that his family has
already betrothed him to a richer girl in another town, persists in his suit despite

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Galathea’s initial repulsions, obtains the Old Woman as a go-between, and forces
Galathea into sex once she has been lured to the Old Woman’s cottage on the false
pretense of finding there some fruits and nuts (itself a metaphor for sexual
fecundity). Readers confronted with the paradox of Pamphilus’ self-declared
ineffectualness are offered two possible explanations. Perhaps Pamphilus is at some
moments powerless and at others powerful, thus illustrating the medieval axiom that
love is by nature oxymoronic. Or, perhaps his self-declared abjection is always
strategic, designed to fool Galathea and possibly readers as well.22 Pamphilus seems
to be an archetypal example of the medieval lover who, as Erin Felicia Labbie puts
it, uses euphemism to ‘‘[convey] duplicitous messages that render… desire
mysterious even as it is in the process of being articulated.’’23
Galathea’s speeches are similarly ambiguous. Venus’ sententious opinion that
‘‘often she will most deny what she wishes to have’’ (112) (‘‘quod habere cupit, hoc
magis ipsa negat’’), uttered before Galathea appears on the scene, necessarily colors
our expectations of the young virgin. The fact that her fears center around danger to
her reputation rather than to her person could be taken to mean that she is chiefly
concerned not about being forced into sex but about being caught. All this evidence
can be marshaled to support the conclusion that her protests during the rape and
afterward are simply a matter of form, uttered so that she can enjoy that which
social and cultural constraints require her to resist.
And yet, Galathea, of all the characters in the Pamphilus, is the least frequently
engaged in obvious attempts to deceive her interlocutors. In fact, like the reader, she
is frequently placed in the position of decoding the speeches of her would-be
seducers. Despite his avowed desire to reveal his cordis secreta (175) (‘‘heart’s
secrets’’), Pamphilus has been advised by Venus artfully to embellish reality to
attain his desired end: ‘‘What you are not you can simulate, through appearance and
words’’ (119) (‘‘Quod non es, simulare potes dictis habituque’’). The Old Woman is
clearly deeply invested in maneuvering Galathea into a vulnerable position by lying
to her whenever it is expedient, for she has agreed to help Pamphilus win Galathea
on the condition that he pay her lavishly for this service. In the course of her
repartee with Pamphilus and the Old Woman, Galathea reveals herself to be, while
not worldly, nevertheless wary of being tricked and aware of why both might want
to deceive her. She frequently penetrates their speeches and parries with clever
responses. Her first speech is to discount Pamphilus’ claim to true love—he quotes
Ovid by announcing, ‘‘tu sola mihi placuisti,/Respuerem pro te quicquid in orbe
manet,’’ (171–172) (‘‘you alone have pleased me/For you I’d reject all women on
earth!’’)—by characterizing this declaration as a jest typical of young men. She
retorts ‘‘Sic multi multas multo tenptamine fallunt’’ (187) (‘‘Thus many men by
much effort hope to deceive many maidens’’) and urges Pamphilus to ‘‘seek others,
more fitted for your guilty behavior, whose heads may be turned with your fraud and
deceit’’ (191–192) (‘‘Quaere tuis alias incestis moribus aptas/Quas tua falsa fides et

22
Peter Dronke has argued that despite the line ‘‘then Venus said,’’ we should take this speech in fact to
be delivered by Pamphilus (1979, p. 227). The speech advocates active duplicity; if is actually a
soliloquy, then Pamphilus’ claims to be rendered helpless by love are all the more paradoxical.
23
Labbie (2006, p. 118).

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224 A. Cook

dolus infatuent’’). Her verbal dexterity is showcased in the neat rhetorical turn by
which she negates Pamphilus’ insistence on the particularity of his love (‘‘you alone
are pleasing to me’’) with her own speculation that this is a well-worn pick-up line
that can be used by any man on any woman gullible enough to credit it.
As their discourse progresses, it becomes apparent that Galathea’s defenses are
wearing thin. Before the end of their first conversation, she grants him a favor (240)
that we are encouraged to infer is a kiss and promises that ‘‘Tempora sat venient
pariter quibus ambo loquamur’’ (243) (‘‘Other fitting occasions will come, when we
shall talk together’’). This guarantee of conversation may include a hidden
agreement to grant other kinds of intercourse. Readerly speculation about the sexual
nature of Galathea’s own desire is enhanced when she refers to it in the coded
language of secrecy. In conversation with the Old Woman, Galathea confides,
‘‘I don’t know whether to confess to you my desire and my secret,/For deceit,
everywhere, has laid traps and snares’’ (429–430, emphasis added) (‘‘Nescio velle
meum tibi secretumque fateri,/Nam dolus insidias tendit ubique suas’’). However,
when Galathea further confides, ‘‘Pamphilus himself just now asked for my love,/
And a true friendship has joined us together!/But I ask you, conceal this, reveal it
only to him’’ (432–435) (‘‘Pamphilus ipse meum petiit sibi nuper amorem/Nos
simul et vera junxit amicitia/Sed tamen hoc cela, soli sibi, posco, revela’’), the
reference to her joining with Pamphilus in ‘‘true friendship’’ hardly reads as a
scandalous confession. Her eagerness to conceal this relatively minor transgression
seems to offer evidence of a certain degree of naiveté. Though she is certainly more
sophisticated than the hapless Alda, neither does Galathea seem to be as urbane
and sexually appetitive as Alcmena, who signals her own complicity in Jove’s
trick when she declares, ‘‘I could not be happier/[i]f I embraced Jove himself!’’
(98–99).24
Galathea’s notorious speech of protest against the rape derives much of its
dramatic force from the fact that this is the moment when any doubts about
Pamphilus’ chief aims are dispelled. If circuitous speech can be employed, as
Matthew of Vendôme writes, to ‘‘avoid foulness,’’ then the rape scene, which is
narrated by Galathea’s protests, marks a moment when Pamphilus no longer
protects Galathea from his meanings, nor does the poet protect the reader. Her
protests leave no doubt as to what is happening:
Pamphile, tolle manus, te frustra nempe fatigas;
Nil valet iste labo, quod petis esse nequit.
Pamphile tolle manus, male nunc offendis amicam,
Jamque redibit anus; Pamphile, tolle manus.
Heu mihi, quam parvas habet omnis femina vires;
Quam leviter nostras vincis utrasque manus.
Pamphile, nostra tuo cum pectora pectore laedis;
Quod sic me tractas est scelus atque nefas.
Desine, clamabo. Quid agis? Male detegor a te;
Perfida, me miseram, quando redebit anus.

24
Elliott (1984, p. 30).

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Erotic Amplification in Pamphilus de Amore 225

Surge, precor, audit nostras vicinia lites;

Quae tibi me tradidit, non bene fecit anus.
Ulterius mecum te non locus iste tenebit;
Nec me decipiet, ut modo fecit, anus.
Hujus victor eris facti, licet ipsa repugnem,
Sed tamen inter nos rumpitur omnis amor! (681–696)
Pamphilus, keep your hands off; you will surely be exhausted in vain!
Your exertion is useless; what you ask cannot be.
Pamphilus, take away your hand; now you are sorely hurting your friend!
Already the old woman returns; don’t touch me, Pamphilus!25
Ah me, that a woman has ever such little strength;
How easily you can subdue both my hands!
Pamphilus, you are hurting my breasts with yours;
It is a crime and a sin; why handle me so?
Desist! I’ll cry out! What are you doing? I am badly betrayed by you.
Wretch that I am, when returns that faithless old woman?
I entreat you, get up; the neighbors will hear our dispute.
That old woman did ill to surrender me thus.
Never again will I, with you, be found in this place,
Nor will the old woman deceive me, whatever she does!
You’ve won out in this business, despite my resistance,
However, between us all hope of love is destroyed! (681–696)
The last exclamation of line 689 (‘‘male detegor a te,’’ which Garbáty’s
translation renders as ‘‘I am badly betrayed by you’’) emphasizes the fact that
Pamphilus’ achievement of carnal knowledge of Galathea, also carries with it other
kinds of knowledge. The verb detego can mean either to physically expose/uncover/
lay bare, or, to betray: thus the line might be rendered ‘‘I am wrongly betrayed
by you’’ or ‘‘I am wrongly undressed by you.’’26 The comic transference that allows
for both the literal sense of removing clothes and the metaphorical sense of
‘‘uncovering’’ true intentions, highlights the fact that in baring Galathea’s body,
Pamphilus also discloses his own hidden agenda. Concomitant with the revelation
that Pamphilus chiefly desires sex (over, say, a declaration of returned love or the
assurance of marriage), is the revelation that he is willing to take what he wants,
with or without Galathea’s consent.
This scene offers the most direct recording we get of Pamphilus’ successful
consummation of desire, but his achievement of that pleasure is signaled only in
Galathea’s shift of verb tense, the moment when, instead of asking him to stop what
he is doing, she begins to bewail what has already been done—when she moves
from being afraid the neighbors will hear what is ongoing, to the moment when she
laments that the old woman has betrayed her, and that Pamphilus has ‘‘conquered’’

25
Here I have taken the liberty of transposing lines 681–682 and 683–684 in Garbáty’s translation, so
that it follows the Latin text of Ulrich’s edition.
26
Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary; see ‘‘detego,’’ def. I and II. Elliott actually
translates this line as ‘‘It is wrong to undress me!’’ (1984, p. 30).

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226 A. Cook

her. In a narrative that so insistently avoids literal references to sex, this crucial shift
in verb tense is the moment when sex is narrated most explicitly. But whether or not
the sex is truly nonconsensual remains oblique, as the text deliberately retains the
possibility that Galathea’s refusals during and recriminations after the act are
feigned. Galathea shouting her resistance and yet being ignored, this scene echoes
the irony of Pamphilus’ initial speech, in which he identifies a secret he cannot share
precisely by sharing it through soliloquy with his auditors. But the rhetorical
symmetry between Pamphilus’ self-avowed agony before the rape and Galathea’s
laments during and after could be understood as extending rather than resolving the
problem of whether or not Galathea’s lamentations are sincere. If Pamphilus’ claims
to escalating agony were partially or wholly strategic, so may be Galathea’s
expressions of pain and betrayal.
Though the text gives us more conclusive proof that sex has occurred than that the
sex can be classified as rape, there are some stylistic shifts that do seem to indicate
a rape, shifts that center around changes in the text’s use of circumvention and
amplification. First, given the possibility that Galathea’s refusals are sincere,
Pamphilus violates his own claims to abject and noble love-service by risking that
he is acting against her wishes. Then too, in her recriminations after the act, Galathea
attempts to strike out against the circumlocutions of sex and rape in which the text is so
deeply invested. If Pamphilus’ act serves to deflate the grand picture of love and
service that he constructed before it, Galathea tries to mark that deflation by insisting
that what has transpired be named explicitly. Here there is a certain irony as Galathea’s
agency comes in her capacity to narrate and name her violation, which on the one hand
signals her lack of agency but on the other indicates her capacity—indeed, her
audacity—to produce a different strategy of rhetorical narration that could be seen as
an effort to mark the difference between sex and rape, precisely in her insistence that
the act with which she was forced to comply, is that which must be named.
Galathea’s notorious speech of protest, articulated (apparently) during the act
itself, begins in the present tense, shifts into the past, and after this shift to the past
that signals the accomplishment of sex, she returns to and names the conditions on
which Pamphilus and she will re-inhabit the present: post-sex, love, for Galathea,
has purportedly become impossible. She insists that this is the case, first to
Pamphilus that in ‘‘conquering’’ her he has destroyed her love for him, and then to
the old woman that though as a pander she has staged a successful hunt, ‘‘the fleeing
hare has died in the trap’’ (740) ([I]n laqueum fugiens decidit ecce lepus). Once
Pamphilus’ true intentions are manifested in the sex act, Galathea attempts to
reverse the text’s pattern of sexual circumlocution, demanding an accounting and a
naming.
While before the sex scene, Pamphilus’ circuitous allusions have the effect of
romanticizing sexual desire, afterward his insistence on not-naming diminishes
rather than exaggerates Pamphilus’ ‘‘love’’: his refusal to take responsibility for
what he has done involves rationalizing and self-justifying demurrals that are
sheepish and self-indulgent. Pamphilus’ invocation of remotio criminalis as if
directly from Cicero’s De inventione offers modern readers the opportunity to
marvel at the longevity of certain narratives used to justify rape. He rationalizes,
justifies, and apologizes for his act, first admitting he deserves to be punished and

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Erotic Amplification in Pamphilus de Amore 227

that Galathea can exact whatever penalty she wants, then in the next lines
contradicting himself when he argues, ‘‘Sic pecasse tamen non mea culpa fuit’’
(704) (‘‘But if I did sin, the fault was not mine!’’). He invokes legal language by
saying, ‘‘Let us seek, if you wish, an impartial verdict/Should I be judged guilty or
be aquitted?’’ (705–706) (‘‘Et modo judicium, si vis, veniamus ad aequum: Aut
modo sim liber aut ratione reus’’) and finally, he ‘‘shifts the charge’’ to both
Galathea and to love itself:
Ardentes oculi, caro candida, vultus herilis,
Verbula, complexus, bascia grata, locus
Fomentum sceleris mihi principiumque dedere;
Institit hortator his mihi rebus amor.
His furor intumuit rabiesque libidinis arsit
Hortanturque mihi facta nefanda sequi.
Iste meos sensus subvertit pessimus error,
Per quem surda tibi gratia nostra fuit.
De quibus accuser, merito culpabilis esses;
Fons hujus fueras materiesque mali. (707–716)
You passionate eyes, white flesh, and noble features,
Your words, embraces, sweet kisses, this spot,
These stimulated my crime, and gave it start.
Encouraged by these, my love overwhelmed me!
They increased my passion, inflamed by fury of lust.
Thus urged, I committed this impious act.
And this, worst of distractions, so upset my mind,
That my good will was totally deaf to your pleas!
Rather, you deserve to be blamed of what you accuse me;
You were the source and heart of the evil. (707–716)
Here again, by refusing to admit what he has done Pamphilus manages to ‘‘leave
unsaid’’ the fact of sex. (The hypocrisy of refusing to say, that which one is
nevertheless willing to do, will be picked up and amplified in Jean de Meun’s sex
scene). Pamphilus’ invocation of forensic language in his slippery demurrals
reminds us that the medieval language of rape legislation, like the poetic language
of sexual propriety, circumvented the actual act of sex: The legal term for rape was
raptus, which primarily denoted marriage by unlawful abduction, but could also
refer to forced coitus.27 The implied equivalence of abduction and forced sex—or
at least, the lack of an imperative to discriminate between them—underlines the
patriarchal tenor of rape law: a woman who had been abducted against her father’s
will was likely to be perceived as damaged goods and therefore less profitable to her
male elders on the marriage market. In short, for fathers whose daughters were
subjected to raptus, the fiscal and legal result of abduction or forced coitus was the
same—though it is hard for not to speculate that for the daughters involved, whether
or not sex was involved would have made a great deal of difference.

27
For an overview of the medieval legislative history of raptus, see Gravdal (1991, pp. 5–7).

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228 A. Cook

While Pamphilus’ invocation of legal language reminds us of the patriarchal

status of a rape law that left unnarrated the experience of individual women, this
comedy does in fact show an interest in exploring in what is at least possibly, a
woman’s experience of genuinely nonconsensual sex. After the act, Galathea
demands that the Old Woman or Pamphilus confess openly to what they have done,
a demand that neither of them concede. When the Old Woman returns to the scene
and asks with feigned innocence that Galathea tell her what has occurred, Galathea
responds, ‘‘Yes, it suits you to ask now, as if you did not know,/When the whole
plan of this trick was an act of yours!/It is by the fruit that one knows the tree,/And
thus you are recognized by your deeds.’’ (729–732) (‘‘Convenit ut nostros quaeras
quasi nescia casus/Cum res consiliis ipsa sit acta tuis./Fructibus ipsa suis quae sit
cognoscitur arbor/Tuque mihi factis nosceris ipsa tuis’’). An extension of the
Pamphilus’ thematic emphasis upon the difference between words and deeds, this
remark from Galathea again foregrounds the sex act as a turning point, a moment of
action that reveals a truth that runs counter to her seducers’ declared intentions.
Deflected by the imperviousness of the Old Woman’s pose of determined and
artificial ignorance, Galathea makes the same plea to Pamphilus, that he admit
openly what has transpired: ‘‘Pamphilus, tell her what happened, since she acts the
unknowing,/And she will learn just how it all came about./As if ignorant, she asks
you what she herself counseled,/That she might not seem guilty, in this matter,
before me.’’ (757–760) (‘‘Pamphile, dic illi nostros quasi nesciat actus,/Res nunc
percipiat qualiter ista venit./Quod tibi consuluit, a te quasi nescia quaerit,/Ut
videatur in hoc non nocuisse mihi.’’). Like the Old Woman, Pamphilus refuses to
refer overtly to what has occurred. He speaks at length, but as noted above, his
speeches are not confessions but rationalizations. The fact that Pamphilus refuses to
take responsibility for what has happened, and the Old Woman’s similar response of
aping ignorance, registers as yet another moment wherein the act of sex is alluded
to, but characters refuse to discuss it openly. The difference is that while before the
act a refusal to name sexual desire overtly was part of a strategy for inflation,
afterwards such refusals are designed not to make sex grander than it is, but rather to
downplay its significance.
Ultimately, while sex is narrated in the Pamphilus, rape must, to some extent,
remain a mystery. Though Galathea threatens to stop the circumlocution in
insisting that rape be named, her insistence is not heeded. The fact that periphrasis,
in its codified avoidance of naming sex, might also help to countenance rape by to
making it invisible, is certainly a disturbing one. The political stakes that currently
inform the way we read rape might motivate us to want to read the Pamphilus
definitively, one way or the other. But in fact saying that Galathea’s protests are
conclusively sincere—or not; or that the text conclusively depicts a rape—or does
not, actually do a disservice to both the literary and the moral complexity of the
comedy. In keeping open the possibility that Galathea has been raped, the text is
able to explore the many registers of possibility inherent in the use of sexual
troping.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to Monique Allewaert, J. Jennifer Jones, and Amy Dayton-Wood for
their invaluable comments and suggestions.

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Erotic Amplification in Pamphilus de Amore 229

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