Bad Kids: Incestuous Fantasy and Phenomenon in A Song of Ice and Fire (original) (raw)

2016, Essays in Medieval Studies

Why does Western culture hate incest? Many versions of medieval Arthurian literature, including the alliterative Le Morte d'Arthur, feature King Arthur, one of history's most beloved heroes, participating in it. George R. R. Martin's hit series, A Song of Ice and Fire (perhaps better known as Game of Thrones), contains incest and is central to the plot. Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur has never been out of print, and Martin's series has exploded into a true culture phenomenon. This paper discusses how incest is manifested as a taboo in literature and why Martin chooses to use it as a main plot point (in his book series, not the television show that it inspired), thus tying incest directly to the medieval history in which he grounds his work. Specifically, in Martin, incest begins as a fantasy between two consenting individuals, but, when that fantasy becomes an actual phenomenon-when the incest produces a product-the taboo situates itself inside that product: the child. It is first necessary to look briefly at the origins of the incest taboo itself to understand its importance in the context of the paper. The question of why this particular taboo exists at all points back to the early hominid demonstrations of incestuous tendencies, suggesting that the practice is at the root of human desire and that a taboo against it is necessary to keep people from engaging in it. The incest taboo fits into the idea of the "other," a foreignness that speaks to the world in which one lives. Bruce Fink describes this foreignness as "a discourse or language that precedes [human] birth and that will live on after [human] death." 1 The Roman Catholic Church governed marriage law in the Middle Ages, but the incest taboo long predates the organization of the Church. Turner and Maryanski provide a succinct explanation regarding the taboo's origin, tracing it back to the mother-son avoidance patterns demonstrated by hominids. 2 Incest avoidance in this biological sense reduced the likelihood of the birth of unfit offspring. Tied to their presentation of Bachofen's idea of the "horde"-that is, a loosely knit group of