Eaten heart  

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"The hero is slain by the husband of the lady whose love he has won, his heart is cut by the husband from his body and cunningly served to the lady at meal-time."--"The Legend of the Eaten Heart" (1911) by John Mattzke

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The trope of the eaten heart was very popular in medieval literature.

In all of these stories, someone's heart is torn from his body: see heart extraction. The trope shares similarities with the even crueller trope of the Mother's heart.

The source text of this tale can be traced to the Indian tale in various version of the tale of king Rasalú whose wife cheats on him with a neighboring prince. After killing the prince, Rasalú carries his heart home and serves it to his wife who kills herself.

It can be found in "Ghismonda and Tancredi"(IV.1) and Guiglielmo di Rossiglione (IV.9), both from the Decameron.

A variation is also found in Baligante and the count of Arminimonte in the Novellino (LXII), and in the third chapter of the Vita Nuova in which the poet feeds Beatrice from his own heart.

Other instances include the French Lai d'Ignaure and the tale of the Roman du Châtelain de Coucilet et la Dame de Fayel.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Eaten heart" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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