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OBSCENITES<br />
RENAISSANTES<br />
Sous la direction de<br />
HUGH ROBERTS, GUILLAUME PEUREUX<br />
et LISE WAJEMAN<br />
Preface de MICHEL JEANNERET<br />
LIBRAIRIE DROZ S.A.<br />
11, rue Massot<br />
GENEVE<br />
2011
Public avec le concours<br />
de I'Arts & Humanities Research Council<br />
ISBN: 978-2-600-01466-3<br />
ISSN: 0082-6081<br />
Copyright 2011 by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Geneve.<br />
All rights reserved. No part <strong>of</strong> this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by<br />
print, photoprint, micr<strong>of</strong>ilm, micr<strong>of</strong>iche or any other means without written permission.
II. L'OBSCENITE COMME<br />
JEU DE FRONTIERES
INTRODUCTION<br />
The contributions in this section investigate intersections <strong>of</strong> visual and sonic culture<br />
with the literary obscene. Sexually transgressive images did not travel in isolation: the<br />
Masons discussed by Cecile Alduy, for example, were accompanied by engravings, and<br />
several were widely disseminated in musical settings. The rapidly evolving world <strong>of</strong><br />
print provided new arenas for these interactions between sight, sound and word, and<br />
the configurations <strong>of</strong> obscenity they helped to articulate.<br />
As the opening chapters <strong>of</strong> this book make clear, the nature <strong>of</strong> obscenity as a<br />
category <strong>of</strong> reception or effect implies a continual process <strong>of</strong> definition and disruption<br />
<strong>of</strong> boundaries between licit and illicit expression. Here we are partly concerned<br />
with discerning how limits are established or tested, and how artists, writers and<br />
musicians work around the variable borders <strong>of</strong> the obscene, <strong>of</strong>ten in highly selfconscious<br />
or knowing ways. Many <strong>of</strong> the texts and images we discuss contain some<br />
acknowledgement <strong>of</strong> transgression: that is, censorship - the drawing <strong>of</strong> limits<br />
elsewhere - may be incorporated into the representation itself in some way. Gestures<br />
toward the potential for <strong>of</strong>fence serve not only as a forestalling device; the imagined<br />
censorious reaction also acts to comment upon (and thus sometimes to heighten)<br />
transgressive effects. Alduy uses filmic concepts to discuss this aspect <strong>of</strong> obscenity,<br />
demonstrating how the Blasons anatomiques are framed and re-framed to create a<br />
complex counterpoint between the permissible and the obscene that destabilizes the<br />
very categories it purports to construct.<br />
A related theme involves the demand for action as a component <strong>of</strong> the obscene: how<br />
texts and images not only anticipate but provoke audience response. Patricia Simons's<br />
paper is concerned with the solicitation <strong>of</strong> shock or condemnation, particularly<br />
from women, as a mode <strong>of</strong> calling the obscene into being as meaningful, that is, as<br />
transgression. Simons, Rebecca Zorach and I are all interested in how the corporeal<br />
qualities <strong>of</strong> the visual or sonic image invoke corporeal responses, creating a somatic<br />
circularity that pr<strong>of</strong>oundly disturbs the boundaries between representation and<br />
action. Whether the action is complicit - as in the behaviour <strong>of</strong> the wedding guests in<br />
Gohory's Amadis (Jeanice Brooks) - or resistant, involving defacement or destruction<br />
(Zorach), this aspect <strong>of</strong> the obscene's proliferative energy was among its most troubling<br />
qualities for contemporary actors. Tales <strong>of</strong> virtue, such as the story <strong>of</strong> Augustus's wife<br />
Livia (discussed by Simons), thus <strong>of</strong>ten involve a refusal to engage in bodily reflexivity.<br />
Some mid-century conduct books aimed at Protestant women recommend that they
no<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
literally stop up their ears, avert their eyes and shut their mouths against lascivious<br />
words, sounds and sights; like Livia's ostentatious non-reaction, these efforts to close<br />
<strong>of</strong>F bodily orifices to prevent penetration from the outside might be read as attempts at<br />
short-circuiting the action <strong>of</strong> sights and sounds on the body to deny the obscene its very<br />
existence as such.<br />
Differences <strong>of</strong> rank as well as gender play an important role in defining boundaries.<br />
As Simons points out, shock must be elicited from elite, 'honest' women, not courtesans<br />
or low-class individuals. The imputation <strong>of</strong> sexual knowledge and unshockability<br />
characteristic <strong>of</strong> the courtesan onto a high-status woman could thus function as an<br />
act <strong>of</strong> aggression (as in the story <strong>of</strong> Cellini and Madame d'Estampes), and women<br />
themselves had a stake in the performance <strong>of</strong> shock, at least in public. Gauging women's<br />
reactions through sexually explicit imagery, as when a phallic chanson is sung for a<br />
princess (Brooks) or a goblet with indecent images is given to a series <strong>of</strong> court ladies<br />
(Simons), not only explored the nature <strong>of</strong> the obscene, but also tested the quality <strong>of</strong><br />
the woman.<br />
Dissimulation <strong>of</strong> inappropriate emotions and reactions was a sign <strong>of</strong> the successful<br />
courtier, and had a role in defining rank in male courtiers as well. As we are largely<br />
concerned here with poems, art and music <strong>of</strong> courtly origin, the interrogation <strong>of</strong> these<br />
dynamics becomes an important concern. The ability to package oneself - to render<br />
one's performances beautiful - was prized, and included the skill <strong>of</strong> cloaking indecency<br />
so as to render it acceptable. Disgust at this aspect <strong>of</strong> courtly aesthetics, the use <strong>of</strong> high<br />
style to describe low things, lies behind some <strong>of</strong> the most stringent critiques, such as<br />
Corrozet's condemnation <strong>of</strong> the blasonneurs (Alduy). When printed engravings and<br />
songbooks began to disseminate images and music, that had previously been restricted<br />
to courtly audiences, to new publics, they rendered the court newly vulnerable to the<br />
accusations <strong>of</strong> dissipation and decadence that had characterized anti-aulic attacks since<br />
the classical period. Joan Dejean has emphasized how print made material previously<br />
restricted in circulation to elite men available to women and girls, whose ostensible<br />
need for protection was a strong motivation for the emergence <strong>of</strong> the legal category <strong>of</strong><br />
obscenity. But since women already had access to potentially obscene material at court -<br />
and indeed were essential to the courtly use <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive images - the effect<br />
<strong>of</strong> print may have been equally powerful in ripping things out <strong>of</strong> courtly performative<br />
frameworks and making them available in new contexts, a shift that forces their<br />
evaluation away from situational judgment and into the realm <strong>of</strong> categorical verdict.<br />
Print thus encourages interpretations based on some concept <strong>of</strong> obscene content, a<br />
problem that can lead to the blurring <strong>of</strong> a further boundary, that <strong>of</strong> time. As Zorach<br />
points out, modern readings <strong>of</strong> sexually explicit material, particularly in the visual<br />
domain, are <strong>of</strong>ten based on notions <strong>of</strong> a transcendent rather than historically specific<br />
corporeality. Thus we believe we can differentiate the erotic from the obscene according<br />
to our own preconceptions and readings <strong>of</strong> style; this may lead, for example, to the<br />
aestheticization <strong>of</strong> court culture through art history (so that if something is judged<br />
as art it cannot be obscene), or to efforts to use notions <strong>of</strong> civility to connect songs <strong>of</strong>
II. L'OBSCENITE COMME JEU DE FRONTIERES - INTRODUCTION 111<br />
earthy physicality to popular rather than elite culture. But as Zorach remarks, obscene<br />
effects may not have formed part <strong>of</strong> initial reception but may occur at any time. In the<br />
case <strong>of</strong> defaced images, for example, it is <strong>of</strong>ten impossible to tell whether interventions<br />
date from the sixteenth century or later. Other examples <strong>of</strong> such dislocation include<br />
the marginalia - apparently from the seventeenth century - commenting on the<br />
phallic poem in the Arsenal copy <strong>of</strong> Gohory's Amadis, or the late nineteenth-century<br />
editor Henry Expert's suppression <strong>of</strong> certain songs in Costeley's Musique. And the<br />
capacity <strong>of</strong> the obscene to trouble boundaries continues to the present day, for in<br />
interrogating obscenity we are forced to confront our own reactions to the material, to<br />
resist its insistent ability to disturb and to confuse, in order to historicize more fully<br />
the emergence <strong>of</strong> an early modern notion <strong>of</strong> the obscene.<br />
Les contributions de cette section etudient les rencontres entre I'obscene litterairc<br />
et les cultures visuelles ou musicales. Les images sexuelles transgressives n'apparaissent<br />
pas isolees d'un contexte : les hlasons poetiques commentes par C. Alduy, par exemple,<br />
sent accompagnes de gravures, et certains de ces blasons ont ete mis en musique. Lessor<br />
rapide de I'imprime a <strong>of</strong>fert de nouvelles possibilites a ces interactions entre le mot,<br />
rimage et le son, et a ainsi permis d'articuler de nouvelles configurations obscenes.<br />
Ainsi que le montrent les chapitres d'introduction de ce livre, I'obscenite implique,<br />
si on I'envisage comme une categoric ou un effet de reception, un processus continuel<br />
de definition et de perturbation des frontieres entre ce qu'il est licite d'exprimer et<br />
ce qu'il est illicite de dire. Dans ce chapitre, nous nous efforcerons notamment de<br />
comprendre comment ces limites sont etablies ou mises a I'epreuve, et comment<br />
les artistes, les ecrivains et les musiciens travaillent autour des frontieres variables de<br />
I'obscene, souvent de maniere tres consciente ou savante. Nombre des textes et images<br />
que nous commentons reconnaissent qu'ils sont transgressifs : ainsi certains procedes<br />
permettent d'integrer la censure - en etablissant d'autres limites - a la representation<br />
elle-meme. Designer son propre potentiel <strong>of</strong>fensif ne permet pas seulement d'anticiper<br />
sur la reception: les reactions de censure que I'cEuvre prete au recepteur permettent<br />
aussi de produire un commentaire des effets transgressifs, parfois pour intensifier ces<br />
derniers. C. Alduy recourt a des concepts d'analyse filmique pour traiter de cet aspect<br />
de I'obscenite, montrant comment les Blasons anatomiques sont cadres et recadres pour<br />
creer un contrepoint complexe entre ce qui est permis et ce qui est obscene, de telle<br />
sorte que les blasons bousculent les categories que, precisement, ils pretendent etablir.<br />
Un autre probleme, lie au precedent, est la fa(jon dont I'obscene peut pousser a<br />
Faction: il s'agit de voir comment textes et images non seulement anticipent une<br />
reaction du public mais la provoquent egalement. La contribution de P. Simons porte<br />
sur la fa^on dont des oeuvres travaillent a susciter un choc ou une condamnation, en<br />
particulier chez les femmes, de maniere a rendre I'obscene signifiant, c'est-a-dire
Ill<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
transgressif. P. Simons, R. Zorach et moi-meme nous interessons toutes trois aux fa^ons<br />
dont les qualites physiques de 1'image visuelle ou sonore suscitent des reponses physiques,<br />
produisant une circularite somatique qui perturbe pr<strong>of</strong>ondement les frontieres entre<br />
representation et action. Que Ton consente a Taction {cf. le comportement des invites<br />
au mariage dans VAmadis de Gohory, dans la contribution de J. Brooks), ou qu'on y<br />
resiste, ce qui peut conduire a efFacer ou a detruire I'ceuvre (R. Zorach), on est pris par<br />
I'energie proliferante de I'obscene, qui est Tune de ses plus troublantes caracteristiques<br />
pour les hommes de I'epoque. Les exemples de vertu, comme I'histoire de Livia, femme<br />
d'Auguste (dont parle R Simons), supposent souvent que Ion refuse de sengager dans<br />
ce jeu reflexif des corps. Certains livres de bonnes manieres du milieu du siecle, destines<br />
aux femmes protestantes, leur recommandent litteralement de se boucher les oreilles, de<br />
detourner les yeux et de fermer leur bouche face aux sons, aux images et aux mots lascifs.<br />
Livia, de fa^on ostentatoire, s'abstient de reagir; de meme, ces efforts pour fermer<br />
les orifices du corps afin d'empecher toute penetration de I'exterieur peuvent etre lus<br />
comme des tentatives pour circonvenir I'effet que les sons et les images pourraient avoir<br />
sur le corps : il s'agit de nier I'existence meme de I'obscenite.<br />
Les frontieres de I'obscene se definissent differemment selon la position sociale,<br />
selon qu'on est un homme ou une femme. Comme le montre R Simons, c'est Telite,<br />
ce sont les « honnetes » femmes qui doivent se montrer choquees, pas les courtisans<br />
ou les individus de basses conditions. Ainsi, imputer a une femme de haut rang des<br />
connaissances en matiere sexuelle, la traiter comme si elle ne pouvait etre choquee,<br />
ce qui est un trait de courtisane, c'est une fa^on de I'agresser (comme dans I'histoire<br />
de Cellini et de Madame d'Estampes commentee par R Simons), et les femmes ellesmemes<br />
avaient tout interet a se montrer saisies, au moins en public. Jauger les reactions<br />
des femmes par le biais d'images explicitement sexuelles, comme lorsqu'une chanson<br />
paillarde est chantee pour une princesse (J. Brooks) ou que Ton fait passer un gobelet<br />
decore d'images indecentes a des dames de la cour (R Simons), c'est non seulement<br />
explorer la nature de I'obscene, mais aussi mettre a I'epreuve la qualite de la femme.<br />
Savoir dissimuler des emotions ou des reactions inappropriees, c'est le propre<br />
du courtisan qui reussit, et cela peut meme contribuer a definir le rang d'un homme.<br />
Dans la mesure ou nous nous occupons essentiellement ici de poesie, dart et de<br />
musique d'origine curiale, il est important de s'interroger sur ces dynamiques. On<br />
prise I'art avec lequel le courtisan doit savoir se presenter et tenir un role, ce qui<br />
suppose notamment qu'il ait la capacite de camoufler I'indecence de fagon a la rendre<br />
acceptable. Certaines des critiques les plus rigoureuses, comme la condamnation par<br />
Gilles Corrozet des blasonneurs (C. Alduy), s'expliquent ainsi par une aversion pour cet<br />
aspect de I'esthetique dc cour, I'utilisation d'un style clcve pour decrirc des choses viles<br />
notamment. Lorsque les gravures et les livres de chansons commencerent a diffuser<br />
aupres de nouveaux publics des images et des musiques qui avaient ete auparavant<br />
reservees a des audiences curiales, ils rendirent la cour vulnerable aux accusations de<br />
dissolution et de decadence qui avaient caracterise les attaques anti-auliques depuis<br />
la periode classique. J. Dejean a beaucoup insiste sur le fait que I'imprime a rendu
II. L'OBSCENITE COMME JEU DE FRONTIERES - INTRODUCTION 113<br />
accessible aux femmes et aux filles des materiaux qui etaient a I'origine reserves aux<br />
elites masculines. Le besoin notoire de protection qua la gent feminine a d'ailleurs<br />
considerablement contribue a I'emergence de la categorie legale de I'obscenite. Pourtant<br />
les femmes avaient deja acces, a la cour, a des materiaux potentiellement obscenes, et<br />
leurs reactions etaient essentielles a I'usage curial des images sexuelles transgressives.<br />
II se pourrait que I'effet de I'imprime soit d'avoir arrache des elements de ce<br />
fonctionnement performatif de I'obscenite a la cour pour les inserer dans de nouveaux<br />
contextes; ce changement oblige a ne pas les evaluer en fonction de la situation mais a<br />
les soumettre a un verdict etabli en fonction de categories legates.<br />
L'imprime engage ainsi a des interpretations fondees sur une certaine definition de<br />
ce que serait un contenu obscene ; ce probleme peut conduire a rendre floue une autre<br />
frontiere, celle du temps. Comme le montre R. Zorach, les lectures modernes dun<br />
materiau explicitement sexuel, en particulier dans le domaine de I'image, s'appuient<br />
souvent sur des conceptions transcendantes du corps plutot que specifiquement<br />
historiques. Nous pensons pouvoir done distinguer la categorie de I'erotique de celle<br />
de I'obscene en fonction de nos propres a priori et de nos conceptions des styles. Cela<br />
peut mener, par exemple, a I'esthetisation de la culture de cour a travers I'histoire de<br />
I'art (et reviendrait a considered que ce qui releve de I'art ne peut pas etre obscene), ou<br />
bien a recourir a des notions de bienseance pour affirmer que des chansons terre-a-terre<br />
relevent de la culture populaire plutot que de celle de I'elite. Mais comme le remarque<br />
R. Zorach, si les effets obscenes peuvent ne pas avoir existe lors de la reception initiale,<br />
ils peuvent se produire a n'importe quel moment. Dans le cas des images defigurees,<br />
par exemple, il est souvent impossible de dire si les interventions datent du XVP<br />
siecle ou si elks sont ulterieures. Les marginalia - datant apparemment du XVir<br />
siecle - commentant le poeme phallique dans la copie de la Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal de<br />
I'Amadis de Gohory, ou bien la suppression a la fin du XIX" siecle de certaines chansons<br />
dans Musique de Costeley par I'editeur Henry Expert constituent d'autres exemples de<br />
semblables bouleversements. Et la capacite qua I'obscene de brouiller les frontieres est<br />
encore manifeste aujourd'hui, car en interrogeant I'obscenite nous sommes contraints<br />
de confronter nos propres reactions au materiau, nous devons resister a son insistante<br />
capacite a nous perturber et a nous troubler, afin de mieux cerner historiquement<br />
r emergence dune definition de lobscene dans la premiere modernite.<br />
Jeanice Brooks, <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Southampton</strong>
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY: THE CHANSON<br />
LASCIVE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF OBSCENITY<br />
As Hugh Roberts points out, Erasmus's Institution <strong>of</strong> Christian Matrimony (1^16)<br />
contains the most wide-ranging discussion <strong>of</strong> obscenity <strong>of</strong> the entire sixteenth century. It<br />
is all the more interesting, then, that the anecdote with which it opens - about a noblewoman<br />
who accidentally swears in church - is immediately followed by an attack on the<br />
purveyors <strong>of</strong> erotic stories and songs. Girls need protection not only from hearing swear<br />
words, but from other sonorous forms <strong>of</strong> obscenity. Erasmus describes how storytellers<br />
drip poison into tender ears, imagining the obscene as literally invading the listeners'<br />
bodies in order to corrupt their minds. But in the case <strong>of</strong> music, instead <strong>of</strong> defending<br />
girls from these incursions, parents misguidedly believe that familiarity with obscene<br />
songs will enhance their daughters' standing within a courtly economy <strong>of</strong> social grace:<br />
In some countries these days, as a sort <strong>of</strong> annual ritual, new songs are published for<br />
girls to learn. Their themes are something like - a husband deceived by his wife,<br />
a girl escaping her parents' vigilance, a secret tryst arranged with a lover. [...] To<br />
these poisonous tales are added words <strong>of</strong> such obscenity, through euphemisms<br />
and innuendo, that pure filth could not be filthier. A lot <strong>of</strong> people, especially in<br />
Flanders, earn a living from such stuff; if the law were more vigilant, the authors <strong>of</strong><br />
these lullabies would be flogged by the hangman, and made to sing dirges, not dirty<br />
songs. And yet these brazen corrupters <strong>of</strong> youth make a living from their crimes,<br />
and there are even parents who think that civility consists, in part, that their<br />
daughters should not be ignorant <strong>of</strong> such songs.'<br />
It is not just the immoral stories and filthy words that constitute the obscenity <strong>of</strong> these<br />
pieces. The music alone is able to communicate obscene content through a process<br />
likened to physical gesture:<br />
Translation adapted from Institution <strong>of</strong> Christian Matrimony, trans, by Michael J. Heath,<br />
Collected Works <strong>of</strong> Erasmus, LXIX, Spiritualia and Pastoralia, ed. by John W. O'Malley and<br />
Louis A. Peraud (Toronto; <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Toronto Press, 1999), p. 415. For the Latin text see<br />
Erasmus, Opera omnia (Leiden: Clericus, 1703-1706; reprint, Hiidesheim: Olms, 1961), V,<br />
7i7f-7i8c; it is reproduced and extensively commented in Jean-Claude Margolin, Erasme et<br />
la musique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965), pp. 16-23.
194 JEANICE BROOKS<br />
And is not our own music, even leaving aside the foul language and disgusting<br />
themes, full <strong>of</strong> frivolousness, not to say madness? There used to be a kind <strong>of</strong> performance<br />
in which, without using words, the actors could represent whatever they<br />
wished by no more than the movements <strong>of</strong> their bodies. It is similar with today's<br />
songs: even without the words, you can still understand, from consideration <strong>of</strong> the<br />
music alone, the filthy character <strong>of</strong> the theme.^<br />
Erasmus's exposition <strong>of</strong> musical obscenity ends with a quote: As Aristotle said, "A foul<br />
mouth will not shrink from foul deeds".' This points up how frequently the problem<br />
<strong>of</strong> the obscene involves the potential passage from representation to action. Music is<br />
especially implicated in the blurring <strong>of</strong> this border because it is already an action, so<br />
that sexually transgressive texts become animated in sound and performed in time.<br />
Composed music scripts aspects <strong>of</strong> delivery (dictating rhythms, pitches, and other<br />
musical elements, to emphasize certain words or to colour their meaning in some<br />
way) to produce and re-produce obscene images and narratives; words are transformed<br />
into enactment through imitation <strong>of</strong> voices and sounds. Such effects can be written<br />
in by composers, who may, for example, represent the speech <strong>of</strong> a female character by<br />
dropping the lower voices for the setting <strong>of</strong> her lines, or mimic sighs by the strategic<br />
placement <strong>of</strong> rests. In performance, singers could heighten these effects or introduce<br />
new ones, by manipulating tempo, dynamic, and attack, changing vocal colour to<br />
imitate cries, sighs or characters' voices, and exploiting other performance elements<br />
such as facial expression and gesture. For Erasmus, such sonic animation <strong>of</strong> the obscene<br />
in songs acts as inducement to further enactments <strong>of</strong> their illicit content outside the<br />
performance. His call for censorship is motivated by concern that the performed will<br />
become performative, bringing about what it purports to describe.<br />
Erasmus's ire was especially aroused by the idea that some <strong>of</strong> his contemporaries<br />
were making money from the production and dissemination <strong>of</strong> obscene songs. His<br />
worries over the free circulation <strong>of</strong> obscene material suggest attitudes toward print<br />
that would come to underpin the secular legal category <strong>of</strong> obscenity in the following<br />
century. But in 15x5, music printing from moveable type was still in its infancy. Most<br />
chansons were still transmitted with their music only in manuscript; those that were<br />
printed usually appeared without musical notation. Only a few years later, the situation<br />
would change dramatically when Pierre Attaingnant became the first to exploit a new<br />
single-impression system for printing music that was both faster and cheaper than the<br />
methods <strong>of</strong> his predecessors. In the decades following the appearance <strong>of</strong> his first music<br />
print in 1518, he produced a staggering number <strong>of</strong> music books - the most successful<br />
going through multiple editions - which were distributed all over Europe. His efforts<br />
Institution, p. 427. Heath's translation elides this passage with the next, which concerns<br />
instrumental dance music, but it is clear from the Latin text that Erasmus is still here<br />
concerned with songs.
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY 195<br />
were supported from the beginning by a series <strong>of</strong> royal privileges, and further rewarded<br />
in 1537 when he was named the first imprimeur et libraire du Roy en musique by Francois<br />
I.' The bulk <strong>of</strong> his production was devoted to secular chansons; and this continued to be<br />
the case for the firm <strong>of</strong> Le Roy & Ballard, who acquired the <strong>of</strong>fice <strong>of</strong> royal music printers<br />
soon after Attaingnant's death in late 1551 or 155Z. The print market for music was soon<br />
flooded with the kind <strong>of</strong> song Erasmus deplored. And alongside the Neoplatonic and<br />
Petrarchan love lyrics that dominate the corpus stood a significant number <strong>of</strong> chansons<br />
setting more explicit texts in a variety <strong>of</strong> registers, ranging from corporeal fantasies in<br />
the style <strong>of</strong> the blason, to courtly texts in feminine narrative voices expressing lustful<br />
wishes, to humorous or mock-rustic sexual and scatological anecdotes.<br />
Attacks on secular song, <strong>of</strong>ten significantly indebted to Erasmus, feature in<br />
discussions <strong>of</strong> bringing up girls through the rest <strong>of</strong> the century, and condemnation <strong>of</strong><br />
obscene songs - usually designated chansons lascives or impudiques - frequently marks<br />
the polemic <strong>of</strong> the Wars <strong>of</strong> Religion.'' In both pedagogical and polemic texts, Protestant<br />
writers were particularly apt to counterpose the licit singing <strong>of</strong> psalms against the<br />
pernicious performance <strong>of</strong> secular songs. But while it is clear that for many early modern<br />
writers, the notion <strong>of</strong> the chanson lascive could refer to a setting <strong>of</strong> an amorous text <strong>of</strong><br />
any kind, Erasmus here targets songs that depict and serve to stimulate female sexual<br />
appetites. His concern with narrative and action also points toward a type <strong>of</strong> sexually<br />
transgressive song that was a speciality <strong>of</strong> French poets and musicians. Their texts consist<br />
<strong>of</strong> brief stories, <strong>of</strong>ten including direct speech, and the punchline generally involves<br />
a strong physical image. They may feature stock characters such as the mal-mariie, a<br />
frustrated young woman married to an old, impotent husband; rustic and pastoral<br />
characters and settings are also common, though humour is sometimes generated by<br />
imputing indecent behaviour to social elites. Settings <strong>of</strong> these texts in chanson prints<br />
use a different musical style from that employed for standard love lyrics, deploying a<br />
wide range <strong>of</strong> vivid musical effects to represent the progression <strong>of</strong> the narrative, <strong>of</strong>ten<br />
On Attaingnant and the early history <strong>of</strong> music printing, see Stanley Boorman, 'Printing and<br />
publishing <strong>of</strong> music', §1, 'Printing', in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, (accessed 6 April,<br />
2.009) and Daniel Heartz, Pierre Attaingnant: Royal Printer <strong>of</strong> Music (Berkeley and Los<br />
Angeles: <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> California Press, 1969).<br />
Jeanice Brooks, "'All you need is love": Music, Romance and Adolescent Recreation in<br />
Sixteenth-Century France", in Attending to Early Modern Women - and Men, ed. by Amy<br />
Leonard and Karen Nelson (Newark: <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Delaware Press, forthcoming). On<br />
obscenity in religious polemic, see Lise Wajeman's article below. Further on music in<br />
particular, see Richard Freedman, The Chansons <strong>of</strong> Orlando di Lasso: Music, Piety, and<br />
Print in Sixteenth-Century France (Rochester: <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Rochester Press, zooo); Craig<br />
Monson, 'The Council <strong>of</strong> Trent Revisited', Journal <strong>of</strong> the American Musicological Society, 55<br />
(zooz), 1-37; David Crook, 'A Sixteenth-Century Catalog <strong>of</strong> Prohibited Music, Journal <strong>of</strong><br />
the American Musicological Society, Gt (1009), 1-78.
196 JEANICE BROOKS<br />
with particular emphasis on the punchhne.' Such pieces emerge as perhaps the most<br />
physically immediate type within the large subset <strong>of</strong> chansons whose corporeal concerns<br />
stand in stark contrast to the spiritualized eroticism <strong>of</strong> courtly love songs.<br />
As in the Blasons anatomiques discussed by Cecile Alduy, printed chanson<br />
collections present disconcerting juxtapositions: ethereal love lyrics and sexually<br />
transgressive songs appear side by side without comment. The question <strong>of</strong> how to read<br />
their relationship, within and outside the print, remains problematic. The <strong>of</strong>fice <strong>of</strong> royal<br />
printer was awarded both to furnish music for use by royal musicians and to represent<br />
the royal musical establishment to the outside world; and texts and music for both types<br />
<strong>of</strong> song were overwhelmingly the work <strong>of</strong> court poets and musicians. Early scholarship<br />
on the narrative chanson was <strong>of</strong>ten aimed, however, at recovering elements <strong>of</strong> popular<br />
culture, and cast the sexually transgressive narrative chanson in opposition to settings<br />
<strong>of</strong> love lyrics along high/low, courtly/popular axes.^ More recent studies that interpret<br />
the pieces as examples <strong>of</strong> Bahktinian inversion do not fundamentally alter this pattern.'<br />
While the <strong>of</strong>ten jarring juxtapositions <strong>of</strong> textual and musical languages between the lyric<br />
and narrative chanson types and the lack <strong>of</strong> contextualizing paratext in music prints<br />
tend to support oppositional readings, there has been little thought about whether<br />
performance contexts and the ideologies <strong>of</strong> musical performance through which songs<br />
were interpreted might <strong>of</strong>fizr a different view. In fact we know almost nothing about<br />
the performance <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive songs, under what circumstances they might<br />
be considered legitimate or obscene, much less how either music prints or musical<br />
performance might figure in a broader history <strong>of</strong> obscenity in early modern France.<br />
Melanie Marshall's research on Venetian dialect pieces and William Prizer's<br />
work on Italian carnival song has shown how social elites used sexually transgressive<br />
repertories that earlier scholarship had considered as popular in origin or function.<br />
Whether in the streets during carnival, or in the homosocial environment <strong>of</strong> academies,<br />
nobles had access to a range <strong>of</strong> extra-courtly settings for performance and audition<br />
<strong>of</strong> obscene songs.® The court origins <strong>of</strong> so many sexually explicit French chansons<br />
A good example is Clement M.zvots Martin menoitsonpourceau au marche, which circulated<br />
in musical settings by Clement Janequin and Claude de Sermisy from 1535 at the latest; see<br />
Jean-Pierre Ouvrard, 'Du narratif dans la polyphonic au XVIeme siecle: Martin menoit son<br />
pourceau au marche - Clement Marot, Clement Janequin, Claudin de Sermisy', Analyse<br />
Musicale, 9 (1987), 11-16.<br />
For example, Patrice Coirault, La Formation de nos chansons folkloriques, 4 vols. (Paris:<br />
Editions du Scarabee, 1953-63); Chansonspopulaires desXV' etXVI'sihles avec leurs melodies,<br />
ed. by Theodore Ceroid (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1913; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1976).<br />
For example, Kate van Orden, 'Sexual Discourse in the Parisian Chanson-. A Libidinous<br />
K\v!Lvy\Journal <strong>of</strong> the American Musicological Society, 48 (1995), 1-41; van Orden situates her<br />
interpretation by pointing (p. 3, footnote) to the long tradition <strong>of</strong> emphasizing text-based<br />
'convtXy-gallois opposition' in chanson scholarship.<br />
Melanie Marshall, 'Cultural Codes and Hierarchies in the Mid-Cinquecento Villotta<br />
(unpublished doctoral thesis, <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Southampton</strong>, 2.004); William F. Prizer,
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY 197<br />
suggests that further investigation might legitimately look within court practice<br />
for other performance milieux. The letter <strong>of</strong> dedication to Ottaviano Petrucci's<br />
Odhecaton A (1501), the first collection <strong>of</strong> polyphony to be printed by moveable<br />
type, outlined the main occasions for the use <strong>of</strong> its contents, specifically mentioning<br />
weddings and banquets.' However, studies <strong>of</strong> court spectacle have usually focused on<br />
formal festivities, in which the musical components are generally large-scale settings<br />
<strong>of</strong> elaborate ceremonial and occasional texts, <strong>of</strong>ten in Latin. In Dejean's reading, more<br />
equivocal material was principally a feature <strong>of</strong> popular entertainments that have left<br />
few documentary traces before the seventeenth century.'" Her association <strong>of</strong> crude or<br />
sexually explicit content with popular events echoes the approach <strong>of</strong> some <strong>of</strong> the early<br />
scholarship on the chanson literature. But in the Institution <strong>of</strong> Christian Matrimony,<br />
Erasmus attributes the custom <strong>of</strong> boisterous weddings, where obscene songs, stories and<br />
jokes are given free rein, to a desire for social climbing: in his view, such events do not<br />
reflect popular practice but result from imitation <strong>of</strong> elite magnificence. Elsewhere in<br />
the treatise his location <strong>of</strong> obscene behavior is cast in even more specifically anti-aulic<br />
terms." Although it seems likely that Dejean was unaware <strong>of</strong> the large body <strong>of</strong> printed<br />
chansons setting equivocal lyrics, their existence also argues against ephemerality and<br />
gestures towards the emerging concept <strong>of</strong> the musical work, whose basic elements are<br />
stably preserved through print.<br />
Dejean's arguments on the emergence <strong>of</strong> a modern concept <strong>of</strong> the obscene rely<br />
not only on the appearance <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive material in print, but on how<br />
print made such material available to groups whose perceived need for protection<br />
led to secular censorship.'^ In this reading, transgressive content was tolerated if<br />
'Facciamo pur noi carnevale-. Non-Florentine Carnival Songs <strong>of</strong> the Late Fifteenth and Early<br />
Sixteenth Century,' in Musica Franca: Essays in Honor <strong>of</strong> Frank A. D'Accone, ed. by Irene<br />
Aim, Alyson McLamore and Colleen Reardon (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1996), pp.<br />
173-211.<br />
A translation <strong>of</strong> the letterfigures in Bonnie J. Blackburn, 'Lorenzo de' Medici, A Lost Isaac<br />
Manuscript, and the Venetian Ambassador,' in Musica Franca, pp. 19-44 (pp. 33-34)-<br />
'There was probably a good deal <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive content in such popular genres as<br />
mime and Fescennine [«V] (a type <strong>of</strong> verse featured at weddings and harvest festivals), genres<br />
that would not have respected the rule <strong>of</strong> formal elegance. [...] Such forms <strong>of</strong> ephemeral<br />
sexually transgressive material are so hard to document, at any period but the present day,<br />
that I limit my discussion to works whose circulation was more traditional' Dejean, The<br />
Reinvention <strong>of</strong> Obscenity, p. 133, n. 9.<br />
'The wedding will be considered beggarly unless a horde <strong>of</strong> aristocrats, grandes dames,<br />
plutocrats, and other notables is invited to the feast. A so-called respectable wedding is<br />
one where vast sums <strong>of</strong> money are squandered on frippery [.. . ] and where licence is freely<br />
granted to filthy language and silly pranks.' {Institution, pp. 348-9). Further on (p. 350),<br />
Erasmus complains that the marriage sacrament is sullied by 'silly games, laughter, lutes,<br />
pipes, foolery, and dancing.' On how scandalously girls are brought up at court 'in certain<br />
countries', see p. 414.<br />
Dejean, The Reinvention <strong>of</strong> Obscenity, p. 7.
198 JEANICE BROOKS<br />
limited in circulation to elite men, as it was in classical antiquity when the Latin term<br />
obscenitas enjoyed its first life. Consideration <strong>of</strong> music prints complicates this picture.<br />
Music books circulated sexually transgressive material in several different ways: song<br />
texts could be read on their own, and the musically literate could get an idea <strong>of</strong> the<br />
techniques used to heighten the imagistic or pictorial aspect <strong>of</strong> some <strong>of</strong> the settings.<br />
Music literacy was an elite or pr<strong>of</strong>essional attainment, and access via print to the<br />
effects songs contain was reduced even for the musically literate, since music books<br />
were published in partbooks rather than in score. That is, the full impact <strong>of</strong> any given<br />
piece is available only through realized sound, supporting to some extent the notion<br />
<strong>of</strong> limited circulation. However, there is considerable evidence that elite women were<br />
musically literate and skilled enough to produce performances <strong>of</strong> this material, and<br />
Erasmus declares disapprovingly that their ability to do so was in fact considered by<br />
many <strong>of</strong> his contemporaries as a sign <strong>of</strong> elite status. Furthermore, musical literacy was<br />
not necessary to hear and understand musical performances; once print made sexually<br />
transgressive songs widely available, musicians could produce them for audiences who<br />
were not themselves capable <strong>of</strong> reading music books. Components <strong>of</strong> delivery added in<br />
performance do not figure at all in the prints. If obscenity is considered as a relation<br />
between content and effect - the reaction to sexually explicit material that marks it<br />
as obscene - musical culture <strong>of</strong> the sixteenth century <strong>of</strong>fers a range <strong>of</strong> different sites<br />
<strong>of</strong> reception in which that effect could be produced. The situation is complex, and it<br />
is useful to distinguish analytically between types <strong>of</strong> dissemination (print versus<br />
performance) and types <strong>of</strong> engagement (performers versus listeners) in interrogating<br />
the relationship <strong>of</strong> the love lyrics that make up the majority <strong>of</strong> the chanson literature,<br />
and the large subgroup <strong>of</strong> cruder or more sexually explicit songs.<br />
Detailed accounts <strong>of</strong> song performance are scarce from this period, however, and<br />
aside from the blanket condemnations <strong>of</strong> lascivious music that figure in moralizing<br />
or polemic texts, descriptions <strong>of</strong> how sexually explicit chansons were performed and<br />
received are almost nonexistent. This renders all the more valuable the musical episodes<br />
in the thirteenth installment <strong>of</strong> the serial romance Amadis de Gaule, translated by<br />
Jacques Gohory. Le Trezieme livre d'Amadis is an example <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive<br />
courtly print material in its own right, and it also includes a musical episode that<br />
suggests court contexts in which sexually transgressive song performances may have<br />
been not only tolerated but encouraged.<br />
The French Amadis was the publishing sensation <strong>of</strong> the century, but its early success<br />
was in direct proportion to its later fall from grace." Michel Simonin shows that the<br />
Spanish model texts were condemned by moralists such as Vives and Guevara before<br />
mid-century. French translations <strong>of</strong> Spanish attacks on chivalric romance in general<br />
13 On the series see Les Amadis en France au XVIe siecle, ed. by Robert Aulotte, Cahiers V.<br />
L. Saulnier, 17 (Paris: Editions rue d'Ulm, 2.000); Marian Rothstein, Reading in the<br />
Renaissance: Amadis de Gaule and the Lessons <strong>of</strong> Memory (Newark: <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Delaware<br />
Press, 1999).
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY 199<br />
and Amadis in particular were soon in circulation, rapidly joined by similar assaults<br />
on the novel by French critics. Notably, French condemnations <strong>of</strong> Amadis <strong>of</strong>ten<br />
bracket it together with Ovid, bringing the vernacular novel into dialogue with the<br />
themes William McKenzie discusses above. These attacks frequently took an antiaulic<br />
turn, with Amadis cast as the mirror <strong>of</strong> a dissipated court culture, where elegant<br />
language and stylized manners serve only as cover for depraved sexual behaviour.'"^ By<br />
1571 the chorus <strong>of</strong> disapproval was loud, and Gohory accordingly uses the preface <strong>of</strong><br />
the Trezieme livre to defend the book against charges <strong>of</strong> lasciviousness. Fiis argument<br />
uses charges <strong>of</strong> hypocrisy to evoke the very desiring woman whose portrayal within<br />
the novel had been targeted by moralizing attacks. He first seems to agree with the<br />
'mesdisans' who claim that the love episodes in the novel could be considered 'un peu<br />
gayes et lascives.' However, this is only to be expected in a recreational work; and he<br />
reels <strong>of</strong>f a list <strong>of</strong> authorities who recommend recreational reading to balance more<br />
serious activity, especially for princes and other elites who require such relaxation<br />
from their efforts in civil and military domains. The 'scrupuleux et facheux', who deny<br />
the usefulness <strong>of</strong> recreation, should just not read the novel - or else get someone to<br />
mark the chapters that might contain objectionable things so they can avoid them. He<br />
closes with a scornful comment about hypocrites who read romances but pretend not<br />
to, using them as primers for relationships with their lovers while condemning their<br />
lasciviousness:<br />
sans y epargner les damoiselles qui ont confesse a leurs amans, que le soir que leur<br />
maistresse commandoit de estaindre les lumieres, elles les avoient leuz a la lueur des<br />
tisons, lesquelles neantmoins a d'autres gentilshommes qui louoient les Amadis les<br />
disoient estre trop dissolus: 6 les sucrees 6 les tendrettes, pour ainsi deguiser sous<br />
le masque de gravite ou Gel de severite, le doux miel qu'elles y avoient savoure des<br />
amoureux delices.''<br />
This blast at female readers and their dissimulation comes to seem disingenuous, for it<br />
is precisely this aspect <strong>of</strong> response that is underlined by his depiction within the novel<br />
<strong>of</strong> how noblewomen should handle encounters with sexually suggestive material. And<br />
Gohory's preface evokes another central quality <strong>of</strong> the obscene dynamic, in which<br />
charges <strong>of</strong> sexual immorality - whether pr<strong>of</strong>fered by others, or ostensibly refuted -<br />
serve to articulate the obscene and thus contribute to its proliferation. Reading<br />
Gohory's preface alongside the musical episode that closes the novel suggests that the<br />
spectre <strong>of</strong> condemnation, like the figure <strong>of</strong> the hypocritical woman reader, is here<br />
deliberately evoked both to heighten the transgressive effect and to defuse it by seeking<br />
14 Michel Simonin, 'La disgrace d'Amadis', Studi Francesi, 18 (1984), 16-19.<br />
15 Jacques Gohory, Le Trezieme livre dAmadis de Gaule (Paris: Breyer, 1571), 'Preface aux<br />
lecteurs' (unfoliated).
zoo<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
readerly complicity. Gohory uses the putative shocked reaction <strong>of</strong> prudish 'scrupuleux'<br />
and the vyanton lust <strong>of</strong> the 'sucrees' both to titillate and to invoke a sophisticated audience<br />
who are, in contrast, capable <strong>of</strong> enjoying erotic material as recreation in a civilized,<br />
courtly and indeed almost morally superior manner.<br />
Le Trezieme livre d'Amadis ends with an episode in which nine courageous knights<br />
who have endured several volumes' worth <strong>of</strong> adventures in pursuit <strong>of</strong> their ladies are<br />
finally married to their beloveds. Gohory's description <strong>of</strong> the wedding features both<br />
formal and informal entertainments, and includes song texts for several musical<br />
components. It begins with a song performed by imperial musicians, set as a pavan<br />
(the musical idiom most <strong>of</strong>ten used for processionals); the text Gohory supplies is<br />
a classicizing epithalamium complete with the Latinate refrain 'Hymen Hymen 0<br />
Hymen' addressing the god <strong>of</strong> marriage (fol. 330'). After the wedding Mass, the newlyweds<br />
return to the palace for a banquet accompanied by music from the 'menestriers<br />
de la grande bande' followed by dancing until suppertime; supper is followed by a<br />
staged marine battle complete with Tritons and monsters, and a Pyrrhic dance by the<br />
nine knights in regional costume. Until this point, Gohory's narrative - including his<br />
elaborate descriptions <strong>of</strong> the participants' sumptuous dress - corresponds closely to<br />
published accounts <strong>of</strong> court festivals.The company then breaks into conversational<br />
groups spread around the room, and are entertained by three performers who between<br />
them articulate a whole catalogue <strong>of</strong> difference from the noblemen they serve: Darinel,<br />
a shepherd; Busend, a dwarf jester; and an unnamed African female dancer. The<br />
song texts each one performs are included, identified as the work <strong>of</strong> 'Suave', Gohory's<br />
pseudonym and the name <strong>of</strong> a tutor character in the novel who functions as his<br />
alter ego.^^<br />
Gohory signals the less formal performance register by emphasizing how Darinel<br />
and Busend decide to 'donner plaisir a la compagnie tel qui leur sembla que la<br />
matiere des nopces meritoit': that is, the performance is unscripted in the celebratory<br />
choreography, but the content is inspired by the occasion and its meanings, 'c'est a<br />
savoir a chanter de la beaute de I'amour'. That 'amour' in its corporeal dimension is the<br />
'matiere des nopces' becomes clear from the song texts. Darinel's Chanson de la Beaute<br />
was written by Suave in honour <strong>of</strong> Pentasilee, the beloved <strong>of</strong> his young charge Sylves de<br />
la Selve. It is a complex blason that schematically dissects the princess's body into 'trente<br />
16 On Pyrrhic dance, included in court pageantry from the 1540s, see Kate van Orden, Music,<br />
Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Chicago Press, 1005),<br />
pp. zi8-ii. Marine spectacles figured in court festivals at Fontainebleau (1564) and Bayonne<br />
(1565); see Frances A. Yates, The Valois Tapestries (London: The Warburg Institute, 1959;<br />
repr., London: Routiedge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 56-57.<br />
17 On Gohory's use <strong>of</strong> the pseudonym, see Willis Herbert Bowen, 'Jacques Gohory (1510-1576)'<br />
(unpublished doctoral thesis. Harvard <strong>University</strong>, 1935); Rosanna Gorris, 'Pour une lecture<br />
steganographique des Amadis de Jacques Gohory,' in Les Amadis en France au XVI' Steele,<br />
pp. 117-56.
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY<br />
loi<br />
beautez', ten groups <strong>of</strong> three elements sharing the same attribute (fol. 3340- The praise in<br />
several <strong>of</strong> the triplets tacks between the visible and the concealed, as in lines 4 ('Sourcils<br />
noir, noire chose et les yeux'), 10 ('La chose estroitte et bouche et le corsage') and 11<br />
('Levre grossette et la fesse et cuissage'); only the mouth and 'la chose' are mentioned<br />
twice, focusing attention on these two orifices. Busend then strikes up his own Chanson<br />
de I'Amour, whose text is 'extrait d'un vieil Romain' (fol. 335"). This little story <strong>of</strong> how<br />
the penis lost his ears continues the theme <strong>of</strong> bodily fragmentation, personifying the<br />
male member and describing how he jumps up on contact with a woman's breasts when<br />
he thinks he will regain ears stolen long ago to form female nipples. In its poetic form<br />
as well as the unfurling <strong>of</strong> the narrative, complete with salacious punchline and quoted<br />
speech, it strongly resembles the kind <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive narrative song that<br />
regularly circulated in contemporary printed songbooks. Here, however, the line 'taken<br />
from an old Roman' alerts the reader <strong>of</strong> a classical context. Busend's song aims to evoke<br />
the Latin genres <strong>of</strong>fescennini, bawdy wedding songs, and Priapea, humorous phallic<br />
pieces. According to Aristotle, the genre <strong>of</strong> comedy began with phallic songs used to<br />
accompany processions; this, along with Augustine's description <strong>of</strong> a bride sitting on<br />
the phallus <strong>of</strong> the god Mutunu Tutunus, provided textual authority for the notion that<br />
both verbal and physical representations <strong>of</strong> the phallus regularly figured in classical<br />
wedding ceremonies.'®<br />
The final song is performed by a 'Negre de Sabee, Baladine fort plaisante' who<br />
sings and dances 'le cantique de I'antique Roine de sa region en son langage' (fol. 336').<br />
Gohory supplies the translation into French by 'Suave' <strong>of</strong> the Queen <strong>of</strong> Sheba's song, as<br />
well as a response for King Solomon. Presented as a set <strong>of</strong> quatrains, the dialogue is a<br />
free rendition <strong>of</strong> passages from the lyrico-erotic Song <strong>of</strong> Songs, describing the bride's<br />
desire for her husband, his welcome <strong>of</strong> her to the marriage bed and his enumeration<br />
<strong>of</strong> the extraordinary beauty and erotic effects <strong>of</strong> her various body parts. The evocation<br />
<strong>of</strong> feminine and then masculine desire echoes the dialogue between female and<br />
male primary obscenities traced by the previous pair <strong>of</strong> songs, while returning to the<br />
marriage topos <strong>of</strong> the opening epithalamium. This Biblical reworking <strong>of</strong> earlier themes<br />
associates them not only with Christian marriage, but the standard contemporary<br />
exegesis <strong>of</strong> the Song <strong>of</strong> Songs also links them to the marriage <strong>of</strong> Christ and the Church;<br />
such a symbolic project fits with Gohory's broadly Neoplatonic approach to eroticism,<br />
which seeks to integrate erotic and spiritual meanings within a humanistic Christian<br />
framework.''<br />
Gohory's description <strong>of</strong> the courtly audience's response to each performance<br />
operates careful distinctions between listeners. The reception embraces intellectual<br />
18 Aristotle, Poetics, i449aii; Augustine, City <strong>of</strong> God, 6.9, 7.24. My thanks to Patricia Simons<br />
for these references, and for drawing the classical context to my attention; thanks also to<br />
Le<strong>of</strong>ranc Holford-Strevens for further discussion <strong>of</strong> classical fescennini.<br />
19 Further on how this approach informs Gohory's treatment <strong>of</strong> music, see Jeanice Brooks,<br />
'Music as Erotic Magic in a Renaissance Romance', Renaissance Quarterly, 60 (2007), 1207-56.
zoi<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
reactions - the blason is admired by poetry connoisseurs in the audience for its<br />
structural complexity as well as its content but it is more strongly marked by corporeal<br />
response. The blason, for example, makes Pentasilee blush, for its causes other audience<br />
members, especially the young men, to stare at her from head to foot, mapping the<br />
song onto her own body as each part is enumerated. The penis song generates both<br />
ribald laughter and a gut reaction in female listeners, who are 'chatouillees en la ratte'<br />
('tickled in the viscera'). Busend first sings this piece in a corner for a small group <strong>of</strong><br />
young women, but at the initial sounds others, including higher-ranking and<br />
dames, move from elsewhere in the room to hear it. Arriving after the song but not after<br />
the laughter it has sparked, the recent arrivals insist on a repeat; and the point that the<br />
performer is not only singing about bodies, but using his own to produce the sound,<br />
seems to be emphasized when Busend s master threatens to literally beat the song out <strong>of</strong><br />
him unless he performs it again for the wider audience.<br />
Gohory's description underlines the degree to which noble women must dissimulate<br />
to live up to courtly expectations. Pentasilee must hide her discomfiture with a graceful<br />
blush when the others stare at her so intently that she is 'en danger, si elle n'eust este<br />
trop bien apprinse, de perdre contenance'. Erotically stimulated women must pretend<br />
to be unperturbed, although both those who laugh and those who adopt the 'masque<br />
de gravite' are equally titillated by the phallic song (note, too the return <strong>of</strong> the mask<br />
image from Gohory's preface). The description conforms closely to the well-known<br />
recommendations <strong>of</strong> Castiglione's Magnifico, who in describing the court lady says that<br />
when confronted with lascivious talk she should not withdraw in a huff; at the same<br />
time, her own speech must be decent and she must not demonstrate too much sexual<br />
knowledge.^" The connection to dissimulation as a quintessentially courtly art seems clear,<br />
but Gohory's text also points to the importance <strong>of</strong> female response as an exciting erotic<br />
element and/or a defining attribute <strong>of</strong> obscenity, as Patricia Simons's work on visual<br />
culture suggests above. Further in keeping with the courtly concepts <strong>of</strong> theatricality and<br />
interiority, overlaps and contrasts between public and private behaviours and thoughts<br />
are continually evoked: the anatomical songs make the newly-wedded men anticipate<br />
later, private 'anatomie[s] de beaute' <strong>of</strong> their ladies; the scene closes as lovers retreat into<br />
their 'soulas prive' after the imaginative rehearsal provided by the 'deduits publiques.'<br />
After the blason, Pentasilee's would-be lover Sylves is 'transi' in a swoon-like interruption<br />
<strong>of</strong> physical mobility, frustrated at his own restriction to a purely imaginary view <strong>of</strong><br />
the female anatomy, unlike the newly-weds. Gohory's manipulation <strong>of</strong> public/private<br />
images contributes to a blurring <strong>of</strong> boundaries between representation within the song<br />
performances and actions outside <strong>of</strong> them, boundaries that the juxtaposition <strong>of</strong> the song<br />
texts with the description <strong>of</strong> listeners' embodied reception has already muddled.^'<br />
10 Baldesar Castiglione, The Book <strong>of</strong> the Courtier, ed. by Daniel Javitch, trans, by Charles S.<br />
Singleton (New York: W. W, Norton, xooi),<br />
11 Compare this to Erasmus's account <strong>of</strong> how flaunting female beauty at weddings makes<br />
young women available for imaginary couplings whose effects on their chastity are hardly
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY 203<br />
The fluctuating nature <strong>of</strong> another kind <strong>of</strong> boundary - between permissible and<br />
forbidden expression - is explicitly addressed when the narrative voice pauses to remark<br />
that marriage festivities justify trespass against the usual rules <strong>of</strong> decency: 'chacun a<br />
I'occasion de nopces s'adonnant volontiers a toute resjouissance, voire aucunement<br />
excusable si elle passoit le moins du monde les bornes de la modestie en tels lieux<br />
acoustumee' (fol. 335'). That is, the 'occasion des nopces' leads to the 'matiere des<br />
nopces': the wedding functions as licence in both senses <strong>of</strong> the word, granting authority<br />
for sexually charged images and behaviour that would be considered immodest in<br />
other circumstances. The focus on fertility and reproduction the wedding requires<br />
is presented as legitimizing bodily celebration; but the attempt at justification, as in<br />
Gohory's preface, has the opposite effect. This excuse for immodesty, which precedes<br />
the account <strong>of</strong> Busend's initial reluctance to repeat his phallic song, provides a strong<br />
build-up to the song itself and underlines the potential for opprobrium even if<br />
unrealized within the text. Licentiousness is carefully prepared as such, and borders<br />
are evoked only so that they may be flouted. However, a Bakhtinian 'world-upsidedown'<br />
reading <strong>of</strong> the wedding seems unwarranted, since the crossing <strong>of</strong> the 'bornes<br />
de la modestie' here reinforces in obvious ways the structure <strong>of</strong> court social relations.<br />
Servants, rustics, women and elite men all act in ways consistent with their access to<br />
power outside the festive context. In anthropological terms, the event is an example<br />
<strong>of</strong> cultural remission - involving the relaxation <strong>of</strong> normal codes <strong>of</strong> behaviour - rather<br />
than inversion; no reversal happens in this collective engagement in festive licence, and<br />
the event does not act as release for social inferiors (whether that release is considered<br />
a force for change, or one reinforcing extra-festive structures <strong>of</strong> oppression). The event<br />
Gohory imagines differs sharply in this regard from charivaris, carnival festivities and<br />
other disorderly rites <strong>of</strong> inversion that have drawn the attention <strong>of</strong> literary scholars.<br />
Gohory's highly literary wedding scene, with its virtuoso rewriting <strong>of</strong> the erotic<br />
marriage in multiple registers and its weaving <strong>of</strong> classical, biblical and contemporary<br />
models with self-commentary, is <strong>of</strong> course not a straightforward description <strong>of</strong><br />
court practice. And while he evokes his characters' responses to songs, the Trezieme<br />
livre provides only their texts, without describing musical elements that may have<br />
characterized their settings. Strong connections with music at court are suggested,<br />
however, by intriguing overlaps between this episode and contemporary songbooks.<br />
Most revealing is comparison with the Musique <strong>of</strong> the royal keyboard player Guillaume<br />
Costeley, which appeared in print a year before the novel. Both books carry dedications<br />
less real than actual sexual activity: 'It is humiliating, not honourable, for a blushing<br />
young virgin [... ] to be exposed to the lustful eyes <strong>of</strong> the young men [...] A virgin has lost<br />
something <strong>of</strong> her chastity if she has delighted so many eyes, has awoken desire, has been<br />
pursued by lustful cries and perhaps appeared by night in someone's dreams and suffered<br />
defilement, so to speak, as the plaything <strong>of</strong> a phantom.' Institution, p. 350.<br />
For a review <strong>of</strong> various approaches to such events, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and<br />
Culture in Early Modern France, rev. edn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), pp. 101-03.
104 JEANICE BROOKS<br />
to Catherine de Clermont, and Costeley's volume features a prefatory poem by Gohory<br />
himself, the earliest <strong>of</strong> a series <strong>of</strong> poems and prefaces Gohory contributed to Le Roy<br />
& Ballard music prints between 1570 and 1373.^' Costeley's book also contains at least<br />
one setting <strong>of</strong> a poem by Gohory, 0 comhien est heureux celuy qui se contente, which<br />
had figured as a song in Gohory's Onzieme livre d'Amadis de Gaule (1551). Two other<br />
pieces are notable for their resonance with the Trezieme livre: Muses chantez le loz de<br />
la Princesse, which appears to be a formal wedding song along the lines <strong>of</strong> Gohory's<br />
epithalamium, and Que de baisers de sa bouche, a different French translation <strong>of</strong><br />
the same passage from the Song <strong>of</strong> Songs that Gohory used as the basis for his own<br />
rendition. In the rest <strong>of</strong> Costeley's volume, settings <strong>of</strong> high-register Neoplatonic and<br />
Neopetrarchan love texts by Ronsard and other court poets mingle with occasional<br />
pieces (celebrating military victories, praying for the king's recovery from fever, and<br />
so on), alongside a healthy dose <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive songs <strong>of</strong> varying types.<br />
Among these are Elle craint I'esperon, humorous advice on how to handle a sexually<br />
inexperienced but willing woman that might have seemed particularly apt as a wedding<br />
joke, and many pieces about sexual encounters involving rustic or pastoral characters<br />
such as Robin, Colin, and Guillot, whose function as either topic or narrator echos that<br />
<strong>of</strong> Darinel in Gohory's novel.^"^<br />
Costeley's book was published the same year as the real wedding between Charles<br />
IX and Elisabeth d'Autriche, and the publication <strong>of</strong> Gohory's novel coincided with the<br />
entry <strong>of</strong> the royal spouses into Paris the following year. Hope for the rapid appearance<br />
<strong>of</strong> progeny to continue the Valois line during a time <strong>of</strong> politico-religious instability<br />
no doubt encouraged even more than usual the imagery <strong>of</strong> fecundity and abundance<br />
that was already such a strong component <strong>of</strong> courtly representational strategy, and<br />
celebration <strong>of</strong> the wedding may well have involved informal performance <strong>of</strong> sexually<br />
explicit chansons in circumstances similar to those Gohory describes in Amadis. The<br />
novel's connection with music by a favoured chamber music performer seemingly<br />
personally known to Gohory lends weight to the notion that musical elements in the<br />
Trezieme livre % idealized festivities contain some residue <strong>of</strong> contemporary performance<br />
practice. At the least, they suggest that analysis <strong>of</strong> compositional techniques, and<br />
13 On Catherine, Gohory and Adrian Le Roy, see Jeanice Brooks, 'Chivalric Romance, Courtly<br />
Love and Courtly Song: Female Vocalicy and Feminine Desire in the World <strong>of</strong> Amadis de<br />
Gaule\ in Musical Voices <strong>of</strong> Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies, ed. by Thomasin<br />
LaMay (Aldershot: Ashgace, 2.005), PP- 68-71. A list <strong>of</strong> Gohory's prefaces figuresin Brooks,<br />
'Music as Erotic Magic', p. 1251, Cosceley's Musique (Paris; Le Roy & Ballard, 1570) is edited as<br />
three fascicles, Les Maitres musiciens de la Renaissancefranfaise ed. by Henry Expert (Paris:<br />
Leduc, 1894-1908; repr., New York: Broude, n.d.); pieces suppressed by Expert, including the<br />
intensely scatological Grossegarce noire et tendre, are edited as vol. 8 <strong>of</strong> The Sixteenth-Century<br />
Chanson, ed. by Jane Bernstein, 30 vols (New York: Garland, 1987-95).<br />
14 Among the most amusing is Le jeu, le riz, le printemps, on the sexual prowess <strong>of</strong> 'Colin',<br />
whose ability is likened to that <strong>of</strong> a good keyboard player; the joke would have been<br />
especially appreciated by those who heard Costeley perform it himself.
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY 105<br />
speculation about performance elements that may have contributed to the corporeal<br />
responses Gohory imagined, might usefully start with Costeley.<br />
For the purposes <strong>of</strong> this book, however, it is more important to note how both<br />
Costeley's Musique and Gohory's Amadis enter the print market as court products,<br />
and what this means to emerging notions <strong>of</strong> obscenity. Whatever their relation to<br />
originating context may have been, both volumes appeared in the new context <strong>of</strong> print<br />
culture as representations <strong>of</strong> courtly performances. By 1571, the tradition <strong>of</strong> reading<br />
the Amadis romances as a mirror <strong>of</strong> court practice was well established; Gohory's<br />
dedication <strong>of</strong> the book to a leading court noblewoman and his claim that he wrote the<br />
book at her request merely confirms an existing link. Costeley's self-identification as<br />
'organiste ordinaire et vallet de chambre du treschrestien et tresinvincible roy de France<br />
Charles IX' in the title <strong>of</strong> his book; his dedicatory poems to the king and the Comte<br />
and Comtesse de Retz; his engraved portrait in fashionable courtly dress; the liminary<br />
poetry to Costeley by court poets such as Remy Belleau and Jean-Antoine de Baif; and<br />
the royal privilege and visual symbols <strong>of</strong> monarchy stamped on the book by the royal<br />
printers, all combine to overdetermine the courtly origins <strong>of</strong> his Musique.<br />
Costeley's book appears as representation <strong>of</strong> his own performances for the courtly<br />
patrons he serves, however ventriloquized through the rustic voices some <strong>of</strong> his songs<br />
adopt. In the Trezieme livre, though 'Suave' is the author <strong>of</strong> their song texts, Gohory's<br />
performers are low-status men and a black woman, and they play musette, cittern and<br />
percussion, not the lutes and harps that accompany the Petrarchan love-complaints <strong>of</strong><br />
aristocratic singers earlier in the narrative. While these differences and the location<br />
<strong>of</strong> the performers' voices in the bodies <strong>of</strong> a rustic, a disabled fool and an exoticized<br />
foreigner appear to distinguish them sharply from their noble listeners, the somatic<br />
response <strong>of</strong> the audience to their songs in turn breaks these distinctions down. Gohory<br />
insists on this mimetic reaction to sexual imagery both in terms <strong>of</strong> erotic stimulation<br />
during the span <strong>of</strong> the performance, and re-enactment <strong>of</strong> the song content afterwards.<br />
The wedding episode thus not only involves bending the 'rules <strong>of</strong> modesty', it also seems<br />
to underline basic impulses that join the different social strata. While at a textual level<br />
rustic or exoticizing topoi allow for the handling <strong>of</strong> sexual narratives at one remove<br />
from courtiers themselves, their performance here brings courtly bodies into alignment<br />
with other bodies, underlining their connection through physical experiences <strong>of</strong><br />
sexuality as well as communal ideological concepts such as investment in fertility.<br />
Emphasis on such somatic circuits through musical performance is not unique<br />
to the sixteenth century (or to Western music), as studies on contemporary popular<br />
music, for example, have amply demonstrated.^' What is significant in relation to<br />
sixteenth-century French culture is the way that courtly products such as Gohory's<br />
2-S For an especially valuable discussion <strong>of</strong> these issues see Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On<br />
the Value <strong>of</strong> Popular Music (Cambridge: Harvard <strong>University</strong> Press, 1996), pp. 12.3-44 and<br />
Z03-25.
io6<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
novel or Costeley's songbook reinforce Erasmus's mapping <strong>of</strong> this performance<br />
ideology onto elite culture. In relation to the emerging notion <strong>of</strong> obscenity, this<br />
becomes intensely problematic despite (or even because <strong>of</strong>) attempts to dislocate<br />
bodily response by attributing it to non-elites, or to defuse it through humour or<br />
other attempts to establish audience complicity. Torn from any licensing structure<br />
that may have characterized the real performance <strong>of</strong> sexually transgressive songs at<br />
court and launched into new contexts determined by print, such volumes fostered a<br />
connection between sophistication and sleaze that allowed obscenity to be conceived<br />
in anti-aulic terms, a problem that only intensified when charges <strong>of</strong> obscenity become<br />
a weapon <strong>of</strong> confessional dispute during the religious wars. This failure successfully to<br />
control readings <strong>of</strong> sexual imagery, once print had begun to disseminate accounts <strong>of</strong><br />
court practice far beyond the court's own confines, may have served to motivate some<br />
<strong>of</strong> the reorientations <strong>of</strong> French court culture in the early seventeenth century. When<br />
the royal court began slowly to reformulate, after the paroxysms <strong>of</strong> the 1580s and<br />
1590S, the concept <strong>of</strong> honnetete began to play a newly central role. The courtly artistic<br />
production <strong>of</strong> the previous century was regularly characterized as crude by seventeenthcentury<br />
actors; and though much sexually explicit material continued to be produced,<br />
it was <strong>of</strong>ten segregated into new kinds <strong>of</strong> publication such as the receuils satyriques<br />
discussed by Guillaume Peureux. Sexually transgressive songs largely disappeared from<br />
the volumes <strong>of</strong> secular vocal music so tellingly labelled airs de cour, and while court<br />
composers continued to exploit pastoral imagery in their songs, the highly sexualized<br />
rustic and more explicit corporeality <strong>of</strong> earlier music prints all but vanished. Within<br />
the <strong>of</strong>ficially sanctioned representional arena represented by the royal music printer,<br />
that is, courtly bodies begin to sing in new and different ways.<br />
Jeanice Brooks, <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Southampton</strong>
TABLE DES MATIERES /<br />
TABLE OF CONTENTS<br />
Acknowledgements 7<br />
Preface 9<br />
MICHEL JEANNERET<br />
Introduction 15<br />
GUILLAUME PEUREUX, HUGH ROBERTS, LISE WAJEMAN<br />
Avertissement 14<br />
I. LE MOT ET LA CHOSE<br />
Introduction 27<br />
EMILY BUTTERWORTH<br />
I. Defining Obscenity 31<br />
EMILY BUTTERWORTH<br />
z. From Latin to French<br />
Z.I Ovidian Obscenity in Renaissance France 39<br />
WILLIAM McKENZIE<br />
2.2 Obscenity and the /ex Catulliana:<br />
Uses and Abuses <strong>of</strong> Catullus 16 in French Renaissance Poetry 48<br />
PHILIP FORD<br />
3. Preliminaires a I'obscene : le Moyen Age « gaulois » 63<br />
NELLY LABERE. HELEN SWIFT<br />
4. From Word to Thing<br />
4.1 'L'Obscene' in French Renaissance Texts 87<br />
EMILY BUTTERWORTH, HUGH ROBERTS<br />
4.2 Emblem Books • 93<br />
HUGH ROBERTS<br />
4.3 Erasmus 100<br />
HUGH ROBERTS
492- TABLE DBS MATIERES<br />
11. L'OBSCENITE COMME JEU DE FRONTIERES<br />
Introduction 109<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
Gender, Sight and Scandal in Renaissance France 115<br />
PATRICIA SIMONS<br />
« La terre encor aux ongles demouroit » : definir I'obscene<br />
dans le champ visuel 129<br />
REBECCA ZORARCH<br />
Archeologie dun gros plan : semiologie du sexe imprime<br />
AznsXcs Blasons anatomiques du corpsfeminin 163<br />
C£CILE ALDUY<br />
Singing the Courtly Body: The Chanson lascive and the<br />
Performance <strong>of</strong> Obscenity 193<br />
JEANICE BROOKS<br />
III. LOBSCENE COMIQUE<br />
Introduction 109<br />
JOSEPH HARRIS<br />
La revoke du Membre : epopee organique et dissidence stylistique<br />
dans la litterature medicale renaissante<br />
DOMINIQUE BRANCHER<br />
Obscene Laughter and Renaissance Comedy 237<br />
JOSEPH HARRIS<br />
L'euphemisme comique et les limites de I'obscenite au debut du XVIP siecle 247<br />
HUGH ROBERTS<br />
Uncivil Conversation: Etienne Tabourot's£icri2i^««
TABLE DBS MATIERES 493<br />
Le sexe du diable : I'obscenite dans les textes demonologiques 319<br />
MARIANNE CLOSSON<br />
Construction de I'obscenite dans les narrations facetieuses :<br />
d'une scene al'autre 335<br />
MICHELE CLfiMENT<br />
Le scandale de Rabelais: une Renaissance contre-nature 349<br />
PETER FREI<br />
V. POLITIQUE DE L'OBSCENE<br />
Introduction 365<br />
LISE WAJEMAN. GUILLAUME PEUREUX<br />
Censured and Censored: Reactions to Obscenity 367<br />
EMMA HERDMAN<br />
Six questions sur la notion d'obscenite dans la critique rabelaisienne . . . 379<br />
ARIANE BAYLE<br />
Usages Chretiens de I'obscenite 393<br />
LISE WAJEMAN<br />
L'obscenite satyrique (1615-1612) 409<br />
GUILLAUME PEUREUX<br />
The Destruction and Re-Creation <strong>of</strong> Obscenity in<br />
Seventeenth-Century Pornographic Prints 413<br />
RUSSELL GANIM<br />
Conclusion 441<br />
LISE WAJEMAN. GUILLAUME PEUREUX. HUGH ROBERTS<br />
Bibliographic generate 445<br />
Index 475<br />
Table des illustrations 487<br />
Table des matieres 491