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zoo JEANICE BROOKS readerly complicity. Gohory uses the putative shocked reaction of prudish 'scrupuleux' and the vyanton lust of the 'sucrees' both to titillate and to invoke a sophisticated audience who are, in contrast, capable of enjoying erotic material as recreation in a civilized, courtly and indeed almost morally superior manner. Le Trezieme livre d'Amadis ends with an episode in which nine courageous knights who have endured several volumes' worth of adventures in pursuit of their ladies are finally married to their beloveds. Gohory's description of the wedding features both formal and informal entertainments, and includes song texts for several musical components. It begins with a song performed by imperial musicians, set as a pavan (the musical idiom most often used for processionals); the text Gohory supplies is a classicizing epithalamium complete with the Latinate refrain 'Hymen Hymen 0 Hymen' addressing the god of marriage (fol. 330'). After the wedding Mass, the newlyweds return to the palace for a banquet accompanied by music from the 'menestriers de la grande bande' followed by dancing until suppertime; supper is followed by a staged marine battle complete with Tritons and monsters, and a Pyrrhic dance by the nine knights in regional costume. Until this point, Gohory's narrative - including his elaborate descriptions of the participants' sumptuous dress - corresponds closely to published accounts of court festivals.The company then breaks into conversational groups spread around the room, and are entertained by three performers who between them articulate a whole catalogue of difference from the noblemen they serve: Darinel, a shepherd; Busend, a dwarf jester; and an unnamed African female dancer. The song texts each one performs are included, identified as the work of 'Suave', Gohory's pseudonym and the name of a tutor character in the novel who functions as his alter ego.^^ Gohory signals the less formal performance register by emphasizing how Darinel and Busend decide to 'donner plaisir a la compagnie tel qui leur sembla que la matiere des nopces meritoit': that is, the performance is unscripted in the celebratory choreography, but the content is inspired by the occasion and its meanings, 'c'est a savoir a chanter de la beaute de I'amour'. That 'amour' in its corporeal dimension is the 'matiere des nopces' becomes clear from the song texts. Darinel's Chanson de la Beaute was written by Suave in honour of Pentasilee, the beloved of his young charge Sylves de la Selve. It is a complex blason that schematically dissects the princess's body into 'trente 16 On Pyrrhic dance, included in court pageantry from the 1540s, see Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1005), pp. zi8-ii. Marine spectacles figured in court festivals at Fontainebleau (1564) and Bayonne (1565); see Frances A. Yates, The Valois Tapestries (London: The Warburg Institute, 1959; repr., London: Routiedge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 56-57. 17 On Gohory's use of the pseudonym, see Willis Herbert Bowen, 'Jacques Gohory (1510-1576)' (unpublished doctoral thesis. Harvard University, 1935); Rosanna Gorris, 'Pour une lecture steganographique des Amadis de Jacques Gohory,' in Les Amadis en France au XVI' Steele, pp. 117-56.
SINGING THE COURTLY BODY loi beautez', ten groups of three elements sharing the same attribute (fol. 3340- The praise in several of the triplets tacks between the visible and the concealed, as in lines 4 ('Sourcils noir, noire chose et les yeux'), 10 ('La chose estroitte et bouche et le corsage') and 11 ('Levre grossette et la fesse et cuissage'); only the mouth and 'la chose' are mentioned twice, focusing attention on these two orifices. Busend then strikes up his own Chanson de I'Amour, whose text is 'extrait d'un vieil Romain' (fol. 335"). This little story of how the penis lost his ears continues the theme of bodily fragmentation, personifying the male member and describing how he jumps up on contact with a woman's breasts when he thinks he will regain ears stolen long ago to form female nipples. In its poetic form as well as the unfurling of the narrative, complete with salacious punchline and quoted speech, it strongly resembles the kind of sexually transgressive narrative song that regularly circulated in contemporary printed songbooks. Here, however, the line 'taken from an old Roman' alerts the reader of a classical context. Busend's song aims to evoke the Latin genres offescennini, bawdy wedding songs, and Priapea, humorous phallic pieces. According to Aristotle, the genre of comedy began with phallic songs used to accompany processions; this, along with Augustine's description of a bride sitting on the phallus of the god Mutunu Tutunus, provided textual authority for the notion that both verbal and physical representations of the phallus regularly figured in classical wedding ceremonies.'® The final song is performed by a 'Negre de Sabee, Baladine fort plaisante' who sings and dances 'le cantique de I'antique Roine de sa region en son langage' (fol. 336'). Gohory supplies the translation into French by 'Suave' of the Queen of Sheba's song, as well as a response for King Solomon. Presented as a set of quatrains, the dialogue is a free rendition of passages from the lyrico-erotic Song of Songs, describing the bride's desire for her husband, his welcome of her to the marriage bed and his enumeration of the extraordinary beauty and erotic effects of her various body parts. The evocation of feminine and then masculine desire echoes the dialogue between female and male primary obscenities traced by the previous pair of songs, while returning to the marriage topos of the opening epithalamium. This Biblical reworking of earlier themes associates them not only with Christian marriage, but the standard contemporary exegesis of the Song of Songs also links them to the marriage of Christ and the Church; such a symbolic project fits with Gohory's broadly Neoplatonic approach to eroticism, which seeks to integrate erotic and spiritual meanings within a humanistic Christian framework.'' Gohory's description of the courtly audience's response to each performance operates careful distinctions between listeners. The reception embraces intellectual 18 Aristotle, Poetics, i449aii; Augustine, City of God, 6.9, 7.24. My thanks to Patricia Simons for these references, and for drawing the classical context to my attention; thanks also to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for further discussion of classical fescennini. 19 Further on how this approach informs Gohory's treatment of music, see Jeanice Brooks, 'Music as Erotic Magic in a Renaissance Romance', Renaissance Quarterly, 60 (2007), 1207-56.
Page 1 and 2: OBSCENITES RENAISSANTES Sous la dir
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Page 25: TABLE DBS MATIERES 493 Le sexe du d

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