obscenites renaissantes - ePrints Soton - University of Southampton

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.