obscenites renaissantes - ePrints Soton - University of Southampton

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JEANICE BROOKS
literally stop up their ears, avert their eyes and shut their mouths against lascivious
words, sounds and sights; like Livia's ostentatious non-reaction, these efforts to close
ofF bodily orifices to prevent penetration from the outside might be read as attempts at
short-circuiting the action of sights and sounds on the body to deny the obscene its very
existence as such.
Differences of rank as well as gender play an important role in defining boundaries.
As Simons points out, shock must be elicited from elite, 'honest' women, not courtesans
or low-class individuals. The imputation of sexual knowledge and unshockability
characteristic of the courtesan onto a high-status woman could thus function as an
act of aggression (as in the story of Cellini and Madame d'Estampes), and women
themselves had a stake in the performance of shock, at least in public. Gauging women's
reactions through sexually explicit imagery, as when a phallic chanson is sung for a
princess (Brooks) or a goblet with indecent images is given to a series of court ladies
(Simons), not only explored the nature of the obscene, but also tested the quality of
the woman.
Dissimulation of inappropriate emotions and reactions was a sign of the successful
courtier, and had a role in defining rank in male courtiers as well. As we are largely
concerned here with poems, art and music of courtly origin, the interrogation of these
dynamics becomes an important concern. The ability to package oneself - to render
one's performances beautiful - was prized, and included the skill of cloaking indecency
so as to render it acceptable. Disgust at this aspect of courtly aesthetics, the use of high
style to describe low things, lies behind some of the most stringent critiques, such as
Corrozet's condemnation of the blasonneurs (Alduy). When printed engravings and
songbooks began to disseminate images and music, that had previously been restricted
to courtly audiences, to new publics, they rendered the court newly vulnerable to the
accusations of dissipation and decadence that had characterized anti-aulic attacks since
the classical period. Joan Dejean has emphasized how print made material previously
restricted in circulation to elite men available to women and girls, whose ostensible
need for protection was a strong motivation for the emergence of the legal category of
obscenity. But since women already had access to potentially obscene material at court -
and indeed were essential to the courtly use of sexually transgressive images - the effect
of print may have been equally powerful in ripping things out of courtly performative
frameworks and making them available in new contexts, a shift that forces their
evaluation away from situational judgment and into the realm of categorical verdict.
Print thus encourages interpretations based on some concept of obscene content, a
problem that can lead to the blurring of a further boundary, that of time. As Zorach
points out, modern readings of sexually explicit material, particularly in the visual
domain, are often based on notions of a transcendent rather than historically specific
corporeality. Thus we believe we can differentiate the erotic from the obscene according
to our own preconceptions and readings of style; this may lead, for example, to the
aestheticization of court culture through art history (so that if something is judged
as art it cannot be obscene), or to efforts to use notions of civility to connect songs of