Thank you David.  And there might be something to say about the contrasting degreees of "full nakedness" and "all joys" to "going naked" and "more enterprise."

For Charlie, I have always thought that Wyatt's 'loose gown" was neo-classical,m as in Amores 1.5, when Corinna enters the speakers bedrom "tunica velata recincta," or in Amores 3.7, when, after an unsatisfying evening, the lady departs wrappping here loose gown about her and on named feet:  nec mora, desiluit tunica velata soluta--/et decuit proripuisse pedes."


-----Original Message-----
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List on behalf of David L. Miller
Sent: Tue 12/5/2006 9:53 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sleeping attire {SpamScore: sss}
 
So for Boccaccio, there's more enterprise in going in your knickers?  Just doesn't have the same Yeatsian ring, does it?

>>> [log in to unmask] 12/4/2006 11:40 PM >>>
I believe that there's a body of argument for sleeping naked as a practice changing with larger looms, availability and fashion for other linens like sheets, and the introduction of luxury undergarments.  Benedict and other monastic rule-maker specify that the religious should sleep in garments.  Are mightclohtes ever called other than by the same terms as daytime garments, like shifts, chemises, or smocks?

But the historical case here is not perhaps as compelling as the semiotic relationship of clothing and nakedness, which define one another, as in the Donne passage mentioned, surely not the first poetic reference to undergarments, where they trope one another willy nilly.    

Earlier Chaucer "strips" Alison  by describing her "smock."

Is not here as elsewhere the undergarment itself a sign of nakedness?

Think about Griselda in Petrarch, Boccaccio, or Chaucer:


	       "The smok," quod he, "that thou hast on thy bak,
	Lat it be stille, and bere it forth with thee."
	But wel unnethes thilke word he spak,
	But wente his wey for routhe and for pitee.
	Biforn the folk hirselven strepeth she,
895	And in hir smok, with heed and foot al bare,
	Toward hir fader hous forth is she fare.

Griselda, is I believe, in Boccaccio, naked in her smock.



-----Original Message-----
From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List on behalf of Marshall Grossman
Sent: Mon 12/4/2006 8:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask] 
Subject: Re: Sleeping attire
 
I've always had the impression that Lucrece was naked when Tarquin broke in:

 What could he see but mightily he noted?
      What did he note but strongly he desired?
      What he beheld, on that he firmly doted,
      And in his will his wilful eye he tired.
      With more than admiration he admired
        Her azure veins, her alabaster skin,
        Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.

John K Leonard wrote:
> I'd love to believe that Hero is naked in the line Bill quotes.  It 
> would add to the comedy of Hero shrieking at the sight of naked 
> Leander in her doorway ("such sights as this to tender maids are 
> rare") if she too were in the raw.  But when, just a couple of lines 
> later, she flees to her bed, she seems to be wearing some kind of 
> undergarment--her "white limbs . . . sparkled through the lawn" (where 
> "lawn" of course refers to a light fabric, presumably of her 
> underwear).  So while she "stayed not for her robes," she does not 
> seem to be completely naked.  Or have I missed something? 
>  
> William Empson, reviewing John Carey's 1981 book on John Donne, 
> famously stated that Elegy 19 contains the first reference to  
> underwear in English literature.  I wonder whether that honour might 
> not belong to Marlowe instead.
>  
> John Leonard
>  
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: William Oram <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Monday, December 4, 2006 4:18 pm
> Subject: Re: Sleeping attire
> To: [log in to unmask] 
>
> > There's certainly literary precedent for sleeping naked.
> > Marlowe's  Hero
> > "stayed not for her robes" when Leander knocks.   Bill Oram
> >
> > >>> Margaret Christian <[log in to unmask]> 12/4/2006 12:51 PM >>>
> > Good friends,
> >
> > Please indulge me and share your learned insights on an off-
> > topic
> > query.  I was discussing Coleridge's Christabel with a
> > class today,
> > and they were much taken by the detail of the two ladies
> > disrobing
> > before sharing the bed.  "Wasn't it usual to wear dressing
> > gowns and
> > caps and everything?  Why are they undressing in front of
> > each other?"
> >
> > The psychosexual reading appealed to them a lot, but I reminded
> > them
> > of Sir Gawain, trapped naked under the covers by his hostess
> > (and
> > Chaucer's characters, who don't seem unduly hampered by layers
> > of
> > fabric), and suggested that maybe Coleridge assumed that it
> > wasn't
> > usual to wear gowns, etc.
> >
> > Anyway, in the real pre-modern world (as opposed to bawdy,
> > medieval
> > romance, and gothic revival fantasy), what did people wear to bed?
> >
> > Many thanks,
> >
> >
> > Margaret R. Christian,
> > Ph.D.                                  
> > [log in to unmask] 
> > Associate Professor of
> > English                          Office: (610)
> > 285-5106
> > Penn State Lehigh
> > Valley                                        Home:  (610) 562-0163
> > 8380 Mohr
> > Lane                                          fax: (610)
> > 285-5220
> > Fogelsville,
> > PA   18051   USA
> > http://www.lv.psu.edu/professional/mrc1/ 
> >


-- 
Marshall Grossman
Professor
Department of English
University of Maryland
3101 SQH
College Park, MD 20895

301-405-9651
[log in to unmask]