>On another subject: all those naughty nuns. A few people
>questioned the use of the word pornographic to describe the poetry
>in question. I suppose I used the word lightly but I can't really
>think of another. Most of it is pretty mild and has been regarded
>as part of the Welsh tradition of lyric love poetry but it can get
>quite explicit. I used the word pornographic because of this
>descriptive aspect and because of the way in which it sees the
>religious habit and the vow of chastity as titillating.
The reason for my eyebrow-raising at the use of "pornography" consisted
primarily in the moral-aesthetic implications of the term. It is very easy
to have sexual or obscene comedy which is far from pornographic, if we
accept a definition of pornography which includes the arousal of sexual
excitement as one of its goals. Although I am not convinced by what he does
with the insight, COOKE, Thomas D., "Pornography, the comic spirit, and the
fabliaux", in T. D. Cooke and B. Honeycutt (eds.), The Humor of the Fabliaux
(Columbia, 1974), pp. 137-162 makes some pertinent comments on this
subject.
Unfortunately, my comments are purely theoretical as I am in no way
acquainted with the texts to which you alluded. I simply based my
observations on the medieval French, German, Italian and Latin traditions of
which I do have some experience, wherein the attribution of sexual
misconduct to members and representatives of religious institutions seems so
frequently to have a fundamentally comic/satirical purpose.
DARON
Daron Burrows, Trinity College, Oxford University.
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"Like them, what I was really afraid of was risk: risking to be myself,
risking to say what I actually felt, risking to feel something for someone
else, risking to let someone else feel something for me" (Sam Fussel,
"Muscle")
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