Dear All
A few things to throw into this debate (to complicate matters!):
(1) Katherine Gill, in an article entitled 'Scandala: controveries 
concerning clausura and women's religious communities in late medieval 
Italy' (in S.L. Waugh & P.D. Diehl, eds, Christendom and Its Discontents, 
CUP, 1996) argues that - in one instance at least - arguments about 
religious women and containment were more to do with political and 
economic power than sexual scandal. She suggests that there is a danger 
in seeing all things to do with nuns and enclosure as sexual, or purely 
sexual. I would be interested to know what others (Jo Ann McNamara in 
particular) think about this argument...
(2) In the original posting, it seemed to me that there were two things 
mentioned: nuns as sexually voracious; and nuns as a sexual challenge to 
be conquered. On the former point, we surely have to remember that there 
is also a long tradition in literature of monks as being sexually 
voracious. How gendered is this particular discourse?
(3) The examples Daron quotes below also point out that in literary 
examples at least, one can also be dealing with what Bakhtin would have 
described as the 'grotesque'; the politics and interpretation of which 
might be more complex... I am not trying to suggest that the original 
points made about this 'medieval pornography' are not valid, or that such 
a discourse (or set of discourses) were not misogynist, but I think that 
we need to be a bit more contextualised in our arguments. Indeed, the 
contextualisation would further the debate over whether or not the term 
'pornography' might be applicable.
(4) James Brundage mentioned Peter Linehan's The Ladies of Zamora. THis 
does indeed contain some interesting evidence; but I have to say that I 
found the tone of Linehan's book, and the way he interpreted the 
evidence, deeply dodgy. Anyone agree?

cheers
john arnold

On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Daron Burrows wrote:

> 
> I too would certainly raise an eyebrow at the use of the term "pornography",
> but there is certainly a comic tradition of sexually promiscuous nuns in Old
> French that you could productively investigate. If you would like references
> to abbesses confiscating disembodied phalluses for their own pleasure,
> scolding their underlings for depravity while wearing their lover's trousers
> on their head, or tales of nuns refusing entry to monks cursed with
> insufficient endowment, I would be happy to oblige. Have you come across the
> literary tradition of the nuns' tournament?
> 
> DARON
> Daron Burrows, Trinity College, Oxford University.
> [log in to unmask]
> 
> 


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