The Language of Sex
in Renaissance Humour
The Theory and Practice of Euphemism
in Courtly, Medical, and Theatrical Texts
from France and England (c. 1512-1659)
Contents
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND THEORY CHAPTER
1.1 Defining Comic Sexual Euphemism
1.2 Corpus and Rationale for Textual Selection
1.3 Methodology
1.4 Early Modern Theory of the Comic: Joubert’s Traité du ris
1.5 Modern Theory of the Comic: Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
1.6 Modern Theory of the Comic: Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World
1.7 Modern Linguistic Theory
1.8 Metaphorical Fields
CHAPTER TWO: ANCIENT AND EARLY MODERN NOTIONS OF COMIC SEXUAL EUPHEMISM
2.1 Early Modern Terms
2.2 Ancient Rhetorical Theory
2.3 Cicero, Montaigne, and Mentula
2.4 Early Modern Rhetorical Theory
CHAPTER THREE: TEXTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE COURT
3.1 Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier
3.2 Brantôme’s Les Dames galantes
3.3 Harington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso, Considered Alongside Early Modern French and Modern English Translations of Ariosto
CHAPTER FOUR: MEDICAL TEXTS
4.1 Joubert’s Erreurs Populaires
4.2 Ferrand’s Traité de l’essence et guérison de l’amour, ou De la mélancholie érotique, Considered Alongside the English Translation Erotique Melancholy
CHAPTER FIVE: THEATRE
5.1 Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Metaphorical Fields
5.2 Overview of the anonymous Wit of a Woman, Sharpham’s Cupid’s Whirligig, and Marston’s Parasistaster, or The Fawn and The Dutch Courtesan
5.3 The Metaphorical Field of Painting/Art and Sex
5.4 The Metaphorical Field of Dancing/Music and Sex
5.5 The Metaphorical Field of Law and Sex
5.6 The Metaphorical Field of Food/Meat and Sex
5.7 The Metaphorical Field of Language and Sex
5.8 Mentula Jokes
5.9 The Metaphorical Field of Money/Business and Sex
5.10 The Metaphorical Field of Disease and Sex
5.11 The Metaphorical Field of War and Sex
5.12 The Metaphorical Field of Clothes and Sex
5.13 The Metaphorical Field of Games and Sex
5.14 The Metaphorical Field of Riding and Sex
5.15 Jumping from one Metaphorical Field to Another
5.16 Other Comic Sexual Euphemisms, Obscenities and Innuendoes
5.17 Bringing Theatre Findings Together
CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION
6.1 Silence as Euphemism
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
