Why did they write so allusively and illusively? Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne. They wrote poetry too, the form of which forces use of attenuated synonyms. Why didn't they write prose? Did anybody write books back then? Why did they all write poems? And why, oh why did they write porn?
It was entertainment for the aristocracy. They worked for the aristocracy. Chaucer wrote before Gutenberg invented the printing press. The Canterbury Tales would have had an initial readership the size of this blog, in the 10's.
The literary mores of the time. Hell, racy books were still getting "banned in Boston" into the twentieth century. A G-rated version of The Canterbury Tales was still a high school textbook in the 1970's.
But literacy rates were extremely low, 10% of men in 1500, Chaucer, 20% in 1600, Shakespeare and Donne. Little chance the porn would have corrupted the morals of commoners.
The aristocracy did what they wanted but there have always been strictures on what you could say and write regardless of what you did. Discretion is the better part of literary valor. Poetry gave writers the cover of indirection. Prose is direct. Hemingway: write short declarative sentences. Well, they didn't do that then. They wrote elliptical poetry. And The Canterbury Tales is great poetry. That would have appealed to the aristocracy. You can look past (or say you're looking past) meaning and content if the brushwork is fine. There is titillation in mystery, in the slow striptease, the fig leaf even if the fig leaf is see-through! The thrill is heightened when finally you get it. How much of The Canterbury Tales did the nobles "get"? How many "got" it? "Cunt" goes back even further than Chaucer. Cunt was first used in the Proverbs of Hendyng, pre-1325.
Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.
(Give your cunt wisely and make [your] demands after the wedding.)
The term cunt was known to the illiterate commoner. There was a Grope Cunt Lane in London. So Chaucer couldn't use cunt. Too direct, too common, too vulgar. Did the nobles get "queynte." If one was literate in Middle English then they would have gotten queynte at least from context. "Bele chose," another term for vagina. French. Well, French was the language of the aristocracy into the nineteenth century but even if they didn't know French the context again would have given it away. All of this barely informed speculation by me.
How much of, e.g. The Canterbury Tales, was true? The Canterbury Tales is a series of conversations among commoners. The temptation is to consider it an accurate look at Plantagenet common life. It is unusual to near unique in giving voice to women. There was a lot of cunt groping in Plantagenet England. And a lot of cunning use of your cunt. Transactional sex is embedded in English history (obviously!) and is prevalent even today. Petty prostitution, episodic, discreet, without a pimp or a whorehouse, both against current English law, is legal. "Hey, 50 pound for a piece? Sure!" The casual, discrete or semi-discrete upper class affair is as much a part of England as the Thames. Cuckoldry was an English social custom. But Chaucer was a man. Chaucer was attached to the court. Chaucer wrote for the entertainment of his employers. How much contact would Geoffrey Chaucer have had with commoners? How much conversation between commoners would he have listened to? He was not riding along with the Wife of Bath. He did not hear that. No, of course not. How many women in Plantagenet England had five husbands? No, Chaucer took poetic license. The Wife of Bath is a fictional character, her life a fictional life but both with some basis in real life, or in the life of the commoner woman as believed real by the nobility. It had to be believable and to be believable it had to be within groping distance of the real.
It was entertainment for the aristocracy. They worked for the aristocracy. Chaucer wrote before Gutenberg invented the printing press. The Canterbury Tales would have had an initial readership the size of this blog, in the 10's.
The literary mores of the time. Hell, racy books were still getting "banned in Boston" into the twentieth century. A G-rated version of The Canterbury Tales was still a high school textbook in the 1970's.
But literacy rates were extremely low, 10% of men in 1500, Chaucer, 20% in 1600, Shakespeare and Donne. Little chance the porn would have corrupted the morals of commoners.
The aristocracy did what they wanted but there have always been strictures on what you could say and write regardless of what you did. Discretion is the better part of literary valor. Poetry gave writers the cover of indirection. Prose is direct. Hemingway: write short declarative sentences. Well, they didn't do that then. They wrote elliptical poetry. And The Canterbury Tales is great poetry. That would have appealed to the aristocracy. You can look past (or say you're looking past) meaning and content if the brushwork is fine. There is titillation in mystery, in the slow striptease, the fig leaf even if the fig leaf is see-through! The thrill is heightened when finally you get it. How much of The Canterbury Tales did the nobles "get"? How many "got" it? "Cunt" goes back even further than Chaucer. Cunt was first used in the Proverbs of Hendyng, pre-1325.
Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.
(Give your cunt wisely and make [your] demands after the wedding.)
The term cunt was known to the illiterate commoner. There was a Grope Cunt Lane in London. So Chaucer couldn't use cunt. Too direct, too common, too vulgar. Did the nobles get "queynte." If one was literate in Middle English then they would have gotten queynte at least from context. "Bele chose," another term for vagina. French. Well, French was the language of the aristocracy into the nineteenth century but even if they didn't know French the context again would have given it away. All of this barely informed speculation by me.
How much of, e.g. The Canterbury Tales, was true? The Canterbury Tales is a series of conversations among commoners. The temptation is to consider it an accurate look at Plantagenet common life. It is unusual to near unique in giving voice to women. There was a lot of cunt groping in Plantagenet England. And a lot of cunning use of your cunt. Transactional sex is embedded in English history (obviously!) and is prevalent even today. Petty prostitution, episodic, discreet, without a pimp or a whorehouse, both against current English law, is legal. "Hey, 50 pound for a piece? Sure!" The casual, discrete or semi-discrete upper class affair is as much a part of England as the Thames. Cuckoldry was an English social custom. But Chaucer was a man. Chaucer was attached to the court. Chaucer wrote for the entertainment of his employers. How much contact would Geoffrey Chaucer have had with commoners? How much conversation between commoners would he have listened to? He was not riding along with the Wife of Bath. He did not hear that. No, of course not. How many women in Plantagenet England had five husbands? No, Chaucer took poetic license. The Wife of Bath is a fictional character, her life a fictional life but both with some basis in real life, or in the life of the commoner woman as believed real by the nobility. It had to be believable and to be believable it had to be within groping distance of the real.
