The Yard of Wit: Male Creativity and Sexuality, 165-175

2. Masculinity as Male Genitalia

Chapter 2 Masculinity as Male Genitalia The underlying premises of this chapter can be summarized as fol­ lows: ( l ) there is an unprecedented proliferation of male genitalia as subject matter ca. 1 650-l 750; (2) discourses of the penis/phallus which emerged in this period reflect uncertainty about the relationship of soft penis and phallus as that connection represented a range of possi­ bilities for defining maleness or some facet of masculine identity; and (3) the newer equations-many of which we have unknowingly inher­ ited-linking the male brain and mind to the condition of male privy members often viewed the yard as the physiological or psychological essence of maleness even while they symbolically separated the yard from the bodies of real men. One of the larger goals of this chapter, then, is to historicize the cultural function of male genitalia in the En­ lightenment, and to examine literary and non-literary usage which might reveal discursive paradigms and their uneven and sometimes contradictory deployment in representative texts and contexts. I will suggest that these developments reflect the early modern origins of our now habitual separation of literal and symbolic genitalia, of the mundane penis-hardly ever a focus outside urology or Viagra ads­ from the obsessively metaphorized and over-determined Phallus. A simple historical question: why is it that from roughly the second half of the seventeenth century the penis, whether limp or erect (less often the testicles and semen), emerges as a common trope and fre­ quent subject in public discussion, despite the fact that such reference was considered impolite? There are, of course, countless references to male genitalia in the written and representational records of earlier periods in Western culture, but not since classical times had men's sexual parts been so often the focus of public discourse. 1 A cursory inventory of examples will provide initial substance for this claim. Consider, for instance, the gossip and the many poems on affairs of state which talk of Charles II's wandering pintle; the libertine yard of Restoration stage rakes (e.g., from the opening scene of Wycherley's The Country Wife the audience's attention is captured by competing stories about Horner's penis); the scores of imperfect enjoyment and 26 Chapter 2 premature ejaculation poems; talking penis poems such as Pope's Sober Advice from Horace2 in which the personified penis speaks to its owner; works such as The Members to Their Soveraign ( 1 726, supposedly by Matthew Prior), the anonymous but possibly Rochesterian "One Writing Against His Prick" (late seventeenth century), and Sade'sjuli­ ette ( 1 791 ), in which men talk to their personified yards; the many dildo stories, from Rochester's well-known "Signior Dildo" ( 1 673), to Samuel Butler's lesser-known Dildoides (first published 1 706), to the now almost forgotten The Cabinet of Love ( 1 72 1 ) and Monsieur Thing's Origin: Or; Seignior D---o's Adventures in Britain ( 1 722); the sublime phal­ lus and the limp penises of pornography as they are offered up in Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure ( 1 748-49) ; the many bawdy poems like The Natural History of the Arbor Vitae: Or, The T ree of Life ( 1 732), T eague-Root Display'd ( 1 746), "The Geranium" (n.d. , attributed to Richard Brinsley Sheridan), or James Perry's l'vfirnosa: Or, The Sen­ sitive Plant ( 1 779) which rely on botanical metaphors of the penis/ phallus as plant or tree; the notorious impotence trials in France and England in which the condition of the husband's genitals was the primary focus of crowded courtroom debate and widely read trial reports; nuanced literary associations of the problematic penis and artistry as in Sterne's T ristram Shandy ( 1 759-65); the sharp increase of medical literature about male reproductive organs and venereal dis­ ease, with an attendant rise in the quantity of anatomical illustrations. Can one make up a comparable list for any period of English history before 1 650 in which attention to male genitalia is so prominent? What does such a proliferation tell us about the cultural status of male genitalia? My claim about a proliferation of the penis-as-public-subject in the late seYenteenth and eighteenth centuries can be substantiated in other ways as well. Consider the curious allusion to Pope's penis and urinary tract which appeared in an eighty-four page pornographic narrative of 1 74 1 , comically entitled A VrJ)'age to...