In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Shakespeare Quarterly 53.4 (2002) 581-584



[Access article in PDF]
Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. By Ian Frederick Moulton. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv + 268. $49.95 cloth.

Although it is sometimes difficult to define exactly what makes for an exciting new monograph in Renaissance studies, I think that we all, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stevens, know one when we see it. Ian Moulton's study of erotic writing from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England is certainly fascinating reading. He has uncovered, for example, a number of sexually-explicit manuscript poems, including a strange text entitled "A Perfect president of a deede of Intayle." This poem parodies the form of a legal document in which one Richard Ambler entails (i.e., transfers) ownership of his mistress to his friend Edward Loyde. Ambler graphically describes his mistress's body, figuring it as a piece of land:

Upon the fourest side thereof
      two little hillockes are
Which for my pleasure manie times
      I have uncovered bare
Within the countie of Cuntington
      neare to the Navill downe
In the midst whereof ther springes a well
      that cost me many a crowne. . . .

(19-20)

In addition to little-known texts such as "A deede of Intayle," Moulton also discusses erotic classics such as Aretino's Ragionamenti, which includes descriptions of "heterosexual coupling, buggery, bisexual orgies, lesbian sex with dildoes, and masturbation" (130).

As these examples suggest, Before Pornography is divided into two sections: part one contains two chapters focusing on English material, and part two contains three chapters dealing with Italian materials and English writing related to the Italian tradition. If Moulton's book thus offers readers an analysis of Renaissance erotica, it also makes an important contribution to our understanding of early modern sexuality. Surprisingly, scholars working in this field have not heretofore focused their research on explicit representations of sexual activity, or on literary works that had titillation as their primary objective. Instead, they have tended to concentrate on such things as court cases, stage plays, anatomy books, or humanist literature. This is not to belittle the previous research (indeed, one of its strengths has been to demonstrate how a vast array of discourses worked to shape ideas and practices regarding sexuality) but rather to suggest that Before Pornographyfills an important gap. [End Page 581]

Moulton places English erotic writing—and eroticism itself—firmly within its cultural and historical contexts. This intervention serves to distinguish his study from the only other full-length monograph on the subject, David O. Frantz's Festum Voluptatis: A Study of Renaissance Erotica (1989). Frantz concentrates primarily on the literary and artistic contexts of erotic writing; so even when Moulton and Frantz analyze the same texts, their treatment of them differs sharply. For instance, both authors discuss Thomas Nashe's "Choice of Valentines" (sometimes referred to as "Nashe's Dildo"), but whereas Frantz stresses this poem's relationship to the literary tradition and especially to the works of Petrarch and Ovid, Moulton focuses on how it helped to construct wider ideals about gender and sexuality, especially ideals regarding female sexual agency. Another strength of Before Pornography is that it introduces readers to a range of material not mentioned by Frantz. Moulton includes an extended analysis of Fletcher's supremely bawdy play The Custom of the Country, a chapter on Jonson's works, and, perhaps most importantly, a long chapter on the erotic poems and epigrams found in manuscript collections. While it is hardly surprising that frank verses such as "On the death of Master Pricke, late of Christ Church College," "A mayde's dream," or the aforementioned "Deede of Intayle" never found their way into print, the texts provide an important record of early modern beliefs and attitudes about erotic expression, and Moulton therefore deserves credit for bringing them to our attention.

As Moulton's title indicates, the main contention of his book is that the Renaissance is "before pornography" in that it predates the rise of the modern genre. This is not to say that there were no explicit representations of...

pdf

Share