Aretino's Pornography and Renaissance Satire

Aretino's Pornography and Renaissance Satire SAAD EL-GARALAWY Apart from his reputation as a lashing satirist, "the scourge of princes," Pietro Aretino was famous—or infamous—in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries for his works of pornography ,1 perhaps the first of their kind in Christendom. His most notorious book was the Ragionamenti, where two harlots dwell on the techniques and practices of sex through dialogues about the lives of nuns, married women, and courtesans. There were also his sixteen obscene sonnets, / Sonnetti Lussuriosi, dealing with modes of intercourse , which accompanied pictures of sexual positions, usually called / Modi, designed by Giulio Romano and engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi.2 Allusions to these bawdy manuals occur so frequently in English literature from Spenser to Milton that they constitute a phenomenon which is worth exploration. In many cases the references to Aretino's "pictures" and "dialogues" become functional as a medium of social, moral and political satire in the later English Renaissance. Saad El-Gabalawy, Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary, has written articles on Renaissance literature in various journals and has translated four American books into Arabic. 1 Since the lines between "pornography," "obscenity," and "erotica" arc very thin and wavering, I have taken the liberty to use these terms rather loosely to imply explicit sexual material in general, without attempting to make dear distinctions. 2 Perhaps the best bibliographical, historical, and critical material related to the two works of pornography is available in A. Gerber, "AU of the Five Fictitious Italian Editions of Writings of Machiavelli and Three of Those of Pietro Aretino printed by John Wolfe of London (1584-1588)," MLN, 22 (1907), 2-6, 129-135, 201-206; Henry Sellers, "Italian Books Printed in England before 1640," The Library, Fourth Series, 2 (September 1924), 114-16; David Foxon, Libertine Literature in England, 1660-1745 (London, 1964), especially pp. 19-27; Wayland Young, Eros Denied: Sex in Westei-n Society (New York, 1964), especially Chapter 9 and Appendix 2; Johannes Hösle, Pietro Aletinos Werk (Berlin, 1969), especially pp. 15-21, 52-56, 89-114, 227-231. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW87 In the Greene-Nashe-Harvey controversy, the name of Aretino appears in different contexts, with the main emphasis on his satire. There is, however, a gradual shift in the 1590's, when these writers begin to concentrate on his works of pornography and regard him as a byword for libertinism. Despite the fact that Gabriel Harvey as a rhetorician expresses early admiration for Aretino's style in the Marginalia , later in Foure Letters (1592) he places his literary enemies in the company of "Lucían, lulian, Aretine, and that whole venemous and viperous brood, of old & new Raylers ..." (Sig. A4V). Nashe is furiously accused of moral hypocrisy in A New Letter of Notable Contents (1593), where Harvey wonders about the strange combination of religion and pornography in Aretino's works, with an explicit allusion to the Ragionamenti: He [Nashe] should be an Aretin: that Paraphrased the inestimable bookes of Moses, and discoursed the Capricious Dialogues of rankest Bawdry : that penned one Apology of the diuinity of Christ, and another of Pederastice, a kinde of harlatry, not to be recited: that published the Life of the blessed Virgin, and the Legende of the Errant Putaña . . . O monster of extremityes; and ô abomination of outragious witt. (Sig. DF) It is clear that "Aretin" is used by Harvey as an abusive term in his character-assassination game with Greene and Nashe, to smear their reputation by identifying them with the blackmailer through satire, the licentious ribald, the boy-corruptor, the Antichrist, the consort of whores, the epicurean libertine. Harvey's personal attack shows him as something of a pompous academic fool, indulging in the blunt denunciation of invective and usually lacking in humour. In his angry expression of fierce contempt, he regards himself as a champion of those traditional and moral values which such dissolute professionals as Aretino and Nashe have obscenely flouted. But his condemnation of these writers is not based on the public motivation which leads to a deliberate and militant attempt to expose vices and reform morals. David McPherson expounds in detail the...