"It is a brotherhood": Obscene Storytelling and Fraternal Community in Fifteenth-Century Britain and Today

This article traces the early history of the explicit sexual verbs swyve and fuck in fifteenth-century England and Wales and provides a thorough overview of their origins and contexts, including swyve's censorship in early manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. It argues that obscene sexual storytelling is central to performances of masculine identity in same-sex textual communities, including letters among the younger Paston brothers; British Library, MS Harley 3362, a school notebook circulated among Cambridge students; and National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 356B, a shared schoolbook from a Welsh Cistercian grammar school. This article explores the role of fuck and swyve in fostering fraternal bonds in homosocial discursive communities—particularly among men who are subordinate in some way, such as students and young, unmarried men subject to maternal authority—and shows how these terms can function to affirm male supremacy, authorize violence against women as well as other men, and encourage misogyny. It investigates these obscenities' pedagogical implications for teaching about sex, gender, consent, and power, drawing connections to the sharing of obscene narratives and images in all-male virtual spaces in the twenty-first century.