124
Lodge, Sociolinguistic History, pp. 236-237.
125
For the study of different culture levels in the Renaissance and the question of the high/low divide, see, for example, Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009).
This section will describe a theory which is my own original conception. Chapters three and five especially analyse what I call ‗metaphorical fields‘. I define this as taking place when something scandalous, like certain types of sex, is talked of extensively in terms of something socially acceptable. The type of sex that is used in such fields is most often bawdy and unchaste, involving humour in the scandal. It is more likely to be with a prostitute than a spouse or intended marital partner, although not always. Metaphorical fields act as a type of comic sexual euphemism, where non-literal terms are used but the content is still conveyed, and allow for multiple levels of double- entendres. This is not just a one-off occurrence, but rather a continuous comparison where it is almost as if a whole world is created within a text where sex is likened to something else so frequently that it is inextricably linked to varying degrees. This is not restricted to one text, with many Renaissance texts using the same metaphorical field or fields, suggesting different audiences would be aware of these lines of thinking and relate to them. When put together, such texts create a network with shared metaphorical fields. The linguistic research of Plaff, Gibbs, and Johnson has shown that people are more willing to accept euphemisms if they are within what I call extended metaphorical fields. As well as being consistent with these findings, metaphorical fields arguably demonstrate Erasmus‘ fears of obscenity made a reality. I am the first to apply these modern findings to, for example, the works of Middleton. I argue that the discovery of Plaff, Gibbs, and Johnson, that people accept a piece of reading more if it consistently uses the same euphemisms, applies very well to metaphorical fields.
Metaphorical fields I examine, in plays and other Renaissance works, include sex being compared to business or money, painting or art, meat and other food, games and sport, disease, dancing and music, clothing, war and battles, riding and horses, language, hunting, law, and (in a different way) silence. They can also blend into one another, or writers can jump quickly from one to the next. Chapter five features many of the same metaphorical texts as those found in courtly texts, such as riding, games, business, war, clothes, language, and meat. Like all euphemisms, the symbolic link made with sex in a metaphorical field can be explicit and implicit, overt and covert, clear and opaque. Such links can fall on different points on a scale of
explicitness. Sometimes it is obvious what is being meant, which leads to the question of what the reason behind using euphemistic imagery is. Other times, the euphemism can be so effective that the double meaning needs explanation in order to be appreciated for both contemporaneous and modern audiences. Chapter five gives examples of a euphemism needing to be clearly explained before some characters understand. This is helpful to modern readers, who do not have the benefit of seeing the original performances so may miss some of the intended meaning, and would also have been useful to any Renaissance audience members who did not get the joke.
In this period, as the OED points out, ‗meat‘ could refer to any food.126
These texts provide examples of sex being talked of in terms of any and all food, eating in general, and specifically meat. There are obvious links to be made between carnal pleasures or sins of the flesh and enjoyment of eating meat – both use bodies. Also, both apply the vocabulary of appetite for food to appetite for sex, crossing hunger for food with sexual desire. Sometimes this comparison is so unsubtle it is almost not euphemistic. To lewdly claim a sexual experience was like eating meat can be so obvious that the ruder meaning is not hidden and is plain for everyone to see. It is at least of the more transparent type of euphemism. It is nearly, although not quite, always women who are compared to meat and food. Most frequently, these women are prostitutes, highlighting the way they are objects to be purchased like slabs of meat. By indicating they are a commodity, the metaphorical field of meat and sex is linked to that of money and sex.
The next chapter considers an overview of the most significant classical and early modern thinking when it comes to comic sexual euphemism, thus completing the vital discussion of theory preceding the analysis of the practice of this language. The world of Renaissance comic sexual language and euphemism is a rich, varied, and exciting one. The different uses of humour in the following chapters can often have deeper repercussions than might be expected. There is more to these jokes than their surface, which may appear to be simply crude. They reveal how those in early
126
Oxford English Dictionary, <http://0-
www.oed.com.lib.exeter.ac.uk/view/Entry/76238?rskey=z2y8WN&result=1&isAdvanced=false #eid> [accessed 27 Sept 2013], n.p.
modern society viewed their own bodies, how men and women related to each other, and who had the power both in terms of gender and the structure of both France and England.
Chapter Two: Ancient and Early Modern Notions of Comic Sexual
Euphemism
This chapter will examine ancient and Renaissance thoughts on the concept of comic sexual euphemism. It starts with French and English contemporaneous terms which were forerunners to ‗euphemism‘, then analyses the influential ancient writers Cicero and Quintilian, before exploring important early modern thinkers from France and England.