Sexual Metaphors in the Fifteenth to Sixteenth Century French Farce

Although much work has been done on various aspects of 15th and 16th century French farce, its metaphorical obscenity has been largely ignored. Not all farces are sexually oriented, but those which are are by far the funniest and their humor stems primarily from the use of metaphor. I have thus systematically gathered evident sexual metaphors from 168 plays, and, for comparison and contrast, from other literature (Aristophanes, Chaucer, the fabliaux, Poggio, Boccaccio, etc.). Due to the volume of material collected, the dissertation alas was limited to those sexual metaphors which form the basis of the plot of one or more plays (sex as medicine, i.e. the giving of a clystere and restraintif; chimney-sweeping; wax-warming; saddle-stuffing; tail-dragging; digging in a garden; combat; singing; and the lending and greasing of a waffle iron) and to a discussion of vessels as female sexual symbols.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

French

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• White, Leah Thompson

• Literature, Medieval

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8127732

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/67930