The 1655 anonymous French work, L’Ecole des Filles, is also credited with being one of the first pornographic literatures. This book is a graphic retelling of a conversation between a teenage girl and her more experienced older cousin with the primary focus on sex… complete with pictures.
The Brits seem a bit more reserved about porn than the French and Italians. In fact, they were the first to actually pass laws criminalizing pornography with the Obscene Publications Act, but that happened well after the Middle Ages ended, in 1857. Despite the animosity toward printed pornography images, the English seemed tolerant of the live version. Cue the peep shows.
Yes, there were medieval peep shows! Posture girls were young ladies who made their living by posing buck-ass naked while paying customers gawked. In the 1681 book Whipping Tom (see the Proto-Stayfree, Midol, and Tampax Chapter), there is a reference to mirror-lined rooms where posture girls could practice their moves and poses and perfect ways to enhance the entertainment value for their customers via their salacious stances.
It is ironic, too, that the British Museum, mindful of the (quote/unquote) historical value of ancient porn, has a hidden room, or Sectretum, within its wall that houses erotic images and items that have been deemed too obscene for the general collection. This portion of the museum started in the 1800s when Dr. George Witt donated his collection of medieval erotica and phallic art to the museum. Clearly, the English were as enthralled with the nude female form as those on the Continent, even as they tried to act pious and moral. It just goes to show that an appreciation of the feminine beauty is universal.
Bawdy Ballads and Vulgar Verse
Popular entertainment of the Middle Ages — songs and poems — ran the gamut from rated-G biblical-based tales to PG-13 courtly love stories to X-rated sexually explicit fabliaux. Fabliaux are ribald and raunchy poetic tales, typically from the north of France, penned anywhere from the mid-1100s to the 1400s. Mostly anonymous, fabliaux were quite popular among all classes of medieval people, although as we read them now, most are rather degrading to women and their vaginas. Yet, from time to time, we see a fabliau in which a woman and her vagina come out on top.
First, let us look at the tale in which a lady’s vagina — and asshole — betrayed her. A parody of chivalrous tales, this account was called The Knight Who Made Cunts and Assholes Speak, a title that makes sense in the context of the story, but would attract criticism in modern times (see The Cunt Chapter).
The title Knight is impoverished, but guided by a strict set of morals and values. He does a favor for a trio of naked maidens, who are really magical fairies. They thank him for his deed by bestowing on him three “gifts”. The first gift makes him the receiver of extreme hospitality wherever he goes. Not a bad gift, right? The second fairy tells the Knight that he now has the gift of making vaginas talk! Not to be outdone, the third fairy adds an amendment to the second gift. She states that, if a vagina is unable to talk to the Knight for whatever reason, the asshole will speak for the vagina. These fairies get props for creative gift giving.
The Knight and his squire test out the “gifts” on a mare and find them to be in working order. They journey on their way and soon come to a castle where they are greeted with open arms, as per fairy number one’s “gift”. The King of the castle throws a lavish dinner party and invites the Knight to stay for the evening. The Queen is enamored with the Knight (plus she is under that whole hospitality spell thing) and, although she really wants to snog with him, she can’t sneak away from her husband.
So she summoned her chambermaid, a pretty young virgin, and commands her to tiptoe into the Knight’s room and have sex with him. She agrees and slips naked into his bed, to the Knight’s surprise. Now it is his turn to surprise the chambermaid. He asks her vagina to tell him who sent the maiden to his bed and the vagina answers him, freaking her out so much that she runs from the room to tell her wild story to the Queen.
The next morning at breakfast, in front of the court, the Queen confronts the Knight about this, but of course, she left out the part about how she was the one who send the chambermaid to have sex with the Knight because she really wanted to bed him herself, but couldn’t ditch the King. The Knight tells her that he can make any vagina talk, even hers. They place a bet on it and the Queen excuses herself for a moment. In private, she stuffs her cunt so full of cotton it is nearly spilling out of her. She then returns to the dining chamber where she bids the Knight to converse with her vagina.
The Knight asks the Queen’s vagina to tell him who sent the maiden to him. Silence. He asks again. Still silence. He asks a third time and now, thanks to the third fairy’s “gift”, the Queen’s asshole answers for the va-jay-jay. It also explains to the Knight that the Queen has packed her vagina with cotton so as the stifle the words that may come forth from this orifice. So the sphincter totally rats out the Queen in front of her husband and the rest of the court, humiliating and disgracing the Queen.
In the next tale, however, it is the man who ends up embarrassed and humiliated. This story is called the Berangier of the Long Asshole. In it, a lady of nobility is unhappily married to a cowardly man beneath her class who berates and intimidates her in a failed display of dominance.
To prove his worth to her, the husband tells her he is going out into the forest to fight the foes. And, indeed for several days in a row he returns home with nicks and dents in his sword and shield… obvious signs of battle. His wife, however, grows suspicious, so when he leaves for battle the next day, she dons his suit of armor and follows him. Soon she comes upon him in the woods, beating his sword and shield against rocks and trees to give them a battle-worn appearance.
The armor-clad wife confronts the faker and challenges him to a joust. Terrified of what his thinks is a real knight, the husband begs for mercy and tells the knight that he will do anything to avoid fighting. “Anything?”, asks the wifely knight. She/he tells him that he can get out of the joust if he kisses her/his asshole. The husband eagerly agrees.
The disguised wife then drops her bottoms and strategically covers her brown eye, then bends over and spreads wide her vagina for her husband to kiss. As he looks questioningly at her slit (and lack of balls and penis), she tells him that she/he is called the Berangier of the Long Asshole and that she/he is the most feared fighter in all the land. Hearing that, the husband fulfills his obligation and kisses the vagina.
The wife hurries home ahead of her husband and takes a lover to bed, so when the husband arrives home, he find his wife making love with gusto to another man. The husband reacts with anger, but the wife interrupts to inform him that she knows all about his encounter with the Berangier of the Long Asshole and threatens to tell the world about his cowardly reaction to a feminine Knight unless he grants her her freedom, especially in regards to her sex life. So in a switch-up from The Knight Who Made Cunts and Assholes Speak, The Berangier of the Long Asshole shows how the vagina empowers a woman to take a stand against her cruel, yet weak and obviously stupid husband.