The Sacred and the Profane I
This week:
• from A “A Full and True Account of a Dreaded Fire … in the
Pope’s Breeches”
• from The Lives of the Nuns
• “Sonnet” [Baffo]
• from Account of the Visit Made to the Theatine Nuns
• “Batter My Heart”
• Letter from Heloise to Abelard
The Sacred and the Profane I
The Sacred and the Profane I
Sexy librarian
The Sacred and the Profane I
Sexy priest
The Sacred and the Profane I
Sexy priest
The Sacred and the Profane I
The Sacred and the Profane I
beatitude = orgasm
purity/impurity
Religion and sex
power
pleasure/desire
transgression
guilt/forgiveness
righteousness/sin
material/spirit
From A Full and True Account of a Dreaded Fire,
that Lately Broke out in the Pope’s Breeches
• anonymous poem 1713
• some powerful anti-Catholic feeling in
England
• Queen Anne in power (Protestant)
• her father had converted to Catholic
• Catholics viewed as
• debauched, licentious, extravagant,
and sex-crazed
• satanic
• associated with magic, tricks,
opulence
Pope Clement XI
From A Full and True Account of a Dreaded Fire,
that Lately Broke out in the Pope’s Breeches
• So:
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there’s a lot of complicated stuff
sacred/profane
spiritual/material (body)
denial/indulgence
reward/punishment
the location of PLEASURE
pleasure of inversion, misdirection,
substitution, deception
• the Pope’s actions are apparently
natural (male-female) but then
unnatural (anal) and then punished
Pope Clement XI
From A Full and True Account of a Dreaded Fire,
that Lately Broke out in the Pope’s Breeches
• all of which raises the question:
• where is the reader’s pleasure in all this?
• is it condoned?
• natural?
• moral?
• righteous?
Pope Clement XI
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• Aretino is “the inventor of pornography”
• from Arezzo in Italy; died in Venice (which, as
we discussed, was SINful)
• the Pope was one of his patrons – for a while
• specialised in the profane, obscene
• Chief works:
• Lives of Nuns
• Lives of Wives
• The School of Whoredom
• he seems to have especially liked to satirize
the rich and powerful – risky behaviour
• irreverent and outrageous
• so, let’s get down to it
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• so this is an orgy
• set in an Abbey – like a monastery,
but with both nuns and monks
• begins in a black mass – not exactly
• but a travesty, a parody, a
profanation
• first – clothes changing
• second – positioning
• third – conclusion
• fourth – denouement – enacts the
reader’s activity
• toys! | anal! | Pater Noster
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• I nearly lost my voice yesterday
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• I nearly lost my voice yesterday
• so today:
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• I nearly lost my voice yesterday
• so today:
• I’ll put up the slides and YOU will tell me about them.
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• I nearly lost my voice yesterday
• so today:
• I’ll put up the slides and YOU will tell me about them.
• Get into groups of 4 or 5
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
• I nearly lost my voice yesterday
• so today:
• I’ll put up the slides and YOU will tell ME about them.
• Get into groups of 4 or 5
• Do it NOW.
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
• the “clyster”
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
• the “clyster”
• what is it?
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
• the “clyster”
• what is it?
• WHY?
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
• the “clyster”
• what is it?
• WHY?
• bottom p. 28 to end
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
• the “clyster”
• what is it?
• WHY?
• bottom p. 28 to end
• in tentationem, et libera nos a malo -- ???
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Here are some of the key elements you’ll want me to be aware of:
• clothing/dress – WHY?
• pain/suffering = ecstasy (at least in outward appearance) – WHY?
• the “clyster”
• what is it?
• WHY?
• bottom p. 28 to end
• in tentationem, et libera nos a malo -- ???
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
from Lives of Nuns
(Pietro Aretino) 1527
Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
• the will of the flesh
• my nature beastly
• to mortify my lust
• martyrdom and enjoyment
• dying a milder death
• I behold it gory and am
about to cry: Confession!
From “Account of the Visit Made to the
Theatine Nuns, …”
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Benedetta Carlini
(c. 1619)
power, confession, interrogation, torture, pleasure, pain, suffering, knowledge, truth
“ecclesiastical interrogations” – what are those?
power produces the acts it governs
exercise of power here
but also enjoyment
minute detailing of events
interest in number of times, how, when, where, etc.
a record for a spiritual court but dealing with the body and bodily acts
Benedetta Carlini
(c. 1619)
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Carlini was from a fairly wealthy family
got her a nice spot in a convent – lucky!
she becomes Abbess
but gets locked in her cell because hallucinations
lover of another nun, Sister Bartolomea
they would frolic, then have visions
sex = transcendence | sex = illusion, despair, damnation
who can tell?
Suddenly: Sonnets!
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14 line poem with regular rhyme
love poetry primarily
very structured and formal
primarily used at court for showing off
Petrarchan sonnet -- his love for Laura
Shakespearean sonnet -- his love for the “dark lady”
Spenserian sonnet -- his love for God
AESTHETICS | FORM | CONTROL | TENSION | RESOLUTION | PLEASURE
Giorgio Baffo
1694-1768
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born and wrote in Venice
licentious Italians, amirite?
Sonnetti Erotici
belongs on the playful, celebratory,
joyful side of thinking about the erotic
• sees it as fun, laughter-filled, humourous
• earthy, and rejects the dour asceticism
of religious prohibition
• argues that it stands to reason that if
humans are made in God’s image, and
we have sexuality, then God must too;
and that if sex is fun on earth – maybe
the best thing going – then it must also
be in heaven
Giorgio Baffo
1694-1768
• sonnet – fits the form mostly (no rhyme, but we are in
translation here)
• sonnets set problems and solve them
• here in octave we get the problem: how can heaven be good if
there’s no sex?
• in sestet we get solution: there is sex and God has it everytime
anyone has it
• fairly radical rejection of asceticism (ἄσκησις áskēsis)
• at issue is who owns pleasure and what its moral status is
John Donne
1572-1631
• “Batter My Heart” is NOT a cannibal recipe
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poet, essayist, theologian cleric in Anglican Church
we already read his “The Flea,” remember?
became a priest against his will (King James I ordered it)
appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London
also celebrant of human sexuality and desire
reckoned on continuity of the human and the divine
contemporary of Shakespeare
personal relationship with God, access to the divine through the
everyday
• there is no necessary tension between the sacred and the
profane
• unlike Baffo, he comes at this from the perspective of divinity –
sex is part of the divine not in a bathetic sense, but in an
elevating sense
John Donne
1572-1631
Power | Desire | Pleasure | Ecstasy
the body as a medium of access to the soul
the parallel of being ravished to infusion of holy spirit
the paradox of rising up by sinking low
paradox itself as an intellectual ecstasy
the pleasure of the intellect, aesthetics, language, form, contradiction and tension
in the name of a higher unity where body and soul coincide in perfect enjoyment
Heloise’s letter to Abelard
• their story:
• lovers in youth
• Heloise gets pregnant
• won’t marry Abelard
• her uncle castrates Abelard in revenge
• OWCH
• she enters convent
• they write to each other
• possibly the greatest epistolary love
affair of all time
• the stuff of legend up there with
Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde
Heloise’s letter to Abelard
• this letter:
• female sexuality
• fantasy
• profanation
• purity – God or love? Is God love?
• eros of the interior life – what are you thinking?
• RIGHT NOW?!?
Heloise’s letter to Abelard
• but also the tremendous erotic power of
words
• knowledge, writing, instruction and learning
• Abelard was her tutor
• their erotic lives are sparked by learning
• replays the biblical story
• but in new context and with different moral
• knowledge is hot; knowing is sexy
• (sexy librarian, schoolteacher, nurse, doctor,
scientist…) Others?
Song of
Solomon
(Bible)
Song of
Songs
(Heine)
Next week
Story
of the
Eye
And the mid-term…