Modus Florum shows poetic, inner-truth alternative to history

So I held my tongue and said nothing;
I refrained from rash words;
but my pain became unbearable.

My heart was hot within me;
while I pondered, the fire burst into flame;
I spoke with my tongue

{ נאלמתי דומיה החשיתי מטוב וכאבי נעכר׃
חם־לבי בקרבי בהגיגי תבער־אש דברתי בלשוני׃ }

Literature developed along with concern about misuse of words. With his characteristic subtlety and audacity, Ovid about the time of Jesus proclaimed: “I speak the marvelous lies of the ancient bards {prodigiosa loquor veterum mendacia vatum}.”[1] For the turned-sober fourth-century scholar Augustine, knowledge of actual historical events provided the foundation for speaking and writing with understanding. Augustine warned that without such foundational knowledge, “you will seek to build on air {in aere quaeratis aedificare}.”[2] Poetry, however, has long been recognized as being more than lies and castles in the air. The medieval Latin poem Modus Florum provides an exemplum of poetic power relevant from ancient civilization to the present day.

Modus Florum evokes the court of an early emperor. A medieval king set out a poetic game in impersonal, historically distanced terms:

If anyone experienced in lying
should apply himself to deception
so well that he is called a deceiver
by the emperor’s own mouth, that man may marry the daughter.

{ Si quis mentiendi gnarus
usque adeo instet fallendo
dum cesaris ore fallax
predicitur, is ducat filiam. }[3]

A man saying that he is lying (is he telling the truth?) was a conundrum that an ancient philosopher put forward.[4] The poetic game was earlier and more serious. Provoking listeners to reject their explicit and willing embrace of deception — willing suspension of disbelief — is a virtuoso display of poetic power.[5]

Modus Florum tells of a Swabian triumphing in that poetic game. The Swabian tells the story of his hunt. On his hunt, he speared a hare. He gutted the hare, cut off its head, and tore off its hide. That could be a parody of brutal philosophical analysis. Then the Swabian turned to fantastic tale-telling:

And as I was lifting the severed head
with my hand,
a hundred measures of honey
spilled out from the wounded ear;
and when I touched the other ear,
it spilled out just as many measures of peas.
I bound them inside the skin and,
while carving the hare itself,
I grasped a royal charter hidden
at the very base of the tail

{ Cumque cesum manu
levaretur caput,
lesa aure effunduntur
mellis modii centeni
sotiaque auris tacta
totidem pisarum fudit.
Quibus intra pellem strictis
lepus ipse dum secatur,
crepidine summae caude }

That’s a story in the tradition of travelers’ tales and accounts of marvels, but more artful.[6] The Swabian then deftly shifted his story to near reality in characterizing the royal charter found at the base of the tail:

It confirms that you are my servant.

{ Que servum te firmat esse meum. }

Forgetting the agreed frame of deception, the king interjected:

“The charter lies,” the king shouts, “and so do you!”

{ “Mentitur,” clamat rex, “karta et tu!” }

In the work of a master poet, poetry can deceive so effectively as to compel persons to speak inner truth against their will.[7]

sun flower

The poetry game in Modus Florum is an obscure part of the ancient Story of Ahiqar. Part of that story survives in Elephantine Aramaic papyri dated to more than 2400 years ago. In a Syriac version probably from before the fifth century, the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, challenges Ahiqar, “tell me a word that I have never heard.”[8] That challenge addresses the whole tradition of poetry and story-telling. It’s a creative, linguistic challenge analogous to telling a deception so effectively that listeners are compelled to denounce its falsehood against their own willing suspension of disbelief.

Ahiqar triumphs by fabricating a letter declaring that the Pharaoh owes Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, a huge sum of money. The conclusion of the story isn’t directly recorded. Within understanding of the poetry game of Modus Florum, the conclusion is clear. The Pharaoh is forced to acknowledge that Ahiqar’s poetic skill is sufficient to create a new story against the will of his listeners. The Pharaoh is delighted with Ahiqar. The Pharaoh gives him tribute not related to the size of the loan claimed in the fabricated letter.

In addition to the freely creative poetry game, the Pharaoh sets for Ahiqar more narrow technical challenges related generally to myth-making and story-telling. Simile set-ups challenge Ahiqar to make mythic figures from the dress of the Pharaoh and his counselors. Creating a castle in the air — the poetic figure that Augustine explicitly disparaged — the Pharaoh sets as a challenge for Ahiqar. A challenge involving the interrupted realism of mares and stallions Ahiqar counters similarly with interrupted realism of a cat and a rooster. Ahiqar solves correctly a this-for-that allegory concerning a pillar and associated items. The story of Ahiqar also includes the fantastic challenges of making a rope of sand and sewing together a broken millstone. These seem to be challenges taken from a literature of labors. Unlike heroes in the literature of labors, Ahiqar resolves his tasks mostly through linguistic creativity.

The Life of Aesop, written about the first century, highlights the poetry game of Modus Florum in adapting the Story of Ahiqar. The Life of Aesop expanded the challenge section relative to other sections in the Story of Ahiqar. It eliminated the rope of sand and the millstone sewing challenges. It moved the poetry game to be the concluding challenge.[9] The Life of Aesop thus concludes the Pharaoh’s challenges with Aesop demonstrating complete verbal mastery of his opponents:

King Nectanebo’s friends lied and said, “We’ve seen this and heard of it many times.” Aesop said, “I’m glad you authenticate it. Let him pay the money on the spot, for the due date is past.” King Nectanebo said, “How can you be witnesses to a debt that I don’t owe?” They {Nectanebo’s friends} said, “We’ve never seen or heard of it.” [10]

Aesop, like Ahiqar, made a new account — one never seen or heard before — despite his opponents’ determination to deny to him that creativity.

Compared to the Story of Ahiqar and the Life of Aesop, Modus Florum presents poetic creativity more artfully. Modus Florum means the song of flowers. It depicts poetic creativity not with a conventional monetary instrument, but with a story that prompts an emotional assertion of truth. It ends with the King and the Swabian becoming family through marriage. That’s story and fundamental human experience.[11]

Languishing
for love of you
I arose
at dawn
and made my way
bare-footed
across the snows
and cold,
and searched
the desolate seas
to see if I could find
sails flying in the wind,
or catch sight of the prow
of a ship.

{ Nam languens
amore tuo
consurrexi
diluculo
perrexi-
que pedes nuda
per niues et
per frigora
atque maria
rimabar mesta
si forte uentiuola
uela cernerem,
aut frontem nauis
conspicerem. }

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Update: I’m grateful to Professor Ioannis Konstantakos, a leading authority on the Story of Ahiqar and the Life of Aesop, not just for important work informing this article, but also for corrections to it.

Notes:

Prologue / epilogue: Psalms 39:2-3. Cambridge Songs {Carmina Cantabrigiensia} 14A, “Languising {Nam languens},” Latin text and English translation from Ziolkowski (1994) p. 69.

[1] Ovid, Amores, 3.6.17, from Latin trans. Ziolkowski (1994) p. 219.

[2] Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.7: ne subtracto fundamento rei gestae, quasi in aere quaeratis aedificare. Similarly, Sermon 8.1: ne substracto fundamento, in aere velle aedificare videamur (“or else after removing the foundation, we seem to seek to build on air”). On the history of Christian concern not to be building the Christian church in the air, see Lubac (2000) pp. 47-50.

[3] Cambridge Songs 15, Modus Florum  / “The lying ballad that I sing {Mendosam quam cantilenam ago},” Latin text and English trans. Ziolkowski (1994). The subsequent three quotes are similarly from id. Modus Florum {manner of flowers} is the title given to this song is the another manuscript in which it survives, W: Wolfenbuttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS 3610, codex Augustanus 8 56.16, also from the eleventh century. Id. pp. xi, pp. 218-9.

Modus Florum is the earliest known tale of the type “Hero forces the Princess to say ‘that is a lie'” (ATU 852, Uther (2004) p. 41). Ziolkowski (1994) p. 218. A broader tale type is “contest in lying” (ATU 1920, Uther (2004) p. 514). The earliest known tale within that type is The Tale of Truth and Falsehood, an Egyptian story attested about 3300 years ago. Konstantakos (2011) pp. 229-30.

[4] The philosopher Eubulides of Miletus (4th century BGC), a pupil of Euclid, formulated the paradox, “A man says: ‘What I am saying now is a lie.'” Better known is the Cretan Epimenides of Knossos (c. 600 BGC). He was said to have composed, “The Cretans, always liars.” That’s echoed in Titus 1:12-3. But Epimenides is described as a figure living before Plato formulated philosophy as a rival of poetry. The context in Epimenides and Titus isn’t paradoxical. Analysis of Epimenides’s statement in relation to paradox is an artifact of eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy.

[5] The phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV.  Coleridge sought to invoke “the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real.” Id.

[6] The contrast in quality between the honey and the peas and locating the royal charter at the hare’s rectum are striking poetic choices. For a brief review of ancient tales of marvels, Konstantakos (2011) p. 230.

[7] Modus Florum begins by presenting itself as a ridiculous trifle:

The lying ballad that I sing,
I will give (highly recommend) to little boys,
so that they may bring great laughter
to listeners through lying little measures of song.

Trans. Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 69, 71. The emphasis on lying seems to me programmatic, and the trivialization of the song, ironic.

[8] Story of Ahiqar, from Syriac trans. Conybeare, Harris & Lewis (1913) p. 119. On dating, id. p. 176. Ahikar is another common spelling for Ahiqar.

[9] The expansion and re-arrangement of the challenges (riddles) are described in Konstantakos (2013) pp. 11-4.

[10] Life of Aesop {Vita Aesopi}, from Greek trans. Lloyd Daly in Hansen (1998) p. 157. Kurke (2011) shows that the Life of Aesop provides important insights into the development of Greek prose from Herodotus in the fifth-century BGC. Modus Florum provides a similarly important perspective for understanding the development of poetry in relation to history.

[11] Modus Florum is not the work of merely a lyrical poet. The author of Modus Florum is closely associated materially, thematically, and stylistically with the author of the medieval Latin poem Modus Liebinc (Cambridge Songs 14), an early poetic version of the story of the snow child. Ziolkowski (1994) p. 219. Modus Liebinc provides forceful critique of unjust paternity attribution and forced fatherhood. Few persons throughout history have found potent means to speak about these continuing, oppressive social injustices.

[image] Photograph by Douglas Galbi.

References:

Conybeare, F. C., J. Rendel Harris, and Agnes Smith Lewis. 1913. The story of Ahikar from the Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Old Turkish, Greek and Slavonic versions. Cambridge: University Press.

Hansen, William F., ed. 1998. Anthology of ancient Greek popular literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Konstantakos, Ioannis M. 2011. “Ephippos’ Geryones: A comedy between myth and folktale.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 51 (3-4): 223-246.

Konstantakos, Ioannis M. 2013. Summary of Akicharos, vol. 3: The Tale of Ahiqar and the Vita Aesopi. Athens: Stigmi Publications.

Kurke, Leslie. 2011. Aesopic conversations: popular tradition, cultural dialogue, and the invention of Greek prose. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Lubac, Henri de. 2000. Medieval exegesis. Vol 2. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans.

Uther, Hans-Jörg. 2004. The types of international folktales: a classification and bibliography, based on the system of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica.

Ziolkowski, Jan M., ed. and trans. 1994. The Cambridge songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland Pub.

rape: a fundamental principle of communication economics

Rape of women has been regarded as a serious offense throughout recorded history. Like violence against men generally, rape of men has been a much less prominent public issue. Today’s highly developed communication media make rape an insightful case study in communication economics. A fundamental principle is readily apparent: public communication highly favors criminalizing men in relation to women.

In 2013 the United Nations conducted a major international survey of violence against women (but not violence against men). The survey asked each man surveyed whether he:

Had sexual intercourse with his partner when he knew she didn’t want it but believed that she should agree because she was his wife/partner. [1]

The United Nations should be able to imagine that some persons understand love to encompass mutual sexual self-sacrifice. Mutual sexual self-sacrifice includes having sex with your spouse/partner, even if you don’t feel like having sex, because you love the other person, and you both understand that love encompasses such sex.

The United Nations defined that kind of love as rape. Moreover, it only surveyed the extent to which men receive such love from women. It produced a report that generated headlines in major newspapers. The Guardian of Britain headlined: “Nearly quarter of men in Asia-Pacific admit to committing rape.”[2] Since the survey was gender asymmetric, there was no risk of labeling a large share of women rapists.

Bias toward declaring men rapists goes far beyond United Nations bureaucracy and sensational journalism. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a leading expert government agency for public health. It sponsors the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. That survey has repeatedly revealed that men suffer rape about as frequently as women do. That important fact hasn’t been effectively communicated publicly.

One can easily see within the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violent Survey the acute anti-men gender bias in public understanding of rape. That survey provides both lifetime and past-year recall surveys of sexual victimization. Lifetime recall is useful for producing shocking share-of-population statistics for press releases. Past-year recall has less cognitive biases and is more scientifically credible. For factual understanding, lifetime statistics should be ignored in reading the survey results.

The definition of rape greatly affects rape statistics. The survey reports “rape” with three sub-headings: “completed forced penetration,” “attempted forced penetration,” and “completed alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration.” So, if a man and a woman have a few drinks and then sex, the man, but not the woman, is defined in this categorization as a rapist. Some college sex-victimization experts explicitly support that gender bias in adjudicating actual sex-victimization claims. The survey reports a separate, non-rape category “other sexual violence.” Along with unwanted sexual banter, that category includes a sub-heading “made to penetrate” sexually another person. That’s how men are most frequently raped. That should count as real rape. Not including “made to penetrate” under rape shows anti-men gender bias in reporting rape.

According to the best available evidence, reasonably interpreted, women rape men more frequently than men rape women. For past-year recall, the 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violent Survey shows that 1.7% of men are made to penetrate another sexually. That should count as real rape. Under the survey’s categorization of rape, the past-year recall figures indicate that 1.6% of women are raped.[3] These figures indicate that, even outside of prisons and jails, men are raped more frequently than women are.

The figure for women raped, moreover, is inflated by definition. Within the 1.6% estimate of women raped, 1.0% of women are alcohol/drug-sex raped. By definition, no men can be alcohol/drug-sex raped. That’s completely unreasonable. In addition, women and men commonly engaged in alcohol-facilitated sex. Most persons do not regard such behavior as the man raping the woman. A reasonable, gender-neutral definition of alcohol/drug-sex rape is likely to be much less than 50% of the reported figure. Discounting for alcohol-facilitated consensual sex, the total share of women raped is likely to be less than 1.1%.

According to the best available evidence, reasonably interpreted, women rape men more frequently than men rape women. Regarding the perpetrators of sexual victimization of men, the survey report states:

For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%), and unwanted sexual contact (an estimated 54.7%). [4]

Those figures indicate that 1.4% of men were made to penetrate sexually by a woman perpetrator.[5] That’s higher than the reasonably adjusted share of women that are raped. Just as for women’s violence against men, women raping men generates much less public concern than does men raping women. The facts of rape victimization don’t support that gender disparity in public concern.

Public discussion of rape shows that public communication favors criminalizing men in relation to women. Rape is a crime with severity of punishment just below murder. Yet major newspapers unjustly label a large share of men as rapists. On the expert side of public communication, technical victimization surveys define and report rape in a way that highlights women rape victims and obscures men rape victims.

horse manure smells better than public discussion of rape

Public communication favoring criminalizing men relative to women has effects readily apparent in the incarcerated population. The U.S. currently holds in prisons and jails five times as many persons per capita as other high-income democracies do. Among persons incarcerated, men outnumber women ten to one. Men are no more naturally criminal than they are naturally business and political leaders. The lowliest victims of gender bias are incarcerated men.

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Notes:

[1] Fulu et al. (2013) p. 20.  The corresponding question for women asked whether she:

Had sexual intercourse when she did not want to because she was afraid of what partner might do

Thus, by the United Nations’ measure, if a woman has sex because she is afraid that her partner will go out drinking with his buddies if she doesn’t, then he has raped her.

[2] Hodal (2013).

[3] Breiding et al. (2014) Table 1, p. 5. Under the survey’s definition of rape, rape of men is too infrequent for a population share to be estimated, given the survey’s sample size. Such rape occurs, but it’s relatively infrequent.

[4] Id. pp. 5-6. Apparently the survey, under its gender-biased definition of rape, was able to estimate sex shares of persons raping men, but not the share of men raped.

[5] The share of men suffering rape from a woman making the man sexually penetrate her is (1.7% men made to penetrate sexually another person) x (82.6% of perpetrators of men made to penetrate sexually are women) = 1.4%. The share of men raped is thus at least 1.4%. To the extent that some share of “completed alcohol- or drug-facilitated” sex is declared to be women raping men, rather than exclusively men raping women, the share of men raped by women is higher than 1.4%.

[image] Horse manure. Photo by Douglas Galbi.

References:

Breiding,  Matthew J.,  Sharon G. Smith, Kathleen C. Basile, Mikel L. Walters, Jieru Chen, Melissa T. Merrick. 2014. “Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011.” Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Surveillance Summaries. September 5, 2014 / 63(SS08):1-18.

Fulu, Emma, Xian Warner, Stephanie Miedema, Rachel Jewkes, Tim Roselli, and James Lang. 2013. Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It? Quantitative Findings from the United Nations Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok:  United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and United Nations Volunteers (UNV).

Hodal, Kate. 2013. “Nearly quarter of men in Asia-Pacific admit to committing rape.” The Guardian (London). Sept. 10.

critical understanding of "lover’s gift regained" story motif

A story motif commonly known as “lover’s gift regained” is widely attested in Europe from the thirteenth century. That motif would be better called “man avoids paying for sex with woman.”[1] The motif transgresses entrenched gender asymmetries in sexual value and reverse commonly observed sex differences in guile. Sparkling amid the stories containing this motif is Decameron VIII.2. Using myth for good, Decameron VIII.2 ends in sexual mutuality and happiness.

Gender inequality in the socially constructed sexual value of men and women is deeply entrenched. Men paying women for sex has been prevalent historically. Women paying men for sex is much more rare. Even with intense public concern for gender equality today, women almost never take the initiative to ask men out, and, if not rejected, pay for dinner and entertainment. That gender inequality supports a society of female entitlement and female privilege.

Some men have temporarily subverted a requirement to pay a woman for sex. Consider a story written early in the thirteenth century:

A clerk rutted with a nobleman’s wife for the price of his cloak
and secretly carried away her pepper-mill.
The next day he returned, bringing back the pepper-mill, and in the husband’s presence
he said, “Give me back my cloak; I bring back your pepper-mill.”
“Give it to him,” the husband said. The wife answered, “I will give it to him,
but he will not grind again in our pepper-mill.”

{ Militis uxorem clamidis mercede subegit
Clericus, et piperis clam tulit inde molam.
Mane redit, referensque molam praesente marito,
Dixit, “mantellum redde, reporto molam.”
“Redde,” maritus ait: respondit foemina “reddam:
Amplius ad nostram non molit ille molam.” } [2]

While recognizing the fundamental gender inequality in men being cuckolded, this story shows the clerk to be superior in guile to the nobleman’s wife. The clerk implicitly created the fiction that he had left his cloak with the woman as security when borrowing her pepper-mill. That would explain his ability to request an exchange in the presence of her husband. The clerk’s fiction allowed him to avoid paying for sex with his cloak.

The nobleman’s wife, though tricked in that particular affair, re-affirmed dominant values. Her response allegorically declared that the clerk would not have sex with her again: “he will not grind again in our pepper-mill.” With the pronoun “our,” she underscored the false beliefs associated with cuckoldry. She also affirmed that her having sex with the clerk was contingent on her getting his cloak. The clerk subverted gender inequality in sexual value, but only temporarily.

mortar and pestle as means for lover's gift regained

Giovanni Boccaccio, a great humanist, took the motif “man avoids paying for sex with woman” a step forward. The first story of Decameron Day VIII features this motif. Neifile, the story-teller, was keen to promote belief that men are equal to women in guile. Her story ends with an affirmation that a clever man can have sex with a woman free of charge. That’s the standard conclusion of the motif.

The second story of Decameron Day VIII adds a mythic ending to the “man avoids paying for sex with woman” motif. In this story, the married woman Belcolore demanded five lire for sex with a priest. The priest gave Belcolore his cloak as security for that sex payment. After having sex with her, the priest sent a boy to borrow a stone mortar from Belcolore. In the evening, one of the priest’s assistants returned with the stone mortar. In the presence of Belcolore’s husband, he asked for the priest’s cloak given in security. Belcolore didn’t want to reveal that the cloak was security not for the borrowed mortar, but for payment for sex. She gave up the cloak and sent a coded message to the priest:

you’ll never pound any more sauce in her mortar again, considering how much you honored her with the one you made this time. [3]

That’s a similar ending to the thirteenth-century Latin story. Boccaccio, who knew well the give-and-take of mercantile society, had the priest send to Belcolore in response the message:

tell her if she won’t lend us her mortar, I’m not going to let her have my pestle.

Boccaccio’s story thus endorses the virtue of gender symmetry.

Boccaccio took his story beyond antagonistic gender symmetry. He added a coda:

Belcolore was furious with the Reverend Father and refused to speak to him right up to the grape harvest. Then, however, after the priest threatened to have her taken down and put into the very mouth of Great Lucifer himself, she got good and scared, and made peace with him over some new wine and roasted chestnuts. From then on, they had more than one good guzzle together, and to make up for the five lire, the priest not only had her tambourine re-covered with a new skin, but had a little bell hung on it, and then she was happy. [4]

The tambourine and the little bell figure Belcolore’s buttocks and the priest’s scrotum. In short, Belcolore and the priest enjoyed together drink and sex. The priest’s masculine sexuality gained value equal to the monetary sex-payment that Belcolore lost. That’s a wonderfully unusual fairy-tale ending.[5]

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Notes:

[1] In Thompson’s categorization, “lover’s gift regained” (man avoids paying for sex with woman) is motif K1581.Thompson (1960 ) v. 4, p. 411.

[2] Verses Concerning the Pepper-Mill {Versus de mola piperis}, Latin text from Wright (1846) vol. 1, p. 167, English translation adapted from Benson & Andersson (1971) p. 281. Id. translates subegit as “seduced.” Because “seduced” tends to carry anti-men connotations that subegit doesn’t, I’ve replace “seduced” with “rutted with” above. Id. describes the manuscript only as being at Trinity College, England.

[3] Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Day 8, Story 2, from Italian trans. Rebhorn (2013) p. 602. The subsequent two quotes are from id.

[4] Dominant ideology buttresses depreciation of men’s sexuality by claiming that reversing lack of receptivity to a man’s sexuality is a fantasy. That itself is a fantasy in service of dominant ideology.

[5] A version of the “man avoids paying for sex with woman” motif, as well as dominant sexual values projected into marriage (wife pays her husband for monetary debt by having sex with him) occur in “The Shipman’s Tale” of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Analogues associated with “The Shipman’s Tale” include Eustache d’Amiens’ “The Butcher of Abbeville {Du Bouchier d’Abevile}” (written in the thirteenth century), Giovanni Sercambi’s “Of Avarice and Lust {De Avaritia e Lussuria}” (early fifteenth century), Poggio’s “Of a peasant man who had a goose for sale {De rustico qui anserem venalem deferebat} (early fifteenth century), “The Priest and the Lady {Du Prestre et de la Dame}” (thirteenth century). Benson & Andersson (1971) provides original language texts and English translations for all these “Shipman’s Tale” analogues.

Ryner (2008) provides additional examples of “lover’s gift regained” mixed in with fashionable moral posing about “commodity fetishism” (monetary transactions, etc.). Critical energy would be much better directed at the current practice of imprisoning men for having consensual sex and being too poor to pay money to women for that sex.

[image] Mortar and pestle made by the Nisenan Maidu of California. Photo © Justin Smith / Wikimedia Commons, CC-By-SA-3.0.

References:

Benson, Larry D., and Theodore M. Andersson. 1971. The Literary Context of Chaucer’s Fabliaux: texts and translations. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Rebhorn, Wayne A., trans. 2013. Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. New York : W.W. Norton & Company.

Ryner, Bradley D. 2008. “Commodity Fetishism in Richard Brome’s A Mad Couple Well Matched and its Sources.” Early Modern Literary Studies 13.3.

Thompson, Stith. 1960. Motif-index of folk-literature; a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Wright, Thomas. 1846. Essays on subjects connected with the literature, popular superstitions and history of England in the Middle Ages. London: John Russell Smith and Adlard Printers.