Reading the Dirty Bits

Author / Editor
Taylor, Andrew.

Title
Reading the Dirty Bits

Published
Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Sexuality in the Premodern West (Toronto; Buffalo, N.Y.; and London: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 280-95.

Description
Cites E. Talbot Donaldson's appreciation of May in MerT as an example of "iconologia," sexualized analysis or penetration of art or literature. Sexual titillation in reading is evident in medieval manuscripts and in modern responses to medieval works, perhaps helping us explore and understand a suppressed aspect of Western culture that is still with us.

Alternative Title
Desire and Sexuality in the Premodern West.

Chaucer Subjects
Merchant and His Tale.