Bosoms!
Chris Onstad is a genius, but this week I think he might have underestimated how rude 17th-century cheap print could be. For example, see Early Modern Whale on 17th century porn, or the effects of coffee (even I was surprised by the mention of dildos there!). At Mercurius Politicus there’s a pamphlet war involving woodcuts of she-devil toilet sex, while Ovid’s Ars Amatoria was one of the things guranteed to irritate a puritan. In Agnes Bowker’s Cat David Cressy dated the first picture of an erect penis in English popular print to 1641. And here are some breasts (illustrating the story of a very promiscuous woman) from LOL Manuscripts. Also in this old post (more popular with Google searchers than anything else I’ve ever written) I looked at how the Old Bailey Proceedings described two bestiality cases in more detail than was strictly necessary. The kind of prudishness parodied in Achewood is more often associated with the Victorians (and that might well be a myth that annoys 19th century specialists), but it could occur in 17th century print too. At LOL Manuscripts there’s a really bizarre example where a pamphlet has an uncensored picture of ass kissing but refuses to spell out the word “arse”!
So yes, people in the 17th century had sex, looked at porn, and used dildos. These are just some of the things that didn’t get mentioned in traditional historiography because they weren’t “proper” history.
Pingback by Carnivalesque 50 « Mercurius Politicus — 10:17 pm, 24 May 2009 [permanent link to this comment]
[...] Investigations of a Dog compiles evidence of how people in the early modern period “had sex, looked at porn, and used dildos”. [...]
Pingback by Airminded · History Carnival 77 — 11:35 am, 1 June 2009 [permanent link to this comment]
[...] following may not be safe for work! Early modern print culture. Great War poetry. Prehistoric [...]