The Rise and Fall of Seigneur Dildoe: the Figure of the Dildo in Restoration Literature and Culture
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The Rise and Fall of Seigneur Dildoe: The Figure of the Dildo in Restoration Literature and Culture by Sandra A. Friesen B.A., University of Western Ontario, 2005 M.A., University of Western Ontario, 2006 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English ©Sandra A. Friesen University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permissions of the author. ii The Rise and Fall of Seigneur Dildoe: The Figure of the Dildo in Restoration Literature and Culture by Sandra A. Friesen B.A., University of Western Ontario, 2005 M.A., University of Western Ontario, 2006 Supervisory Committee Dr. Robert Miles, Supervisor Department of English Dr. Eric Miller, Departmental Member Department of English Dr. Andrea McKenzie, Outside Member Department of History iii Abstract Seigneur Dildoe, as this dissertation will contend, was a fixture in Restoration literature and culture (1660-1700). But what was his provenance, by what means did he travel, and why did he come? This dissertation provides a literary history of the fascinating and highly irreverent dildo satire tradition, tracing the dildo satire’s long and winding progress from antiquity to Restoration England, where the tradition reached its early modern zenith. Adding breadth, context, and texture to existing treatments of the trope’s political and sexual potency, this dissertation investigates the dildo satire’s roots in both Greek comedy (Aristophanes, Herodas) and Latin invective (Martial, Juvenal), its influential association in early modern Italy with Catholicism and monastic life (Aretino), and its introduction in early modern England (Nashe), where it cropped up in the works of a surprising number of literary giants (Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Marvell). In Restoration England, we find in the satiric dildos of Butler, Rochester, and the contextually rich “Seigneur Dildoe” articulations of a dildo gone viral: the mock-heroic Seigneur deployed as a politically central motif symptomatic of its society’s acute patriarchal fissures. Throughout I argue that the dildo satire’s longevity is due not to a uniformity of purpose or signification (misogynist, anti-Catholic, emasculating, or otherwise), but to its innate versatility and ambiguity as a fugitive sexual and political figure. I also argue that what does in fact unite the satiric dildo’s variety of contingent ends, against what has been assumed in the scholarship, is its status as a markedly anti-Phallic figure. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee… ......................................................................................... ii Abstract… .................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ...................................................................................................... iv Dedication… .............................................................................................................. v Chapter One .............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................. 33 Chapter Three ........................................................................................................... 96 Chapter Four… .......................................................................................................... 130 Chapter Five… ........................................................................................................... 160 Chapter Six ................................................................................................................ 185 Epilogue .................................................................................................................... 232 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 237 v Dedication To my teachers: thank you. And to Hannah and Austen, my two pillars of support. Chapter One: Introduction O! all yee young Ladyes of merry England, That have been to kisse the Dutchesse’s Hand, I pray you, enquire, the next tyme you doe goe For a Noble Italian call’d Seigneur Dildoe. This Seigneur Dildoe was the chiefe of the Trayne, That came, to conduct her safe over the Maine; I could not in Conscience, but let you all know The happy arrivall of Seigneur Dildoe. … You will take him at first for noe Person of Note Because hee’le appeare in a plaine Leather-Coate, But when you his virtuous Abilityes know, You’le fall downe, and worship this Seigneur Dildoe.1 Sometime in late 1673, not long after a shipment of French dildos had been seized and burned by English customs and the English heir James, duke of York had married an Italian Catholic princess, the clandestine satire “Seigneur Dildoe” glibly announced that an unassuming Seigneur had arrived in England and was there to stay. The ladies of the realm, claimed the knowledgeable satirist, had only to ask their new Catholic Duchess and future Queen for his whereabouts. Soon, virtually every Restoration peeress of note was depicted in the satire as a friend of the euphemized Seigneur, and courtiers clamoured to acquire a copy of the poem’s 1 “Seigneur Dildoe”, 1-4, 13-16, Oxford Bodleian MS Don. b8 (henceforth Od8 following the sigla of Harold Love, English Clandestine Satire 1660-1702). Because I wish to retain the integrity of the many distinct versions and spellings of “Seigneur Dildoe” and view the poem as a multiform tradition, the tradition as a whole is largely referred to as “SD” in this dissertation except where this would cause a lack of clarity or where a particular manuscript version and/or titular spelling is intended. When quoting from “SD” I also default to Od8, except where otherwise indicated (see Bibliography for list of manuscript sigla). When referring to the Restoration trope of the dildo as Seigneur Dildoe, I favour the earliest French spelling for consistency’s sake. 2 agglomerative versions, many of which were carefully preserved in manuscript miscellanies whose unadorned leather bindings concealed, like the Seigneur’s own leather coat, the risqué riches within. In 1675, one particularly enterprising courtier, Charles Sackvile, Earl of Dorset, took the conceit so far as to deliver one of the French-imported dildos sold among dolls and perfumes on the Exchange to one of the Duchess’ Ladies of Honour, Frances Sheldon. The joke became public knowledge, as it was undoubtedly intended to, when the note appended to the delivered dildo was allegedly dropped by an unlucky Sheldon and picked up by an indiscreet Earl of Middlesex. It read: Mush Honord Madame Me ha here wit sent yr good Laship de dildoa & de Beel in wch me ha prized all things so ver shepe dat (me assure you) me be like to gett but ver ver little by dis emloy: for me <rest lost through trimming>.2 Among the most immediate observations we might make about these satirical anecdotes is the dildo’s alleged relation to and ubiquity among Restoration women: “SD” is, after all, addressed to the women of England, even as a dildo is addressed individually to the unlucky Frances Sheldon and to countless other English ladies in the “SD” stanzas which follow its general opening. Additionally, we might remark that in both examples overtones of bawdry, irony, and mischief predominate, as does the satirists’ concern with narrating the dildo’s provenance as a foreign Catholic import (down to a forged, French-accented delivery note in the case of Frances 2See Harold Love, ed., Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 477-8; MS Osborn b 54, 933. 3 Sheldon). Happily, in many senses, the satirists’ concern with the dildo’s early modern origins and affiliations mirrors our own, seeming blithely to answer many of the questions modern scholarship might wish to ask about the dildo’s provenance and signification; yet just as happily, the dildo narratives woven into these accounts are indeed carefully curated, highly ironic fictions, often raising more questions than they answer despite their apparent candour.3 The sexual politics of Seigneur Dildoe in history and criticism Accounts of the long-eighteenth century dildo trope and “Seigneur Dildoe” in particular – as the first extant satire in the English language devoted entirely to the topic of dildo use - have appeared sporadically but consistently within the history and criticism of sexuality over the past several decades. These are with few exceptions divisible into two often mutually- exclusive approaches: those which interpret the early modern dildo trope as an androcentric, phallocentric affirmation of male sexual and social dominance, and those which herald the trope as a proto-feminist, proto-modern emblem and tool of female agency. Strengthened by the legacy of Randolph Trumbach’s work on the sodomite as a third gender in eighteenth-century England, specifically by Trumbach’s assertion that expressions of female sexualities hardly existed outside of conventional heterosexual marriage before the end of the long eighteenth century,4 much scholarship on male sexualities and of sexual themes in male-authored satires on women have tended to approach representations of female dildo use, 3 See Steven N. Zwicker, “Irony, Modernity, and Miscellany: