Sex, marriage, and prostitution in late medieval and early modern literature, with a focus on Poggio Bracciolini and sixteenth-century German jest narratives (Schwänke)

Even though much of medieval and early modern literature focused on the theme of courtly love, it indirectly also addressed sex. We would blind ourselves if we ignored this hidden but significant fact. But where and when did poets ultimately come out of their hiding and address the broad theme of sexuality more directly? We could ask this question also pertaining to the history of art, for instance, but in literature across Europe, at the latest since the thirteenth century (fabliaux), sexual activities were a common topic at least in certain genres. When we turn to the fifteenth century, we discover that poets strongly intensified that discourse (Oswald von Wolkenstein, Poggio Bracciolini, or the poets of the anonymous Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles). And when we examine the genre of the sixteenth-century jest narratives (Schwänke), we recognize that traditional notions of shame, embarrassment, shyness, purity, and official decency were hardly valid any longer. It was common to talk about prostitutes, to laugh about sexual affairs, and to discuss even genitalia, at least in literature geared for the ordinary consumer, such as the urban middle class and the intellectual elites. Most likely, the same applied to the rural population, but we do not have enough evidence for them. Much of early modern humorous literature was predicated on marital problems commonly created by different needs in matters of sexuality, and hence on countless cases of transgression.