Rinaldo di Montalbano had it right:
"If the same ardour, if an equal fire
Draws and compels two people ever more
To the sweet consummation of desire
(Which many ignoramuses deplore)
Why should a woman by a fate so dire
Be punished who has done what men a score
Of times will do and never be blamed
Nay, rather, will be praised for it and famed?"
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, ix: 66
It doesn't take much to please me, but finding instances of proto-feminism and sexual progressiveness in a 16th-century epic totally makes my day.
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But the woman must be punished, for it is she who punishes all of society, which must suffer from the earthquakes she has caused with her promiscuity!
ReplyDeleteDay: made.
ReplyDeletei was looking for more examples of sexual equality in the middle ages, and guess what came up? Icelandic sagas! i think it's time i read the Laxdaela saga :)
ReplyDeleteThere was sexual equality in medieval Iceland because though slutty women may cause earthquakes, promiscuous men cause volcanoes. It all evens out in the end, really.
ReplyDelete