Kaye has a great post about research today, and it was very timely for me since last week I started a new story and realised there was a lot I didn't know about the period.
Anyway, for some odd reason today I gave my hero a codpiece. And the more I thought about it the more I wasn't sure he ought to have one. So I had a bit of a Google and stumbled across this most delicious site, Renaissance Dancewear which kept me enthralled with the history of this intriguing article of manly modesty.
But the bit which totally cracked me up was a snippet from Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", when apparently men's shirts became shorter thus ensuring all their unmentionables were on public display. I've pasted it in below for your educational pleasure!!!
Alas! some of them show the very boss of the penis and the horrible pushed-out testicles that look like the malady of hernia in the wrapping of their hose, and the buttocks of such persons look like the hinder parts of a she-ape in the full of the moon. And moreover, the hateful proud members that they show by the fantastic fashion of making one leg of their hose white and the other red, make it seem that half of their privy members are flayed. And if it be that they divide their hose in other colours, as white and black, or white and blue, or black and red, and so forth, then it seems, by the variation of colour, that the half of their privy members are corrupted by the fire of Saint Anthony, or by cancer, or by other such misfortune.
11 comments:
I love Chaucer - and wouldn't he have commented on todays fashion for young men to show half their pants by wearing their jeans so low? and the girls flashing their muffin tops and thongs? Nothing changes really.
Katie McAllister wrote a book.. Goodness I don't remember the title... something with Diary in it.. anyway in it the hero and heroine were doing a reality TV thing where he played a Duke and she the Duchess... he had to wear a codpiece and the Jewled penis holder got stuck on a table cloth... Funny!!! OMG wet my pants funny.
Okay, too busy laughing to comment...
LMAO!
LOL - love it. I feel as you've set me a challenge now. I really need a codpiece in one of my stories. Hmmm, just a thought. I wonder if they do double codpieces for sci-fi stories? ;)
This is just too funny, Christina! Love Chaucer too. But that codpiece idea is priceless. Like Shelley says now we are all going to need a codpiece in at least one story. Yeah, double ones too! (I wonder what Django would have done with one or two, lol!)
Nell that reminds me when I went jeans shopping with my son, I think it was a couple of years ago. He tried them on and had them slung real low, showing off his boxers. Of course being a good mummy I immediately tried to help him hike them up and both he and my daughter pitched fits!
OMG Catherine, a jewelled penis holder! hahhaa! Sounds a bit uncomfortable to me!!!
Helen, every time I read it I get the giggles. I don't know what this says about me!!!
A double codpiece!! Shelley you must definitely write one. And Kaye, that's sooo funny about Django! Not that he (or anyone else now I think about it!) seemed to mind letting them all hang out!!!
LOL, that was hilarious, Christina! ;)
Heheh, Cari! That first sentence is just so wonderfully visual!!!
Lol! Now I can't stop thinking about codpieces, heehee!
Thanks for stopping by my blog btw, and I really like what Angela did with your covers, too--she's great
Post a Comment