Sexual symbolism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- “All art is erotic. The first ornament that was born, the cross, was erotic in origin. The first work of art, the first artistic act which the first artist, in order to rid himself of his surplus energy, smeared on the wall. A horizontal dash: the prone woman. A vertical dash: the man penetrating her.” Ornament and Crime" by Adolf Loos, tr. Michael Bullock
Psychology has found that people, and even animals, can respond to symbols as if they were the objects they represent.
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History
Ancient times
Agriculture and topography have been popular sources of sexual symbolism from Ancient times.
Havelock Ellis noted in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) (1927) that
- "for the Latins especially the whole process of human sex, as well as the male and female organs, constantly presented itself in symbols derived from agricultural and horticultural life. The testicles were beans (fabæ) and fruit or apples (poma and mala); the penis was a tree (arbor), or a stalk (thyrsus), or a root (radix), or a sickle (falx), or a ploughshare (vomer). The semen, again, was dew (ros). The labia majora or minora were wings (alæ); the vulva and vagina were a field (ager and campus), or a ploughed furrow (sulcus), or a vineyard (vinea), or a fountain (fons), while the pudendal hair was herbage (plantaria)."
Shakespeare
Shakespeare often incorporated phallic symbols into his plays; swords and knives, for example, were phallic symbols representing the masculinity of their wielders. For example, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus says to his fiancé Hippolyta "I wooed thee with my sword"
Somatopia
Somatopia is an 18th century literary genre which compared women to topography.
19th century research
Life Symbols As Related To Sex Symbolism
Psychoanalytic theory
Common psychological symbols include a gun to represent a penis or a tunnel to represent a vagina (David G. Myers, Psychology, Worth Publishers; 7th edition (June 6, 2004))
- "Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank interpreted that smooth walls . . . correspond to erect human bodies" and "staircases . . . represent the sexual act, while cellars and corridors stand for the female sexual organ." --The Haunted Screen
Male and female
Phallic symbolism
Cylindrical, tubular forms and protrusions, such as stalks, sticks, rods, trees and towers. Also animals such as the snake, see serpent symbolism.
Yonic symbolism
Hollow and concave forms such as shells, holes, caves, tunnels, grottoes and cavities.
Sexual symbolism as euphemism
The use of euphemisms is at its highest in sexual matters. Sexual euphemisms are used to denote the sexual act or the genitalia.
A line of dialogue from Aretino's Reasonings, for example, argues for the abandonment of sexual euphemisms and sexual symbolism in literature and is in favour of calling a spade a spade:
- "Speak plainly, and say cu', ca', po' and fo' [two-letter abbreviations for culo, cazzo, potta and fottere] ; otherwise thou wilt be understood by nobody, if it be not by the Sapienza Capranica, with thy rope in the ring, thy obelisk in the Coliseum, thy leak in the garden, thy key in the lock, thy pestle in the mortar, thy nightingale in the nest, thy dibble in the drill, thy syringe in the valve, thy stock in the scabbard, and the stake, crosier, parsnip, little monkey, the this, the that, the apples, the Missal leaves, the affair, the verbi gratia, the thing, the job, the story, the handle, the dart, the carrot, the root and the shit, mayst thou have it! ... I shall not say in the snout, since thou wilt walk on the tips of thy shoes. Well, say yes for yes, and no for no, or else keep it to yourself." --Aretino's Reasonings, tr. Peter Stafford.
See also
- Sexual euphemism
- Sexual ritual
- Symbolism
- Human sexuality
- Fertility symbol
- Life Symbols As Related To Sex Symbolism
- Sex symbol
- Phallic symbol
- Baseball metaphors for sex
- The birds and the bees
- Apple (symbolism)
- Forbidden fruit
- Language is full of metaphorical symbols of sex (Havelock Ellis)
- Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5[1] (1927) by Havelock Ellis
