The Book of the Prick
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Love Academy is a Italian dialogued novel by Antonio Vignale, written in the mid 1520s, first published in Napels in the 1530s. It was translated by Alcide Bonneau into French and most recently by Ian Frederick Moulton in a scholarly English edition.
It is in a similar vein to the works of Pietro Aretino's Ragionamenti but the preponderance of homoeroticism is larger in in the Cazzaria.
- The idea that anal intercourse is "against nature" is, according to Arsiccio, "unknown to nature itself. If nature had wanted men not to engage in buggery, she would not have made the experience so enjoyable; or she would have made it physiologically impossible ... but in fact we see the opposite, for the anus receives the penis as easily as does the vagina.
The sophistry of the older man (as to why the testicles do not enter the cunt nor the asshole when fucking) only serves to the older man getting the younger man in bed in order to start a pederastic relationship.
Contents |
Speaking genitals episode
A political allegory is present the Cazzaria by way of a society anthropomorphic gentials: (Pricks, Cunts, Balls and Anuses) representing political fractions in contemporary Italy.
There are two varieties of cazzi: big ones and little ones; and two varieties of potte: ugly ones and beautiful ones.
- "La Cazzaria has earned Vignali a place of distinction among such notorious authors as Pietro Aretino and Antonio Rocco since many consider La Cazzaria the summit of sodomitic satire that inspired subsequent works of early modern pornography- Vignali's text is striking for the explicitly homoerotic nature of the dialogical interaction of the interlocutors, the fable and embedded dialogue of speaking genitalia that provide a critical political allegory of early sixteenth-century Siena.--Buranello
- The power struggle between the organs is expressed primarily through the contrasting opinions of various factions within the Cazzi. Cazzatello, "a very honest, wise and moderate cock" (142; "un cazzo molto giusto, savio e riposato" 112), begins his oration with a balanced and soothing tone, referring to his audience as "Honorable brothers and sisters" (142; "fratelli e sorelle onorande" 112), and invoking the idea of justice and stable government over chaos. His words were particularly effective on the Culi:
- (Arsiccio: [...] The Assholes, for their part, sighed with compassion at the beautiful and affectionate words of Cazzatello, to which they had listened with open-mouthed attention — it seemed that the wind had gone out of them. [Vignali, 77?^ Book of the Prick, 145])
- A similar description of the reaction of the Culi and Potte follows Cazzo Albagio's fiery condemnation of any sort of power sharing among the genitals. It elicited "a strong threatening shudder from the Assholes and the grinding of the lips of the Cunts".
- In the end the traitorous Coglioni are forever forbidden entry into either Culi or Potte whenever the Cazzi engaged in sexual activity.
Editions
Brandon House Library edition
The Brandon House Library translated it as The Love Academy, translated by Rudolph Schleifer.
Olympia Press edition
The source text of the Olympia Press edition is the legendary book known as "La Cazzaria," which translates as "The Book of the Prick." Also known in English as "Dialogue on Diddling," as translated by "Sir Hotspur Dunderpate of the Maidenhead Academy."
From the publisher Olympia Press
- Arsiccio and Sodo are two ambitious students at an Italian academy for fools and lovers, yet their conversational history of sensual science smacks of lecherous genius. Is it possible that they are putting us on? The Love Academy is the most creative and unusual sexual fantasy you will ever read. It is a highly imaginative work, full of wry wit, ribald humor, and even provocative food for thought. The dialogue is sharp, colorful, and thoroughly modern... yet The Love Academy was written more than four hundred years ago.
Routledge
From the Routledge edition:
- La Cazzaria is the most outspoken erotic text of the Italian Renaissance-a ribald dialogue about politics, sex, and desire written in 1525 by Antonio Vignali, a young Italian nobleman from Siena. Here, in the Rabelaisian depictions of personified genitalia and other bodily organs, a page of our sexual past is restored. La Cazzaria is at once a comic fable about bodies and desire, and an outrageous political allegory. Composed as a dialogue between two actual members of one of the most prestigious literary societies of 16th-century Italy, it is organized as a series of fifty-two questions on subjects ranging from anatomy, to psychology, linguistics, and psychology. The text is remarkable for its frank discussions of sexuality and explicit homoeroticism-especially when compared to other texts of the period-and for its sophisticated treatment of sexual and political power. Written for circulation among a group of educated young men, the dialogue's elitism and misogyny also offers a powerful and often disturbing picture of early modern gender relations. Outrageous and iconoclastic, La Cazzaria was a risqué and provocative text in its day, and remains so today. This first English translation is extensively annotated, and the volume includes a detailed and accessible introduction by Ian Frederick Moulton, author of Before Pornography, which provides a historical and intellectual context for this unfamiliar by fascinating text. La Cazzaria is at once a stunning literary achievement, and essential reading for anyone interested in the history of sexuality.
See also
- "The Hidden Ways and Means of Antonio Vignali's La Cazzaria," an essay by Robert Buranello[1]
- Antonio Vignale
- Cazzo
- Samuel Putnam
- Renaissance erotica
- Italian erotica
