Customer Reviews

Aretino's Dialogues

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This book is a great read. It is basically a catalogue of all the nasty tricks the author could think of men and women playing on one another -- a Renaissance battle of the sexes, told with great brio and style. It is deeply cynical and unrestrainedly profane, so anyone looking for tales of snow-white unicorns jumping over rainbows in dewy meadows should skip this title. Best to read it as a testament to its author's wit rather than as a historical document on morals and manners, though it certainly is a historical document and can be read that way. I had to put it down several times as I laughed so hard tears streamed from my eyes.

You have to keep reminding yourself as you read this book that it was written by a man. The characters are all female and Aretino must have had great fun attacking his own gender through them. One senses a genuinely female intuition and outrage... Aretino's intimate knowledge of sexual attitudes and politics would have made him a fascinating companion both in and outside the bedroom.

The book is in 3 parts... part 1 has Nanna the whore telling her friend Antonia about her adventures as a nun, a wife and a whore. At the end of part 1 they decide that Nanna's young daughter Pippa should choose whoredom over nunnery and wifery. Logically, in part 2 Nanna tells Pippa how to be a whore. In part 3 a procuress (bawd) tells both Nanna and Pippa about the trials and triumphs of bawdry.

If you are in a hurry you can skim or even skip part 1 -- it is the least interesting of the three parts and the rest of the book doesn't depend on it. Part 2 is absolutely brilliant, and part 3 is quite good also.

Be warned: Aretino's satire is not for the delicate reader, especially not for one shy about the doings and mis-doings between men and women. It's not for the anyone with "political correctness" issues either, with rampant sexism, anti-semitism, and every other ism-of bad taste that has a name.

Now that I've got your attention, this is a spectacular collection. If you read long enough, you'll see humorously ugly pictures painted of prostitutes and panderers, painted by a prostitute and a procurer respectively. You'll also see a somewhat misogynist view of faithless wives and an unpious view of what goes on behind monastery or abbey walls. After a while, though, you'll see the same anatomically crude wit turned on just about everyone else, too, including the low-lives who try to cheat the poor working girls, the hypocrites who enjoy their favors by night and revile them by day, broad stereotypes of men from different cities and regions, and from every profession known at the time. And, although Aretino protrays prostitutes as grasping sneaks, more interested in the ducat than in honesty acquiring it, he also paints a sympathetic view of the marginalized women, including the difficlty and danger of keeping bread on their tables.

Like Johnathan Swift, Aretino baits his social commentary with attractive humor - even if that humor has a much more bawdy, earthy thrust. Well, it works. I'm hooked on this thick collection. Aretino quietly expresses his highest hopes for civil behavior between men and women, hiding those hopes behind the lowest kind of ribaldry.

-- wiredweird