« Comment a nom » : nommer et représenter le sexe féminin chez les poètes de la première Renaissance

Using wordplay, Clément Marot expressed his difficulty in describing the female sex. Around the same period, successful attempts were made in the “blasons du con”, composed at a time when medicine brought a finer knowledge of female anatomy. The wordplay gives a glimpse of this anatomy, but transposes it into an imaginary world without breaking from the Middle Ages. Behind the pleasure of the description is a kind of eroticism of language, supported by recurring style figures. But this poetic game can be dangerous: the poet is exposed to censorship, more or less consciously, because the notion of obscenity is relative. Political issues may explain why the reception of images of the female sex oscillates between shadow and light.