The Unpleasant Woman flax: she all the time holds so much in her mouth, that her palate becomes slimy; in her lip there is always some piece of the threads that she bites. She smells just like leather-based when it’s tanned, or like a dead canine, or like the nest of a vulture: her odor is sufficient to grease the field (now, assume, what a remedy!) and he or she has escaped from the grave; she at all times has asthma and a cough and she endears me with it. If she grabs the flask, she drinks all of it like a sponge, she even needs me to kiss her. I reproach her: ‘Come on, go away!’ and but she acts loopy around me. She can not dangle her soul through the teeth, on the grounds that she simplest has one for medicine; her eyes supply out no light, and are full of tartar. Divine spirit drips all the way down to her chest; her throat is so withered and dry, that it seems like a woodcock’s beak. There are as many wrinkles in her cheeks, as there are stars within the sky; her withered and empty breasts look like worn out cloth. In her pants there’s no hair, her belly can also be made into an ps more than mules when she circles round me.)

The act of contemplating the poet with pleasure, summed up in the verb ‘vagheggiare,’ in Delcorno Branca’s phrases ‘verbo per eccellenza del galateo amoroso’ (196) (verbs through definition of the love/courtly etiquette), is in itself an oxymoron

Delcorno Branca traces precisely the Latin and vernacular antecedents at play on this ballad (191–2), but finds the true edition in Poliziano’s poor descriptio mulieris within the ode ‘In Anum.’ The language within the ballad is wealthy in borrowings from medieval life like poetry. The outdated girl is ‘vizza’ just like the ‘vecchiuzza’ of Niccola Muscia, and her ‘puzzo’ recalls Rustico’s ‘buggeressa’; the dripping nostril and the eyes ‘tutti orlati di tonnina’ are a memory of Beroe, whereas the adjective ‘scrignuta’ right away calls to thoughts the ‘scrignutuzza’ of Guido Cavalcanti, a poet in particular revered by way of Poliziano. The ballad centres on the transgressive attitude of the old hag who courts the poet. An unsightly, previous, and disgusting woman who’s associated with such an process can simplest name up abhorrence, rejection (‘Io la sgrido: ‘Oltre va’ giaci!’), and laughter within the male topic. Her advances are usually not restricted to the ‘vagheggiare’or ‘vezzeggiare’ but go so far as to request the poet’s kisses (‘e vuole anche ch’i’ la baci’). Yet the independence and self-assertiveness displayed via this feminine figure are tense to the male poet. The narrator’s response to the outdated hag’s advances is one in all whole rejection, and yet the specified and meticulous

As Lois Banner factors out, it was once now not an unknown observe for growing older women to hire younger males for sexual purposes, when they may now not appeal to men on their very own (172)

description of her private parts (‘poppe vizze e vote,’ ‘nelle brache non ha pelo, / della peccia fa grembiale’) would point out first-hand expertise slightly than vivid creativeness.65 Even if the textual content does not overtly name this old girl a prostitute, her express requests, together with another transgressive behaviour, level in that direction. Excessive ingesting, for instance (‘s’a un tratto el fiasco impugna, / tutto ‘l suga come spugna’), used to be conventional of prostitutes. As Lyndal Roper has shown in her historic study, prostitutes frequently frequented taverns and were dedicated to extreme consuming.sixty six The activity of spinning, in proverbial tradition a typical occupation of retired prostitutes, reinforces the identification of this previous lady as a prostitute.sixty seven The ‘vecchia’ just isn’t known as witch within the poem, however her acts of spinning and drinking implicitly link her with the witch as she regarded in the Latin custom. In Ovid’s Amores, for instance, the previous prostitute Dipsas now not most effective drinks to extra but in addition knows the entire arts of witchcraft.68 This ballad is a adaptation on the standard descriptive vituperation towards the disgusting previous hag; as in Cammelli’s sonnet, the poet/narrator is conversing with an imaginary target market invited to take part in her mocking.69 Poliziano once more assumes the persona of the persecuted male in the Latin ode 9 ‘In Anum,’ a textual content in particular indebted to Horace’s epode 12. Opposite to the ballad, right here the emphasis is on the previous girl’s extreme lust and on ‘l’aspetto ributtante e libidinoso della vecchia’ (‘the revolting and lustful aspect of the outdated girl’) (Delcorno Branca, 194). ‘In Anum’ fits more effectively within the style of the vituperatio vetulae, since from the opening line the poet invokes the facility of the verses to help him elude the obscene outdated lady. right Here disgust and the minute description of bodily ugliness are intently linked to classical models and medieval Latin rhetoric (e.g., Beroe): Huc huc, jambi! Arripite mi jam mordicus Anum hanc furenti percitam libidine, Tentiginosam, catulientem, spurcidam, Gravedinosam, vietam, olentem, rancidam. (Opera Omnia, 271) (Here, here iambs, get off my kissbrides.com significant hyperlink teeth the livid previous woman, excited, lustful, in warmth disgusting, flaccid, malodorous.)