Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages (review)

Abstract

Over four decades ago, while I was serving, initially, as a member of the U.S. Army of Occupation and, subsequently, as a "guest of the German Federal Republic," the following took place in the Herzogenaurach enlisted men's mess. A fellow soldier, about to leave for two weeks of furlough Stateside, was looking forward to Thanksgiving with his family. We were happy for him, but a corporal at our table was worried. We all used the participial adjective "mother-fucking" as a matter of course, prepositively, so to speak. It was as inevitable as our use of the definite article, in fact it probably helped establish our group identity. (Curiously, our Polish guard friends, who aped our "mother-fucking" perfectly, mastering all the expressive nuances we used, were hopeless in regard to the English definite article; they regularly stuck one in where it did not belong, or they failed to use it when it was required.) The corporal was afraid that when our buddy sat down to Thanksgiving dinner , he would blurt out: "Hey Mom, would you please pass the mother-fucking butter?" We agreed that this worry had substance, so we spent the evening drilling our homeward-bound friend, making him practice a speech free of "mother-fucking" (and other gros mots).