wayfarers in wonderland 545
joke, [just] laughed.” and with that demeaning laughter ringing in his ears
he slunk home to die “without anyone noting it.”5 a dead giveaway—for
the youth’s noble love and “heroic” gesture went unnoted, leaving only his
death and dishonor at the hands of a Venetian courtesan along with Ban-
dello’s cautionary tale of the evils dangers of the illicit world of Venetian
sex for unwary wayfarers.
Bandello’s negative vision of Venice comes through clearly in this tale.
yet, at the same time it underlines a widely shared contemporary percep-
tion that the sexual life of the city, especially its world of illicit sex, made it
a special place and an attraction that was particularly alluring, especially
for young men. of course, this was in its own way just another aspect of
the renaissance myth of Venice that has been so extensively studied for
its political and social dimensions. But concomitant with the celebration
of the city as a unique polity and society, there existed a developing myth
of Venice as a pleasure city that attracted wayfarers from across europe
that would grow yet greater with time. Bandello’s tale, however—where
nothing rings quite as one might expect—with its strangely selective
prostitute, her bevy of suitors rather than clients, and her would-be lover
victim leaves one wondering what realities stood behind that developing
myth in renaissance Venice. What were its sexual practices, how did they
interrelate with the more famed illicit sexual world or worlds of the city,
and how unusual was its sexual life in the context of other italian renais-
sance cities?
studying the sexual life of renaissance Venice one finds many things
that at first sight seem quite familiar and that might lead one to think
that there is little to be said about the history of sex in the city. But as one
begins to look more closely at everyday sexual practice and the worlds
of illicit sex there, to return to a metaphor that i used in The Boundaries
of Eros now more than 25 years ago, one begins to feel rather like alice
in Wonderland: things appear to be familiar, but on closer examination
they keep turning out to be not quite what they seem.6 in a way rather
5 ibid., p. 40.
6 Michel foucault and his followers in many ways set the agenda for the study of the
history of sex in the West; see his seminal work, The History of Sexuality, An Introduction,
vol. 1, trans. robert hurley (new york, 1990), originally published in french in 1976. one of
his most controversial claims was that there was no sex before the modern period, when
modern disciplines defined and at the same time disciplined our modern conception of it.
This brief summary hardly does justice to the complexity of his position, but in some ways
it might be argued that it was less radical than it seems. in fact, if we accept the idea that
sex and sexual practice are not simple biological givens but also involve cultural constructs