546 guido ruggiero
like Bandello’s young wayfarer, but from a more modern point in time, we
too find ourselves wayfarers in wonderland, where wonder in its classic
meaning invokes a sense of strangeness and disorientation before what at
first seems familiar, much as was the case for lewis carroll’s alice. and
although we perhaps may not be so easily fooled into believing Venetian
courtesans will perform like lombard prostitutes, there are a host of things
that at first seem simple and familiar in renaissance Venice that, when
looked at more closely, evoke this sense of wonder, some things merely
strange, some more challenging and troubling. so, in a way, in seeking to
understand sex in renaissance Venice, we too, like Bandello’s unnamed
lombard, will be wayfarers in wonderland.
Perhaps the best place to begin is by looking at another literary text
apparently written in the first half of the 16th century in Venice by an
anonymous author who claimed it was true, based on actual events. This
comedy, La veniexiana, although never performed and not discovered
until recently, is particularly interesting for its graphic portrayal of the
sexual desires and practices of two noble Venetian women, angela, a
young widow, and Valiera, a young newlywed, and the love object they
fight over, Giulio, a young upper-class dandy from Milan—yet another
wayfarer in what he hoped would be for him the sexual wonderland of
Venice.7 he, like Bandello’s unhappy hero, came to Venice seeking sexual
pleasure and, like him, was prepared to pay for it. But his highest desire
was that his youthful good looks and mannerly ways would win him the
love of a more difficult prize, a Venetian noblewoman. and, in fact, he
had encountered at a party at a convent a young newlywed Venetian of
the highest rank, Valiera who had captured his heart. But already one is
struck by the sensation that we are on the wrong side of the looking glass.
for what, one might well ask, was Giulio doing falling in love at a convent
party? Were not convents supposed to be places of withdrawal from the
world, where virgin brides of Jesus served God? certainly they should not
that interpret and make sense of a diverse range of passions, emotions, and biological
“givens,” it becomes clear that there can be a history of those constructs and that they were
not always seen as they are seen today. from that perspective we are, in the end, saying
much the same thing that foucault claimed without, however, necessarily accepting his
hypothesis that modern disciplines were the key to the way we see sex today. for a fuller
discussion of my vision of foucault’s theories on sex, see ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love,
especially pp. 6–8, 19–21 and relevant notes. for a thoughtful rethinking of foucault’s ideas
on the subject by one of his leading followers, see david halperin, How to do the History of
Homosexuality (chicago, 2002) especially the essay, “forgetting foucault,” pp. 24–47.
7 La veniexiana [The Venetian Comedy], in laura Giannetti and Guido ruggiero, ed. and
trans., Five Comedies From the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2003), pp. 285–321.