Detachable Penises and Holes in Knowledge: Reading Exeter Riddles 44 and 62 Alongside Le Fevre de Creil [ The Blacksmith of Creil ] and Jean Bodel’s Le Sohait des Vez [ The Dream of Cocks ]

Abstract

In this essay, I read two suggestive Exeter Riddles, 44 (“Key/Phallus”) and 62 (“Borer/Poker/Phallus”), which are connected though their use of the figure of a detached penis, in order to counter conventional interpretations that claim containment of the dangerous eroticism with a safe solution. I argue that the separable phalluses in motion in the two Old English enigmas communicate the instability and reversibility of the master/servant relations; the existence of holes in our knowledge as both pleasurable and threatening possibilities; the intertwining of the erotic and non-erotic in the language; and the implication of the reader in the power games set up by the texts. After comparing instances of penile detachment and proliferation in two fabliaux, Le Fevre de Creil [The Blacksmith of Creil] and Jean Bodel’s Le Sohait des Vez [The Dream of Cocks], I conclude that Exeter Riddles 44 and 62 emerge as less graphic than the late-medieval French comic narratives, but also less restrictive in envisioning the varied forms of human sexuality.

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