Thursday, February 2, 2012

Illustration from a Learned Attack on Erasmus

M.A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (1997; rpt. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), p. 250:
A learned attack on Erasmus by Lopis Stunica sports a printer's ornament with a mannequin-pisse on one side and, on the other, a woman copiously, vigorously and vividly breaking wind. Are such things so routine that compositors set them up without a second thought, or is there a conscious mixture of the grossly earthly and the highly spiritual?21

21. Lopis Stunica, Annotationes contra D. Erasmum Roterodamum, Conrad Resch, Paris, 1522.
Here is the title page, with "mannequin-pisse" at top left and "woman copiously, vigorously and vividly breaking wind" at top right:

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