Fondling on the kitchen table – Artefacts,sexualities and performative metaphors from the 15th to the 17th centuries

Abstract

The term ‘sexual metaphor’ consists of two elements: sexuality and metaphor. Both individually and together provide a perspective on material culture, and particularly on the current discussions on the relations between humans, things and materiality. Using such relatively common objects as cock taps, bollock daggers and redware pipkins as examples, the article examines sexual metaphors in material culture from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Sexual metaphors – such as touching a barrel tap, or thrusting a bollock dagger – did not have hidden meanings. Instead, as situations they express the entanglement of two domains of practice, connecting everyday objects and repetitive practices with conceptions of sexuality and, for example, humoral theories about the human body.