The Fruit-Shop, a Tale is an anonymous work of satire with erotic themes printed at London by C. Moran in 1765.[1] A second edition was printed in 1766 for J. Harrison, near Covent Garden.[2] The text is, for the most part, an allegorical and discursive disquisition on the "Fruit-Shop", as the author calls woman, or rather on those parts of her which are more particularly connected with fruit-bearing.[3]
Frontispiece
To the first volume there is a curious, roughly engraved frontispiece, signed C. Trim fect., representing a garden scene; before a temple of oriental design stands a yew tree shaped like a phallus, above which two Cupids hold a wreath in form of the female organ; a man, dressed in academic robes, and leaning on an ass, points to the phallic tree, while a boy squirts at him with a syringe.[4] The chief figure in this frontispiece is intended for the "distinguished personage" to whom the volume is dedicated: Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy (the book on which the ass treads in the frontispiece).[5]
Contents
The work is divided into four parts.[3] The first treats of the Garden of Eden, its probable position on the globe, etc.[3] The second part relates to what happened after the Fall, the invention of the Fig-leaf, etc., and goes on to treat of Love, Marriage, Cuckoldom, and "The Unnaturalists, or Deserters of the Fruit-Shop".[3] Part III consists of a review of the "unwearied passion for the Fruit-Shop" among the Romans, beginning with Jupiter and ending with Julius Caesar.[3] In the fourth part are chapters on "Odd Conceptions", Celibacy, and Flagellation as a "Bye-Way to Heaven".[3] Other matters discoursed upon are Macerations, "Mahomet no Fool", Platonism, Eunuchism, and the "Philo-gonists, the truly Orthodox".[6]
The Appendix and Notes close the second volume.[6] In them is described "The Fruit-Shop of St. James' Street", where "matters never proceed further in this chaste domain than to a kiss or a feel, transiently and with the greatest decorum"; the object, title, etc., of the work are explained; and, finally various quotations, in different languages, upon women's breasts.[7]
Appraisal
According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, "The manner and humour of Swift and Sterne seem to have been aimed at; sarcasms and covert inuendos [sic] on living personages are frequent; and digressions are freely indulged in; but the wit and true satire of these writers are never attained."[3]
References
Sources
- Ashbee, Henry Spencer [Pisanus Fraxi] (1885). Catena Librorum Tacendorum. London: privately printed. pp. 107–12.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. - Harvey, Karen (2004). Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 5, 52, 86, 95, 98, 114, 133, 139, 143, 144, 150, 152, 184–5, 190, 204, 206, 207, 212, 213. ISBN 9780521822350.
- Peakman, Julie (2003). "Sexual Utopias in Erotica". Mighty Lewd Books. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 118–19, 221. doi:10.1057/9780230512573_6. ISBN 9781349512041.
Further reading
- Harvey, Karen (August 2002). "The Substance of Sexual Difference: Change and Persistence in Representations of the Body in Eighteenth-Century England". Gender & History. 14 (2): 208–9, 214–15, 217. doi:10.1111/1468-0424.00263. PMID 17494216. S2CID 24055522.
- Sambrook, James (22 September 2005). "Franciscans [Monks of Medmenham] (act. c. 1750–c. 1776)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/71306. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
This page was last edited on 26 September 2023, at 11:24