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“Benedicite! What eyleth the man, so synfully to swere?” said Chaucer’s Parson in The Canterbury Tales, while Dan Michel, in his 14th-century self-help manual Ayenbite of Inwyt, warned: “Hi hise clepieþ ydele wordes ac hi ne byeþ. Ac hi byeþ of grat cost and harmuolle and perilous.” (I’m not certain that I follow, but regardless, imagine if your parents had chastised you in such a manner when you were a kid! My response would have been: “The value of your words is primarily philological, Dad.”)
During the 1960 obscenity trial over Lady Chatterley’s Lover, prosecutor Mervyn Griffiths-Jones reportedly said, “Would you want your wife or servants to read this book?” Had I seen the chart he had presented to the court — see below — my answer would have been “Yes,” giving away the fact that I cheated and read the final chapter of Ulysses without finishing the rest of the book, apparently missing “cunty” in the process.
| Word | Lady Chatterley’s Lover | Ulysses | Finnegans Wake |
|---|---|---|---|
| * Note that this count is constituted by exact words, and does not include variants (like Wakeisms) or cases where a given word occurs within a longer or compounded word (e.g., “shite,” or the more unusual “cunty,” both of which appear four times in Ulysses): thus, the two incidents of “fuck” in Ulysses do not account for the use of “fucking.” | |||
| fuck | 30 | 2 | 0 |
| cunt | 14 | 1 | 0 |
| balls | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| shit | 6 | 4 | 1 |
| arse | 3 | 10 | 1 |
| piss | 3 | 4 | 1 |
This table is reproduced from the article “Joyce’s Bad Words,” by Tim Conley, which I read with huzzahs and sweaty palms.
comments
what an instructive table..! lady chatterley’s lover has 30 more fuck than ulysse, and almost equal balls. cunty and shite should count double though.
posted by nathalie on October 22, 2004 5:39 PM
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