Pedagogies of Pleasure

Abstract

This chapter exposes how alewife poems and singlewomen's erotic songs stage models of peer education in which women teach their peers how to pursue pleasure, minimize risk, and negotiate for satisfaction. It explores English songs from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which enact common models of same-sex performative pedagogy. The chapter discusses these understudied lyrics and reveals a paramount focus on pleasure in women's sexual education even as they traffic in misogynist stereotypes of the “lusty maiden” — young, single, often lower-status — who is always ready for sex. In their emphasis on maidens' self-assured pursuit of pleasure, the chapter unveils how these lyrics contrast sharply with popular discourses that portray young women's erotic expression as engendering shame, regret, and self-inflicted social and spiritual ruin. Ultimately, the chapter shows how these lyrics represent same-sex peer pedagogy as having the potential to engender changes in sexual culture that are as necessary today as they were in the Middle Ages.