Artikel

“This fleshlike isle”

The voluptuous body of the people in Dutch pamphlets, novels, and plays, 1660-1730

It is the year 1680. A Rotterdam bailiff goes on a guided tour of the Amsterdam brothel district. In the middle of the night, in a playhouse in an alley, they meet an impressive prostitute. She is dressed "like a servant" and has little locks "curled like those of the Negroes." Moreover, she is so enormously fat that the bailiff cannot imagine her father had any intention of making a girl "when he started laying the foundations for this fleshlike isle."

"Her arms and her hands were… so thick and fat that one’s taste had to be perverted to fall in love with them." And yet, immediately, a gentleman, carrying a jug of Rhine wine to get her in the proper mood and win her affection, jumps upon the lady. The bailiff is fascinated. "What charms does this creature possess, I asked my guide, that can infatuate this gentleman with her?" His guide resolutely answers: "In her whole body, as huge and as fat as it is, there is nothing at all that might entice an honest man." Obviously, all men do not share the devil’s opinion, otherwise she would not be in her profession.

Leemans, I. (2013). “This fleshlike isle”: The voluptuous body of the people in Dutch pamphlets, novels, and plays, 1660-1730. In In Praise of Ordinary People: Early Modern Britain and the Dutch Republic (pp. 181-202). Palgrave / MacMillan.
DOI (behind paywall): https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380524_9

Afbeelding credits

Header afbeelding: Wikipedia Commons - Nicolaus Knuepfer

Icon afbeelding: Wikipedia Commons - Nicolaus Knuepfer