THE PUTOS OF PERO DA PONTE: REMARKS ON THE HISTORY OF A WORD

Abstract

Medieval Galician-Portuguese satire (medieval joke poetry) is a diverse source for understanding the social meaning of relationships between men. Although it is not the corpus in which we can hear the “sodomite’s” voice, it is a wide showcase for the understanding of speeches against sodomy. In this perspective, we took the song of Pero da Ponte, [Eu digo mal com’ome fodimalho] to analyze the meanings of the word “puto”, the only occurrence in the masculine in all Cancioneiros. For this purpose, we used a set of elements of philological practice (paratexts, indirect sources, analysis of lexicographic and editing works) that made it possible to find some semantic features that helped us understand the change of meaning and the polysemy of the term. From this investigation, we were able to reach the following questions: (i) “puto”, in the occurrence of the song by Pero da Ponte, is a hyperonym for sexual relations between men (active or passive); (ii) the change towards the expansion of the sexual meanings of the word “puto” happened since Ancient times and is generalized in a moral dimension in the Middle Ages; (iii) “puto” seems to have changed through the relationship between youth and moral purity, from this synthesis the objectification of these bodies in contexts of prostitution also emerged.