Painful pleasures : sadomasochism in medieval cultures / edited by Christopher Vaccaro.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Vaccaro, Christopher, editor.

Series:

Manchester medieval literature and culture ; 43.

Manchester medieval literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.

Literature, Medieval.

Civilization, Medieval, in literature.

Pain in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 388 pages) : digital file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press, 2022.

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

data file

Summary:

Painful pleasures organises its investigations into two sections, based on distinctions between religious and secular (con)texts. Part I explores the sadomasochistic pleasures of medieval monastic and mystical life, highlighting religious devotion, bodily renunciation, humility, and submission. Investigations into religious discourses expose the libidinal possibilities within penitential and correctional activities such as fasting and whipping. Within a swathe of early medieval hagiography, antique narratives provided eroticised examples of the will (and failure) of Roman magistrates to dominate the Christian martyr. Part II traces instances of dominance and submission within secular discourses, those more appertaining to life at court, in the marriage bed, and on the battlefield. Behaviours in this sphere might be in tension with the Church, evolving from more regionalised or even familial-kinship patterns. Chivalric romances told at court recount pleasures that resonate with those of the S/M world today and describe scenarios that fuel sadomasochistic fantasies. Painful pleasures compiles evidence of the ways in which power and control were eroticised in the Middle Ages, how sexuality was then, as today, imbued to varying degrees with a thrill of the chase and the capture, and how pain and humiliation could not only be pleasurable but central to formations of gendered identities and to spiritual advancement. It makes substantial gains in exploring the medieval terrain of eroticised power and pain and asks how looking at sadomasochism historically might affect our conception of the Middle Ages, and - preposterously - of ourselves.

Contents:

Introduction: The jouissance of medieval kink / Christopher Vaccaro

Part I: Spiritual and penitential (con)texts

Humiliation as penance in some early penitentials / Erin Abraham

Land of saints and sadists: the S&M scene(s) in medieval Ireland / Phillip A. Bernhardt-House

Failed sadism and masochistic martyrdom in Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Ciť des Dames / Tina-Marie Ranalli

The monastic pleasures of frustrated knowledge / Karmen MacKendrick

The pains of being pure at heart: sadomasochism in Richard of St. Victor's On the four degrees of violent love / Christopher Michael Roman

Negotiating power and pleasure in the Book of Margery Kempe / Nicole Slipp

Part II: Courtly and secular (con)texts

I am not having what she's having: female sexual (un)pleasure medieval and modern / Juliana Dresvina

Queer consolation: BDSM in Chaucer's The Clerk's tale, sadistic epistemology and the ends of suffering / Masha Raskolnikov

Ideological sadism or cultural enhancement: thirteenth-century Mongols in Kievan Rus and Baghdad / Vicky Panossian

Fetishizing the past: Troilus and Criseyde, sadomasochism, and the historophilia of modern BDSM / Kersti Francis

'My warlike grip broke his beating heart': masochism and the deadly embrace in Beowulf ll. 2501-2508a / Christopher Vaccaro

Death drive and the maiden: the queerness of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim / Philip Liston-Kraft.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Feb 2026).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on pre-publication data; resource not viewed. E-publication viewed on July 15, 2022.

ISBN:

1526153343

9781526153340

9781526153357

1526153351

OCLC:

1377815380