This collection of essays circles the topic of pleasure, which was the thematic strand of the 2013 International Medieval Congress at Leeds. In keeping with the mission of the series in which it appears (International Medieval Research), most of the essays were delivered as papers at this conference and presumably underwent double-blind peer review subsequently. Although it is difficult to understand how some of the contributions made it through that process in their current form, there are also some true gems, and the sheer variety of definitions and disciplinary approaches encompassed in the volume effectively presents the complexity of seeking "pleasure" in historical contexts. As Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy stress in their introduction, "medieval culture itself was not unified, but rather a mosaic of several cultures" (xv) that differed according to region and changed over time. They identify the increasing emphasis on Christ's incarnation and the corresponding rehabilitation of the human body in the later Middle Ages as an example of a diachronic shift (xiv). Through the inclusion of Karen Moukheiber's essay on Islamic didactic literature, the volume gestures towards the productive possibilities of comparative work on non-Christian cultures that can de-naturalize the assumptions of Western, culturally Christian scholars working on Latin Christian material. Many of the essays that focus on regions traditionally emphasized in medieval scholarship (England and France) skilfully demonstrate that the religious and secular spheres were not separate but in fact influenced each other through overlapping contexts and spheres of experience. (The contributions by Philippa Maddern and Maeve Doyle are exemplary in this regard.) Although one might wish for greater representation of non-Christian or Eastern Christian cultures and traditions, the essays do encompass a fairly diverse range of textual objects and disciplinary approaches which broaden the understanding of pleasure in medieval Latin Christendom.
Since the editors have both made names for themselves in the field of "history of emotions," one might anticipate that this volume would be firmly situated in that area of research. It is a strength of their introduction that they respond to the diverging interests of their contributors by situating pleasure as emotions-adjacent but not identical. As they note, none of their contributors engage with current trends in scientific and sociological research on emotions, that is, with the prominent exception of William Reddy's cogent, if programmatic, essay on neuroscience. Still, as Cohen-Hanegbi and Nagy point out, many of the same tools of inquiry and analysis applied to emotions also yield results and insight into the dynamic and evolving medieval landscape of pleasure. The introduction highlights two major analytical tools and one thematic focus, which are shared with the "history of emotions" and which undergird most of the essays, whether the contributing authors articulate them explicitly or not. Namely, historically grounded investigations into pleasure should, according to the editors, carefully attend on the one hand, to the connotations of vocabulary in specific contexts (xiv-xv) and on the other, to the gestures and practices associated with the pursuit and experience of pleasure (xvi). Both of these analytical lenses deliver insight into the anthropology that informs the object of study, that is, how historical actors imagined what it meant to be human especially regarding the relationship of body and soul. Readers interested in the history of emotions will find these three concerns (nuanced meanings, social practices, and concepts of embodiment) often treated sensitively and productively, even by contributors who do not understand pleasure to be an emotion.
The essays are grouped into three sections: "Pleasured Bodies," "Didactic Pleasures," and "Pleasures in God." The first section treats pleasurable sensations or activities and the experience of bodily pleasure in different historical contexts and from different disciplinary perspectives. The second section explores the role of pleasure in pursuing virtue and in constructing a Christian cultural community. The essays of the final section treat pleasure as repudiated, allegorized, and transformed in the writings of Church reformers and mystics. The editors explain that, although it runs counter to medieval modes of ordering which would prioritize the divine, they chose this order because didactic and religious texts often reject, respond to, or are grounded in experiences of physical pleasure, which should therefore be treated first (xix). However, the effect of the organization is to lead the reader on the path of mystical enlightenment, from base pleasures of the medical body, through bodily pleasure ordered to virtue, to rejection of the physical and enjoyment of the divine--achieved in Faesen's final essay which finds in the Flemish mystics "an enjoyment on the level of 'being' rather than the level of 'experiencing'" (371). Far from "invert[ing] the 'normal' medieval intellectual structure", the volume effectively traces the common threefold mystical path from beginning, to progressing, to perfect.
The editors made a deeply unfortunate choice in placing Esther Cohen's essay first in the volume. The decision is understandable, since the contribution does address questions of vocabulary and reviews various pleasures of monastic experience to be found in unexpected places, bringing up both spiritual pleasures (friendship) and physical pleasures (music). However, the citations are sparse and spotty, the second passage of Latin is translated both incompletely and inaccurately, and she draws unsupported psychologizing conclusions about the mental states of medieval actors. Describing the pleasures of written communications, for example, she comments that "if one adds the pleasure of unrestrained vituperation to the list, some of Bernard of Clairvaux's letters must have caused him considerable delight" (13). I would contest the claim that everyone today who descends into vilifying rages "enjoys" producing such rhetoric, and Cohen adduces no reason internal to the historical evidence to suggest that Bernard found it pleasurable. Fortunately, the remaining essays of the volume are much more focused in topic and far better supported in evidence.
Philippa Maddern's posthumous contribution is the first of three to treat medicine, although this is not immediately evident from her premise. She investigates the contextual use of the term "merry" in late medieval and early modern English to argue convincingly that the term carried medical connotations of physical health, as well as the happiness it denotes today. Carried into religious contexts, this shade of meaning attached to the soul's weal, associating merriment with salvation. The connection between positive emotional states and healthy physical states is reinforced in both Fernando Salmón's and Naama Cohen-Hanegbi's contributions. Salmón departs explicitly from the premise that in humoral medical theory, "there was no radical separation between the psychic and the somatic" (40) and human health was treated holistically. He traces the term delicia in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century university reception of Galen, arguing that medical scholasticism was conceptually flexible enough to assimilate lived human experience, including somatic experience of emotions. Galenism was so successful and long-lived, because it could retain its theoretical core while adapting to cultural variation and different moral attitudes towards specific pleasures. Addressing sex in fifteenth-century Italian medicine, Cohen-Hanegbi also brings another dimension to the body-soul holism discussed by Salmón, that of the social. Showing how medical recommendations reinforced norms of masculinity and adapted to Christian moral expectations, she argues that those bodies are considered healthy which comply with the social order.
The following two essays both explore ways in which the imagined female body edified medieval readers. Maeve Doyle's art historical contribution moves away from the field of medicine but transitions well from Cohen-Hanegbi's claim. Doyle analyzes a noblewoman's Book of Hours (Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 87) to elucidate how sensual representations of the Virgin Mary's body center devotional attention not on physical or sexual pleasure but rather on motherhood. The illuminations and prayers both represent the pleasures of Mary's body in order to encourage the female dedicatee and viewer to desire motherhood, socially required of her for the continuation of the families' lines. Similarly interested in political responsibility, Karen Moukheiber describes the role of concubines in adab literature, a third/ninth- and fourth/tenth-century genre of the educated urban elite in Baghdad. The figure of the sexually available female slave served as a discursive repository for a variety of ethical lessons about cultural refinement and political loyalty. Far from being a mere indictment of courtly decadence, the sexual slave woman provided a literary device through which men explored the ethical demands of their own private and public selves.
In his contribution, William Reddy argues that the pursuit and experience of physical pleasure has no simple biological mechanism but rather responds to context, training, and goals. He argues this on the one hand, through a review of research in brain chemistry and processing and on the other, through an analysis of William IX's ribald troubadour poetry, its cultural context, and its political implications. Both of these arguments are successful in demonstrating that pleasure is not a simple appetite but a complex negotiation. Although they reinforce each other, the two arguments do not need each other.
Barbara Rosenwein's essay introduces a series of contributions about explicitly didactic genres that seek to control earthly pleasures in order to attain the pleasure of virtuous living. She argues that Alcuin's ninth-century treatise On the Virtues and Vices should be read as an emotional self-help manual, which promotes contentment through self-mastery. Richard Newhauser attributes the success and influence of William Peraldus's thirteenth-century Summa de vitiis to its practical and utilitarian approach to pleasure in moderation. Newhauser finds this principle at work not only in the content of Peraldus's treatise--for example, in the argument that the pleasure we get from satisfying hunger helps to keep us alive (190)--but also in its form. Peraldus exploited the aesthetic pleasure of exempla and anecdotes as the spoonful of sugar that made the moral medicine go down. Finding a similar justification for judicious permission of pleasures, Noëlle-Laetitia Perret's contribution turns from the moral formation of adults to the education of children in Giles of Rome's De regimine principum and his reception of Aristotelian concepts of pleasure. Giles of Rome argues that the best way to encourage a child in good behavior is through positive feedback (playtime and sweets as rewards and motivations) rather than punishment. Such rewards eventually inculcate a habituation which makes the exercise of virtue its own reward.
The contributions by Xavier Biron-Ouellet and Élyse Dupras begin the transition to discussion of religious pleasures. Biron-Ouellet compares texts by two fourteenth-century spiritual writers, Richard Rolle and Simone Fidati, to elucidate how the scholastic recuperation of the body that followed the reception of Aristotle influenced later pastoral approaches to pleasure. He argues that these writers distinguish between the pleasures of physical sensation and the emotional affects that result from rational valuation of the sensations. Pleasure is not bad in itself, but it must be ordered towards contemplation of God (Rolle) or virtuous action (Fidati). In a sharp analysis of scopophilia, Élyse Dupras discusses representation of hell's torments as a sort of sadistic Christian Schadenfreude. During the persecution of the early church, these descriptions of hell echoed and promised future retributive justice for the tortures inflicted on Christian martyrs. Once the Church was dominant, descriptions of hell's pains were retained but became a way to consolidate a Christian moral community by evoking joy in the torment of others and outsiders.
The final section on "Pleasures in God" focuses (fortuitously, as the editors note in the introduction) on the role of food and alcohol, both real and metaphorical, in religious writing. Zachary Giuliano presents John Cassian's discussion of gluttony as background to Bede's surprisingly valorizing metaphorical discussion of scriptural exegesis as feasting. Whereas Cassian warns against fullness as a gateway sin and advocates focusing desire on God, Bede offers a path to conversion by framing the pleasures of reading in the terms of physical desires. Rather than asking his readers to reject drunkenness, he encourages them to become drunk on the Word instead of on wine. Attending to the unlikely pleasure found in onions, Ken Grant offers a nuanced understanding of Pope Gregory VII's moralizing position on pleasure, which allows for the flexibility of individual programs. Gregory does not reject pleasure as such but instead demands unwavering focus on God. Pleasurable things must only be avoided insofar as they distract one from the divine path, and since different people have different weaknesses, each much determine his own ascetic program. Turning to Biblical imagery of drunkenness and sexuality, Constant Mews traces two readings of the bride in Song of Songs commentary, a corporate interpretation that sees the bride as the Church or ecclesia and an individual interpretation of the bride as the soul. The latter was associated with Origen and, after he was condemned, fell out of favor until the twelfth century. Bernard of Clairvaux refocused this reading away from moral rhetoric contrasting carnal and spiritual love towards a meditation on devotional growth and contemplative progress, to be rewarded by spiritual intoxication in this world.
Rob Faesen's essay concludes the volume somewhat curiously by arguing that the Flemish mystics Hadewijch and John Ruusbroec do not understand enjoyment of God to be an experience. The term "enjoyment" designates instead the state of being-in-relation proper to the Trinity. This relation is characterized by freely and wholly giving love, which humans can touch and enjoy by giving themselves wholly to enter into relation with God.
Despite the thematic groupings ("Pleasured Bodies," "Didactic Pleasures," and "Pleasures in God"), the separation into three sections feels rather artificial and the collection is far more unified than it might at first seem. Most of the essays about pleasured bodies in the first section could justifiably have been included under the didactic heading, given the practical applications of medicine, the formative function of devotional books, and the political counsel of the Abbasid literature. Conversely, the religious literature examined in the third section mentions food strikingly often for texts that purportedly lead us to transcend the physical. The continual recurrence of embodiment and formative practices throughout all three sections lends a great deal of coherence to the volume as a whole. As I noted above, one might wish for slightly less coherence of subject matter in a volume with a title as broad as Pleasure in the Middle Ages. Specifically, there are no contributions on Jewish texts or traditions, whose inclusion would not have trespassed a narrow European geographic boundary. Nevertheless, limiting one's expectations to "Pleasure in the Latin Christian Middle Ages" (plus Moukheiber), the volume provides a diverse collection of approaches with a couple of exemplary contributions.