The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture (review)

Pain is undoubtedly intrinsic to being human, and in the Early Modern period, before the discovery of analgesics and anaesthetics, the experience of it, for everyone, was probably inevitable and occasionally overwhelming. But while the experience of pain might be universal, suffering is rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts, and the responses to pain and the lessons learnt from it vary considerably across time and place. More importantly, pain is not understood simply in terms of individual experience, but serves as a highly malleable metaphor for many other aspects of human existence.

The seventeen essays (and Introduction) in The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture - originally presented as papers at the 'Perceptions of Pain in Early Modern Culture' conference held at the University of Leiden in 2007 - are testimony to the wide variety of Early Modern representations and manifestations of 'pain'. The collection crosses a vast disciplinary terrain and offers the reader an introduction to a veritable treasure trove of texts and examples from across Early Modern Europe. Anita Traninger, for example, reads the pedagogical writings of authors such as Roger Ascham and Erasmus and considers contemporary opinions of the practice of inflicting pain on schoolboys (i.e., beating them) to facilitate the learning of Latin. Frans Willem Korsten offers readings of three plays by Joost van den Vondel, the seventeenth-century Dutch playwright, and Emese Bálant examines the records of a sixteenth-century Hungarian poisoning trial. In perhaps the most satisfying essay of the collection, Jenny Mayhew examines English Protestant godly dying manuals, and drawing connections between body, mind and language, provides some intriguing insights into contemporary understandings of the relationship between pain, suffering and spirituality.

Not surprisingly, the theological basis of Christianity - the suffering, crucified Christ and the inherent, largely bodily, post-lapsarian sinfulness of all Christians - means that pain, in various forms, features heavily in Early Modern religious discourses, and many of the articles included here reflect this. Jetze Touber, for example, examines Antonio Gallonio's Italian treatise on martyrdom of 1591 and its central contention that, for the martyr, the endurance of pain (torture) demonstrates the 'truth' of their faith. The mystical suffering of Teresa of Avila, as represented in images and in Teresa's own writings, is the subject of Maria Berbara's article.

There is a good deal of fascinating material here but, as a whole, this collection is something of a disorganised Cabinet of Curiosities. Pain and suffering manifest themselves in so many different ways, and can be approached by scholars from so many different perspectives that it is impossible to discern a common thread between the articles. Worse still, some of the articles deal with the concept of pain only indirectly. Kristine Steenbergh's article, for instance, is primarily about anger and revenge. Certainly, these emotions can be construed as 'self-destructive', but to construe them as 'painful' seems to stretch the point too far. In another example, Lia van Gemert's paper claims to examine debates about pain in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. While it does indeed describe contemporary discourses of pain, the 'debates' relate more to the acceptability of torture as a judicial procedure.

The diversity possibly accounts for the editors' decision not to arrange the essays into thematic sections - now conventional in edited collections - but if the articles were intended to stand individually, then the editors ought to have ensured that each article included was equally as strong. The lengths of the papers are wildly inconsistent, with the shortest covering a mere thirteen pages, while the longest has blown out to 74. The differences in length also perhaps reflect variation in the degree of development each paper has undergone from the conference format; most though, sit comfortably in the middle.

The...