Pleasure in the Middle Ages ed. by Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy (review)

Pleasure in the Middle Ages, edited by Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy, remedies a gap in historical criticism and popular medievalisms that frequently results in the representation of the period as exclusively violent and painful. The seventeen-chapter volume is, by necessity, broad-ranging: the unifying theme of 'pleasure', which has no direct corollary in the Middle Ages, is defined by the editors during an introduction that emphasizes its plurality as 'either an emotion, either spiritual or sexual, as pleasure experienced through the senses or the rational mind, and it may be either lauded or decried' (p. xv). Noting that shifting ideas of the natural world impacted the cultural understanding of pleasure, Cohen-Hanegbi and Nagy state that 'the deep-seated association between pleasure and nature challenges historians to consider what pleasure was in previous societies, the ways in which it was understood, and the ways in which it was propagated' (p. xii). They identify 'medieval anthropology'—the vision and study of humans—as evidencing the changing theological importance of pleasure from the eleventh through to the thirteenth centuries (p. xiv). Modern critical interest, as much as medieval, often adopts the differences between 'natural' and 'unnatural' pleasure as the basis of an ethical investigation in which the experience is deemed to be good or bad according to a medieval Christian worldview. However, the editors note that these ethical categories, along with other false binaries such as physical/spiritual and pleasure/pain, are fundamentally merged by the experience of pleasure, which is not just described in literature, but fundamentally expressed by literary devices such as simile and metaphor.

Having sprung from a selection of papers given at the 2013 International Medieval Congress at Leeds, the volume incorporates diverse methodologies and historical analysis that ranges from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. This is suitable for the material, highlighting the individuality of experiences of pleasure as much as the communal and the cultural. While the volume clearly responds to the affective turn, Cohen-Hanegbi and Nagy describe a general resistance by the contributors to directly engage with the theoretical framework provided by the history of emotions, noting that many prefer to treat 'emotions' like any other cultural practice (p. xvii). Nonetheless, the collection does feature essays by leaders in the field of the history of emotions, including Barbara H. Rosenwein and William Reddy, who both adopt modern understandings of emotions, such as neuroscience and self-help books, to present accessible and engaging studies. An essay by the late Philippa C. Maddern likewise contains a useful and applied model of her methodological framework for working with medieval emotions, highlighting the importance of translation.

The editors note that the order of the chapters reveals the varieties of medieval pleasure in a way that reverses a medieval worldview, because it begins with personal experiences of pleasure that become a building block for the way it is expressed in theological and mystical material (p. xix). The first section, 'Pleasured Bodies', includes chapters by Esther Cohen, Maddern, Fernando Salmón, Cohen-Hanegbi, Maeve Doyle, Karen Moukheiber, and Reddy. Thematically these chapters range from worldly monastic pleasures including singing and friendship, good health, medical conceptualization and advice regarding bodily pleasure, the aesthetics of reading, the boundary between licit and illicit love in adab literature, and the cultural context of courtly love. The middle section, 'Didactic Pleasure', is primarily concerned with pleasure as a means for ethical instruction, usefully examining the cultural impact rather than the 'location' of pleasures, which the division of medieval bodies from spirituality often encourages. Contributors include Rosenwein, Richard Newhauser, Noëlle-Laetitia Perret, Xavier Biron-Ouellet, and Élyse Dupras. Content ranges from moral self-help guides, the rhetorical purposing of pleasure as a means of spiritual guidance, the monitoring of pleasure during education, the role of vices and virtues, and the enjoyment of morality plays. The final section, 'Pleasures...