Pleasure in the Middle Ages

This volume explores the diverse manifestations and uses of pleasure in medieval culture. Pleasure is a sensation, an affirmation, a practice, and is at the core of the medieval worldview, no less than pain. Applying a variety of methodological perspectives, the essays collected here analyse the role of pleasure in relation to a variety of subjects such as the human body, love, relationships, education, food, friendship, morality, devotion, and mysticism. They also integrate a wide range of sources including literature (monastic to courtly), medical texts, illuminated prayer books, iconography, and theatrical plays. Each document, each discipline, and thus each essay combine to provide a complex and diversified picture of medieval joys and delights--a picture that shows the extent to which pleasure is engrained in the period's culture. This collection shows how pleasure in the Middle Ages is at once a coveted feeling and a constant moral concern, both the object and the outcome of a constant negotiation between earthly and divine imperatives.