Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Edited by Naama Cohen Hanegbi Edited by Piroska Nagy
Explores the manifold manifestations of pleasure in medieval culture and the various rationales to its appearance and use.
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.
- Edited by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
- Edited by Piroska Nagy
Other Titles in this Series
Languages of Love and Hate
Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean
Volume 15
The Vocation of Service to God and Neighbour
Essays on the Interests, Involvements and Problems of Religious Communities and their Members in Medieval Society
Volume 5
Exile in the Middle Ages
Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 8-11 July 2002
Volume 13
Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe
Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100-1500
Volume 22
The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850-c. 1550
Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body
Volume 12
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