Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Cultures ed. by christopher vaccaro (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Cultures ed. by christopher vaccaro
• James C. Staples

christopher vaccaro, ed., Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Cultures. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Pp. xii, 388. isbn: 978–1–5261–5333–3. £90.00.

Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Cultures reveals how an erotics of pain in the present can open up a nuanced nexus of affects, and thus a much richer account of subjectivity and agency, in the medieval past. Painful Pleasures is ‘the only volume [End Page 108] dedicated to making the subject [of S/M in medieval cultures] its primary focus’ (p. 19); however, the authors frequently engage with scholarship on masochistic martyrdom, the sadomasochism of courtly love, and the violence inherent in medieval marriage, referencing Robert Mills, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Sarah Salih, and many others who have considered such topics. Christopher Vaccaro’s introduction provides a thorough genealogical theorization of BDSM, from Krafft-Ebing’s and Freud’s pathologizing accounts to feminist and queer theoretical engagements, but he and the other contributors also frequently incorporate personal experiences or reflections, including Vaccaro’s acknowledgments of the ‘Doms, Sirs, Masters, boys, slaves, and pups’ who provided inspiration (p. xi). Through its focus on connections (and differences) between the past and the present, Painful Pleasures reveals the ‘need’ for studying BDSM ‘to expose the libidinous nature of medieval iterations of power’ (p. 3). The vast approaches and subjects across the volume, united by this singular task, result in a generative approach to medieval pain and its pleasures.

The volume is divided into two sections, focusing on ‘spiritual and penitential (con)texts’ and ‘courtly and secular (con)texts,’ respectively. The collection begins with an essay by Nicole Slipp that details how Margery Kempe’s excessive life ‘resonates’ with kink, revealing how Kempe discovers pleasure in a negotiated, consent-based power-relationship with God (p. 37). Tracing evidence across early Irish narratives, Phillip A. Bernhardt-House considers the ‘erotic possibilities’ of accounts of humiliating flagellation (p. 69), noting similarities between two heroic figures—Cú Chulainn and Saint Columba—who faced similar abuses by phallic divinities. Tina-Marie Ranalli masterfully reveals how Christine de Pizan thwarts the conventional sadistic titillation of hagiography—whereby a tyrant ruptures the sexualized bodies of virginal women—through a desexualized masochism that allows the women to remove themselves from the economy of male desire. Karmen MacKendrick revisits Jean Leclerq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God to propose the masochistic quality of a monastic ‘desire to desire’ (p. 134), a form of study that resists final knowing in relation to the mysteries of both God and self. Christopher Michael Roman reveals in Richard of St. Victor’s On the Four Degrees of Violent Love how a technique of unknowing the self (and desire) opens a space of becoming, allowing practitioners to experience a love beyond normative conventions. Erin Abraham details how the ‘social sadomasochism’ (p. 179) of public forms of penance demanded by seventh-century penitentials coincides with both a social masochism and the community’s vicarious vengeance to restore order, especially in response to public scandals.

The second section begins with Juliana Dresvina’s essay regarding pain in women’s sexual experiences. Dresvina’s essay most directly engages Arthurian content, considering Guinevere, Isault, and the Wife of Bath, to argue that women can be sexually unsatisfied even when in love, leading her to reconsider the (lack of) evidence for historical discourses of clitoral pleasure. Masha Raskolnikov next discusses the ‘sadistic epistemology’ offered by Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale and its ‘hyper-heterosexual’ violence (pp. 238–39). By centering ‘consent,’ Raskolnikov reveals how this ‘game’ of heterosexuality operates in a queer mode, and she ultimately finds consolation [End Page 109] in the negotiated limits of such violence (p. 256). Vicky Panossian compares the effects on Kievan Rus and Baghdad of the ‘ideological sadism’ (p. 267) inflicted by the thirteenth-century Mongols, relating violence to collective memory and cultural enhancement. Through a comparative analysis of Chaucer’s use of the past in Troilus and Criseyde and archival materials from UCLA’s sadomasochism collection, Kersti Francis conceptualizes a ‘historophilia,’ (p. 292) where the past becomes a site of negotiation between...