The diverse chapters in Painful pleasures provide abundant evidence that medieval sexualities and cultures possessed sadomasochistic aspects that correspond in interesting ways to modern conceptions of sadism and masochism.
The practices of BDSM (bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism) brought unexpected and sometimes radical pleasures to medieval people, just as they do to people today. Contributors shed light on sadomasochistic resonances within medieval saint´s lives, mystical accounts, and works of spiritual fiction. They examine the pleasures derived from the restorative power of abstinence, personal abasement, fasting, exile, and flogging. Other topics covered include the pleasures of a masochistic positioning within marriage, the joy of losing on the battlefield, and the impacts of social and cultural sadism. Medieval sadomasochistic pleasures give saintly bodies power, defeated warriors meaning, and female bodies agency, and they do so in ways contemporary practitioners of BDSM can relate to, despite the hermeneutic gulf.
Painful pleasures opens new pathways for examining medieval culture and invites further analysis into the kinkier side of human sexualities, a side that could not be more central to the study of our culture.
