Suffering in the Modern World #3: Why suffering people make perverse decisions…
Linda Tirado, Night Cook, Essayist, Activist, This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense Lots of pain here, not much pleasure, and a fine explanation of why decisions that may seem perverse or self-destructive make perfect sense to the people who make them.…
Christia Mercer, Knowledge and Suffering in Early Modern Philosophy: G.W. Leibniz and Anne Conway
Here is a useful little paper on early modern perceptions of the passions of Christ, originally published in Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Emotional Minds: The Passions and the Limits of Pure Inquiry in Early Modern Philosophy (Walter de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 179-206:Christia Mercer, 'Knowledge and Suffering in Early Modern Philosophy'.…
New Book on Early Modern Perceptions of the Male and Female Body
Helen, King, The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Ashgate, 2013).This has only just come out, and I have not yet read it, but it looks as if it may turn out to be a significant contribution to early modern gender studies. Since a large part of my own work hinges…
Seventeenth-Century Tidbits #5: Sex and the City in 17th-century England
Women's gossip about their sex lives in seventeenth-century England:Sex & The c17th City…
Forthcoming book on Pain
Watch out for Robert Boddice, ed., Pain and Emotion in Modern History, (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). The contents page can be viewed on academia.edu. Mostly focuses on more recent history, but there is at least one paper on the early modern period.…
Alec Ryrie on Suffering among Early Modern Protestants
I am currently reading Alec Ryrie’s Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University Press, 2013), which is one of the best books on the Reformation in Britain to come out this year, and perhaps this decade. Ryrie’s book aims to answer in relation to the early modern Protestant the question the little boy at the…
The history of emotions
There's a good blog on the history of emotions here. It contains an interesting review of Javier Moscoso, Pain: A Cultural History, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), a work which I had not previously come across.…
Christia Mercer on suffering and sympathy
Here is a link to a PDF file placed in the public domain by Christia Mercer, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College. Knowledge and Suffering in Early Modern Philosophy: G.W. Leibniz and Anne Conway Mercer also has a chapter in Sympathy: A History (OUP, 2015). The links are valid at the time of posting; if…
Masochism and Empowerment in Nineteenth-century Women’s Novels
Marianne Noble, The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature (Princeton University Press, 2000) This is another book that lies outside the geographical and temporal scope of Pain, Pleasure and Perversity, but is nevertheless of interest in the context of the genealogy of masochism (which is, I suppose, the central underlying theme of my own …
Suffering in Early Modern Germany
Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (OUP, 2012). Another recent publication, geographically outside the scope of my book, but thematically very much on-topic. Rittgers emphasizes Protestant patience in accepting suffering as part of God's will, but - unlike Meli…
