Suffering is a theme that dominates the literature of all periods, and this book demonstrates a significant linkage between the affairs of the flesh/privacy to the affairs of the nation/publicity. The 17th century does seem to me still a rather neglected area among Japanese students today, a concern which was stated during last year’s annual ELSJ conference. In the age of new historicism, I think this book by Professor Yamamoto-Wilson will inspire many young aspiring academics working particularly on the 18th century and beyond to take into account the religious internal division that Britain experienced during this particular period, which left a lasting mark upon the minds of British writers for centuries.
Thank you for your response, Chiaki! I am working on additional material to put up on the website. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed reading the PDF file of the introduction.
The introduction to “Pain, Pleasure and Perversity” is weirdly interesting. Although this is not a subject of which I have any significant knowledge, I think the underlying evolutionary psychology would probably be an inherently fruitful subject for research.
Hi, Pete. It seems to me the subject has been largely neglected. I mean, there’s a lot of psychological research into sadomasochism (the very term arises from psychology), but modern psychology has its roots in northern European discourse, and a lot of its 19th century (and even modern) exponents express themselves in terms which are explicitly anti-Catholic. The more sacramental nature of the southern Catholic temperament is alien to them, and – rather than demonstrating that the asceticism of the saints was simply a form of masochism – they merely *assert* that it is so and others follow in their footsteps.
I prefer a more nuanced and empirical approach. Some of the things the saints got up to do strike me as pretty weird (not to say kinky!), but it is curious that Protestant contemporaries only began to introduce sexual innuendo in their attacks on Catholic practices at the end of the 17th century. Prior to that their polemic was along the lines of ‘They deserve to whip themselves because they’re naughty boys’. They only start to smear them with the implication that they might be getting a kick out it after about 1680. This suggests that the idea that became encoded in the early modern period as masochism didn’t really exist (or somehow couldn’t be articulated or recognized) in the early modern period.
Suffering is a theme that dominates the literature of all periods, and this book demonstrates a significant linkage between the affairs of the flesh/privacy to the affairs of the nation/publicity. The 17th century does seem to me still a rather neglected area among Japanese students today, a concern which was stated during last year’s annual ELSJ conference. In the age of new historicism, I think this book by Professor Yamamoto-Wilson will inspire many young aspiring academics working particularly on the 18th century and beyond to take into account the religious internal division that Britain experienced during this particular period, which left a lasting mark upon the minds of British writers for centuries.
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Thank you for your response, Chiaki! I am working on additional material to put up on the website. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed reading the PDF file of the introduction.
Reply
The introduction to “Pain, Pleasure and Perversity” is weirdly interesting. Although this is not a subject of which I have any significant knowledge, I think the underlying evolutionary psychology would probably be an inherently fruitful subject for research.
Reply
Hi, Pete. It seems to me the subject has been largely neglected. I mean, there’s a lot of psychological research into sadomasochism (the very term arises from psychology), but modern psychology has its roots in northern European discourse, and a lot of its 19th century (and even modern) exponents express themselves in terms which are explicitly anti-Catholic. The more sacramental nature of the southern Catholic temperament is alien to them, and – rather than demonstrating that the asceticism of the saints was simply a form of masochism – they merely *assert* that it is so and others follow in their footsteps.
I prefer a more nuanced and empirical approach. Some of the things the saints got up to do strike me as pretty weird (not to say kinky!), but it is curious that Protestant contemporaries only began to introduce sexual innuendo in their attacks on Catholic practices at the end of the 17th century. Prior to that their polemic was along the lines of ‘They deserve to whip themselves because they’re naughty boys’. They only start to smear them with the implication that they might be getting a kick out it after about 1680. This suggests that the idea that became encoded in the early modern period as masochism didn’t really exist (or somehow couldn’t be articulated or recognized) in the early modern period.
Reply