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Chapter 2 - Medieval Affect, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Medical Treatments of the Embodied Soul

from Part I - Origins: Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2024

By
Holly A. Crocker
Edited by
Anna M. Elsner  and
Monika Pietrzak-Franger
Anna M. Elsner
Affiliation:
Universität St Gallen, Switzerland
Monika Pietrzak-Franger
Affiliation:
Universität Wien, Austria
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Summary

This essay details the foundational place of affect for medical treatments of body and soul in the late Middle Ages. Because the medieval soul was fully embodied, affects of love, joy, fear, and anger played a practical part in diagnosing or treating a patient’s health. In late medieval medical manuals, along with forms of living and confessional forms, care for bodies and souls draws on a common affective vocabulary. Rather than seeing one form of affective discourse as spiritual and the other as practical, this chapter concludes by briefly turning to the Book of Margery Kempe to take seriously her claim that Christ heals via an affective intensity that transforms her body and soul. The therapeutic domain of affect unites body and soul, spiritual and practical, in late medieval medical writings.

Keywords

Book of Margery KempeAffectHistory of EmotionsSoulmedieval medicineChrist as physician
Type
Chapter
Information
Literature and Medicine , pp. 39 - 52
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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