This valuable anthology of ten essays brings to studies of correctional practices a welcome perspective: that of scholars of literature. As Sarah Bowden describes the project in the introduction, “we consider the representation of lived experience in literary texts, and how literary depictions intersect with such lived experience” (3). These essays supply what is usually missing from the normative medieval sources that prescribed penances or punishments, described transgressions, or recorded judgments in courts or other fora: they provide a view of how penitential and punitive practices were understood, manipulated, developed, and suffered. These literary scholars also apply critical approaches, many drawn from the work of Michel Foucault, relating to the inscription of pain on the body, the sexual dimensions of such inscription, and the poetics of the penitential self—aspects less frequently addressed by historians of law or pastoral care. The contributors are to be commended for their attention to the work of historians who have investigated penance and punishment; rarely should the reader wonder if segregation of disciplines has produced unfortunate oversights.
Even so, there is a pronounced orientation to fellow scholars of medieval German vernacular literature. Few of the essays provide any introduction or contextualizing (not even dates) for the specific works they analyze. The assumption is that readers will be quite familiar with medieval texts such as Rudolf von Ems's (1220–54) Alexander, Wolfram von Eschenbach's (ca. 1180–1220) Parzival, Oswald von Wolkenstein's (1376–1445) Beichtlied, Claus Spaun's Fünfzig Gulden Minnelohn and Hans Rosenplüt's Spiegel und Igel (both from the mid- to late fifteenth century), Johannes Pauli's (ca. 1455–ca. 1530) Schimpf und Ernst and Georg Wickram's Rollwagenbüchlein (1555), the Life of Cristina von Hane (1269–92?), the Life of Elsbeth von Oye (1290–1340), and Konrad von Würzburg's Pantaleon (in the 1380s). Extending a welcoming hand to those readers who may not be familiar with these texts would have improved the collection. There are, however, hospitable gestures in the practice of translating all quotations from Middle High German, and in the substantial abstracts of the articles written in German. Each essay includes a suitable bibliography.
Readers who press on through the mysteries will be rewarded. Each essay typically takes a single text and a single problem in the sphere of punishment and penance illuminated by that text. The problems are important, and the texts are interesting witnesses. Every essay creates an opportunity for further investigation into other texts; the potential for inspiring future work is exciting. Among the topics engaged are the ways in which corporal chastisement expresses power over others, and over oneself. Henrike Manuwald tests fruitfully the proposition of René Girard (La violence et le sacré [1972]) that institutional retribution is, in essence, regulated vengeance. Her essay could be put in dialogue with the more recent work of Claude Gauvard (e.g., “De grace especial”: Crime, État, et Société en France à la fin du Moyen Âge [1991]). Instances of revenge that enhance our thinking about motive, purpose, and common standards are in Annette Volfing's essay, “‘und wolt iuch hân gebezzert mite’: Keie, Cunneware and the Dynamics of Punishment,” and in Jamie Page's consideration of the informal, social, and gendered devices for controlling others, “Offenlich und unter ogen: Honour and Punishment in Late Medieval Urban Life.”
Responses to corporal suffering are traced in the contributions of Sebastian Coxon (“‘schneident mir beid oren ab’: the Comic Potential of Corporal Punishment in Sixteenth-Century Schwankbücher”), Racha Kirakosian (“Penitential Punishment and Purgatory: A Drama of Purification through Pain”), Björn Klaus Bushbeck (“Körpergebrauch, Kontrolle und Kontrollverlust in den Askeseschilderungen der Vita Elsbeths von Oye”), and Katharina Mertens-Fleury (“Strafen und Leiden im Martyrium: Überlegungen zu Konrads von Würzburg Pantaleon”). The impact of suffering on the individual, and the implications for the concept of the self are further uncovered by Almut Suerbaum's interrogation of aristocratic self-representation in conflictual contexts (“Legal Process and Fantasies of Torture: Reality and Imagination in Oswald von Wolkenstein”) and Andreas Kraß's observations on poetic play on the self as subject and object (“Sünder, Prediger, Dichter: Rollenspiele im Beichtlied Oswalds von Wolkenstein”). The collection is beautifully anchored in philological foundations supplied by Henrike Manuwald (“râche zwischen, ‘Vergeltung eines Unrechts durch den Geschädigten’ und ‘Strafe’: Semantische Spielräume im Alexander Rudolfs von Ems”) and by Sarah Bowden in her exposition of the Middle High German meaning of strafe in the introduction to the volume. Both discussions, parsing the language of response to injury, complicate neat models of progression from private revenge to systems of institutional retribution.
The scope and varying perspectives of this slim volume form an excellent set of interlocking pieces to the puzzle of medieval punishment and penance. Taken in sum, the volume presents a compelling case for considering the two processes in conjunction: their nexus is extensive; the multivalence of each increases the points of interchange. The crossings and transfers of meaning, and the often strange medieval calculus of pain, in which suffering can be excessive, vicarious, validating, degrading, voluntarily undertaken, and brutally inflicted, are nicely brought to light in this collection, worthily conceived and deftly executed.
