Punishment and Penitential Practices in Medieval German Writing by Sarah Bowden Annette Volfing

Abstract

 Reviews decades-old data does not help here (e.g. pp. , , , ). While the inevitable misrepresentations are compounded by factual errors, there are not enough of these to be too off-putting. e linguistic issues are more niggling. No clear rationale is offered for the selection of historical forms of names, for example. Sanders’s provision of cross-language tables of comparative examples is commendable, but when illustrating Icelandic and Faroese, does it really make sense to use passages of Bible editions from different centuries ( and : p. ) or to compare relatively contemporary registers of Norwegian with English from the deliberately archaic King James Bible of  (p. )? To summarize, this short book is packed full of information, much of which is relevant, well presented, and entertaining. e ‘intersections’ chosen to illustrate the interplay and cross-fertilization of (some of) the languages of the Nordic countries are broadly representative of the topic as a whole. And their presentation, using relatable, family-based metaphors and Romantic imagery, will no doubt enhance their appeal to the intended audience. e book is not without its issues. To the lay reader, very few of these, beyond the lack of explanatory detail and up-to-the minute statistics, will be apparent. From an academic perspective, however, even if intended for consumption in general or non-advanced studies, it must reluctantly be considered an opportunity missed. U  E A M Punishment and Penitential Practices in Medieval German Writing. Ed. by S B and A V. (King’s College London Medieval Studies, ) London:Boydell&Brewer. . pp. £. ISBN ––––. at the medieval period was one of torture, dungeons, hanging, drawing, quartering , and burning at the stake is a popular view of our past. e scholarly version of this foundational myth of modernity is Michel Foucault’s Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (), which argues that by overcoming this pre-modern era of violence and replacing it with state-controlled discipline, the modern legal system and more peaceful society was born. As with all grand narratives, its success is based on the fact that it is not only flattering to our modern age and memorable, but also that despite its huge simplifications and generalizations, it captures a lot of truth. is is at least the impression that comes out of this collection on punishment and penitence in medieval German writing, edited by Sarah Bowden and Annette Volfing on the basis of a conference at King’s College London in . e Middle Ages does seem to be ‘a deeply penitential period’, as Bowden writes in her Introduction (p. ), however much nuancing this needs, and a time in which punishment was a ‘phenomenon deeply embedded in everyday life’, as Jamie Page puts it (p. ). e collection takes the innovative and eye-opening approach of discussing legal punishment and Christian penitential practices together. Religiously motivated self-inflicted harm, Bowden rightly points out, has much in common with legal MLR, .,   or social punishment, as both aim at absolving humans of wrongdoing through physical and psychological pain. More precisely, this book focuses on written, predominantly literary descriptions of punishment and penitence in German in the twelh to sixteenth centuries, rather than on actual practices, on law or theology, or on a broader context beyond German-speaking lands. is means that the volume provides a good complement to existing studies that focus on legal practices or on visual representations. Bowden’s Introduction elegantly summarizes the state of research and the rationale for the volume along such lines. e ten chapters together give a sense of the surprisingly wide range of contexts in which punishment and penitential practices are discussed in late medieval German literature. Henrike Manuwald shows that the Middle High German term for revenge, râche, in its literary uses, especially in Rudolf of Ems’s Alexander romance, is much less clear-cut and encompasses controlled punishment by the king rather than just referring to the personal tit-for-tat violence oen assumed, thus further undermining the narrative of linear development from a society of personal revenge to one of state-controlled punishment. e significant gendered aspects of punishment are investigated in Wolfram’s Parzival by Annette Volfing as...