INTERSECTIONS. Yearbook for Early Modern Studies brings together new
material on well considered themes within the wide area of Early Modern
Studies. Contributions may come from any of the disciplines within the
humanities: history, art history, literary history, book history, church
history, social history, history of the humanities, of the theatre, of
cultural life and institutions. The themes are directed towards hitherto
little explored areas or reflect a lively debate within the
international community of scholars.

Call for Papers for Volume 12: Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture

The experience of pain, far from being a purely bodily sensation, is
powerfully mediated by cultural belief systems. The early modern period
is one of most important eras in the history of pain in Western Europe.
For example, the origins of modern Western attitudes towards pain as
meaningless are partly to be found in the Reformation era, when
Protestant theologians attempted to redefine and circumscribe the
spiritual meaning of physical suffering, and rejected late medieval
assumptions about pain. In late medieval religious culture, physical
suffering was seen as a way of participating in the Passion of Christ,
or as a form of ‘purgatorial suffering’ that could contribute to
salvation. Reformation theologians, by contrast, downplayed the
theological sig­nifi­cance of physical suffering, and saw Christ’s
self-sacrifice as a unique and complete event, from which humans were
excluded. This often highly ambivalent and piecemeal transformation was
only one among a range of developments within early modern notions of
pain, whose roots frequently go back to the later medieval period.

This volume of essays will investigate these developments from a range
of different angles, and from an international as well as
interdisciplinary perspective. The editors welcome articles on theology,
humanism (for example on the humanist interest in Stoicism), medicine
(the impact of anatomy on conceptions of pain, or the growing separation
between medical and theological notions of pain), print culture (the
impact of the printed book on our understanding of the body), visual
culture (representations of the Passion in early modern art) and
literary texts (pain in devotional verse, or the role of pain in the
warrior ethos of epic poetry). This list is not exhaustive, and the
editors are specifically interested in essays which investigate the
interrelations between the various fields sketched here.

The volume will be edited by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen and Karl Enenkel,
and is scheduled to appear in 2008. The volume will be backed by a
conference which will take place in October 2007. Proposals, about 300
words, should be sent (preferably electronically) no later than
December 1^st 2006, either to

Dr. Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen
Department of English
University of Leiden, Faculty of Arts
P.O.Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden – The Netherlands
e-mail: j.van.dijkhuizenlet.leidenuniv.nl
<mailto:j.van.dijkhuizenlet.leidenuniv.nl>

or

Prof. dr. Karl Enenkel
Institute of Classical Studies
Department of Latin and Neo-Latin Literature
University of Leiden
P.O.Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
e-mail: K.A.E.Enenkellet.leidenuniv.nl
<mailto:K.A.E.Enenkellet.leidenuniv.nl>

The authors of the proposals that have been accepted will be invited to
write a paper and to participate in the conference before January 15^th
2007.