Monatshefte

This volume focusses on a complex of interrelated issues: sin, penitence, penance, punishment, and revenge. Taking Michel Foucault's Surveiller et punir (1975) as their theoretical starting point, the ten essays in English and German transcend Foucault in their analysis of penance and punishment in the religious, social, political, and literary framework of the Middle Ages. Sarah Bowden's introductory overview provides the contextualizing framework, outlining Foucault's thesis of movement away from "focus on punishment of the body to the punishment of the mind" and from "punishment as a public event or spectacle to punishment as a discipline behind closed doors" (1). Since the volume aims to "investigate the way in which literary texts can function as a means to consider the conceptualization and problematization of punishment and penance" (2), a key focus is the intersection of literary depictions and lived experience. Hence the core issues include: what individual acts of penance and punishment communicate; self-inflicted penance as a means of asserting agency; the symbolic capital of the body; the devotional function of pain; the reflection of such issues in the language and composition of the source texts.

Henrike Manuwald's chapter on revenge in Alexander by Rudolf von Ems provides a crucial basis for subsequent chapters. In her nuanced discussion of the semantic development of strâfe, râche, and related terms, Manuwald distinguishes between legally based retribution for a violation of social norms and over-hasty avenging of a perceived injury to the self. At the core of political and personal punishment is God, and Manuwald weighs the extent to which His revenge is provoked by violation of the ultimate norms, the Ten Commandments. Punishment and revenge similarly [End Page 338] form one focus in Annette Volfing's contribution on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. Volfing points out that punishment is generally inflicted in accordance with a certain set of values and addresses an objective wrong, enabling a return to normal, stable relations. She unpicks the complex interweaving of punishment, revenge, and honour in Keie's beating of Cunneware. Central to her discussion are the roles played by gender and hierarchy; the appropriation of authority; the exemplary nature of female suffering; and punishment as a literary device, namely, a structural marker in Parzival's development.

Structure and hierarchy are also central to the analysis by Andreas Kraß of Oswald von Wolkenstein's Beichtlied. The song mirrors the structure of ritual confession. Oswald plays with the hierarchy of sinner, preacher/priest, and God through the "systematische Vollständigkeit der aufgezählten Sündengruppen" (69), replicated in the structure of individual stanzas. By playing with notions of sin and penitence Oswald casts himself as superior to the priest since, like God, he is a creator, so penance emerges as an ironic literary game intended to enhance the status of the poet. Oswald also forms the subject of Almut Suerbaum's chapter, albeit as a participant in a legal process. Suerbaum studies the role of his œuvre in allowing us to assess "the literary uses to which legal and especially penitential images are put" (81). Investigating the correlation between historical records (concerning a dispute over pasture rights in which Oswald was involved) and poetic accounts, she concludes that "punishment, or even negotiated non-punishment, is a complex tool within a power-structure of multiple dependency" (89). The relationship between historical documents and songs, crystalized in the "I" in both, constitutes a "way of negotiating between need to belong to a group, and the articulation of conflicting or deviant views, desires or practices" (91).

Jamie Page also uses historical documents to examine the ways in which urban literature reflects justice and social order, portraying "grotesque acts of mutilation or physical abuse which echo judicial penalties" (95). Taking slander—especially accusations of prostitution directed against women—as his focus, Page compares court records of the Ratsgericht in Zürich with two contemporary Mären, highlighting the key role of honour, its enmeshment with fama, and the function of slander as informal punishment since it damages the honour of its targets. Like Volfing, Page highlights the "heavily gendered codes of honour" at play.

Sebastian Coxon studies the comic potential of corporal punishment. He highlights the inclusion in texts such as Johannes Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst of a relatively large number of anecdotes to do with legal process, pointing out that "texts often concern the process of establishing guilt or innocence and attempts to procure or subvert the course of justice" (116). He examines various forms of humour to demonstrate how the process of physical punishment is distorted to produce comedy, concluding that corporal punishment was not "deemed especially suitable for comic treatment" (124).

Self-inflicted punishment and mutilation of the body are the focus of the next two contributions: Racha Kirakosian on the mystical Vita of Christina of Hane (1269–1292), and Björn Klaus Buschbeck on control of the body in the Vita of Elsbeth von Oye. Christina's Vita "allows us to study the relationship between internal penance and physically suffered penance in a way that considers the historical background of penitential practices and beliefs in their individual and collective natures" (129). Kirakosian [End Page 339] outlines the evolution of penance as a "personal act of reconciliation" (129) and the impact of Purgatory on religious thought in the thirteenth century. In her battle to overcome the sins of the flesh, Christina's penitential practices constitute a "severe self-punitive seven-year-long programme of 'secret penance'" (137) which, performed in the service of others, effects the release of souls from Purgatory. In her fragility Christina embodies the Passion of Christ, her private penance bringing about what might be seen as a 'public' good. In the case of Elsbeth von Oye, the corrective punishment and extreme suffering inflicted on her body ultimately serve as an "Akt der Kontrollübernahme und Selbstermächtigung" (164). Punishment and penance perform a devotional function, turning Elsbeth's body into a "Medium der religiösen Erkenntnis im Rahmen der imitatio Christi" (164). Chastisement becomes an "aktiv betriebene Selbstheilung" (162); the body itself an "Austragungsort des religiösen Geschehens" (169).

Finally, punishment and suffering are also discussed by Katharina Mertens-Fleury, who outlines their function in Konrad von Würzburg's Pantaleon, the legend of a fourth-century doctor martyred under Emperor Maximianus. In her study of punitive sanctions against violations of social norms, reward and punishment as social control, and the assertion of power, familiar themes emerge: the centrality of the body (here its renewal or decay); the re-signification of human suffering as spiritual healing; punishment and pain as means of revealing or appropriating power; and sanctions imposed on the individual body as a strategy in the salvation of others, here spectators of Pantaleon's martyrdom.

The essays in this volume impress in a number of ways: first, the painstaking textual analysis on which each study is based. A lucidly outlined theoretical framework always supports this analysis, but the literary and historical sources are allowed to speak for themselves. Second, detail is used not just to build a specific argument but to point to broader contexts and connections, so that, third, the essays interact, commenting on and complementing one another. Through such intersections the volume illuminates the complex interconnectedness of medieval life, provides thought-provoking answers to the questions it poses, suggests new approaches to punishment and penitential practice, and proves its value not just to Germanists (or, indeed, medievalists) but to any scholar working on these topics.