The Body-in-Pain: Sensorial, Emotional, and Performative Dimensions of Pain in the Early and High Middle Ages

在任何时候，痛苦的经历不仅受到生物因素的影响，而且受到社会和文化因素的影响。因此，它受到历史变化的影响。由于绝大多数人正在或曾经经历过疼痛，因此对这种现象有深入的了解，因此解决疼痛和将疼痛纳入社会和文化的方式提供了对整个社会的洞察。基于一系列早期和中世纪的资料，该研究项目将提供前现代社会长期疼痛的第一个系统研究之一。重点是当代概念的身体，情感和知觉，并在表演层面的痛苦。在中世纪，身体被认为是可渗透的，容易改变的;疼痛的体验与感官（以及超验的）感知、情感状态、（仪式）行为和行为密切相关。该项目考察了社会意义，适用性，以及这些概念在6世纪和12世纪之间的变化。其目标是1。在中世纪，直接关注疼痛作为一种身体体验; 2。研究中世纪对疼痛的情感和感觉体验; 3.强调了中世纪文化中疼痛的表现特征。该项目的重点是长期疼痛是一种普遍现象，有效缓解疼痛的范围有限的时间段。通过研究随着时间的推移，疼痛的文化和社会塑造的经验，该项目将推进和深化前现代残疾史领域以及我们目前对疼痛的理解。它在方法上和主题上都是创新的，因为它结合了疼痛、残疾和情感等历史主题，并将各自的方法结合在一起，而不回到残疾的个人主义模式。这种方法将与斯旺西大学前现代残疾史和情感史领域的领先研究人员合作开发并不断加强和评估。为了充分探讨这一新的方法论前提，将启动一个国际跨时代研究网络“残疾、疼痛和情绪”。

At all times, the experience of pain is shaped not only by biological, but by social and cultural factors. As such it is subject to historical change. As the vast majority of a population are or have been experiencing pain, and therefore have intimate knowledge of this phenomenon, the ways pain is addressed and incorporated socially and culturally provides insight into societies as a whole. Based on a range of early and high medieval sources, the research project will provide one of the first systematic studies of long-term pain in premodern societies. The focus is on contemporary concepts of corporeality, emotions, and perception, and on the performative dimension of pain. In the Middle Ages, the body was seen as permeable and easily changeable; the experience of pain was closely linked with sensory (as well as transcendent) perceptions, emotional states, (ritual) acts and deeds. The project examines the social meanings, the applicability, and the changes of these concepts between the 6th and 12th centuries. Its aims are to 1. direct attention to pain as a corporeal experience in the Middle Ages; 2. study the emotional and sensorial experience of pain in the Middle Ages; 3. highlight the performative character of pain in medieval cultures. The project focuses on a time period when long-term pain was a widespread phenomenon and the scope of effective pain relief was limited. By examining the culturally and socially shaped experiences of pain over the course of time, the project will advance and deepen the field of premodern disability history as well as our current understanding of pain. It is methodically and thematically innovative in that it combines the historical subjects of pain, disability, and emotions, and brings together the respective methodologies without reverting back to an individualistic model of disability. This approach will be developed and continuously sharpened and evaluated in collaboration with leading researchers in the fields of premodern disability history and the history of emotions at Swansea University. In order to fully explore this new methodological premise, an international, cross-epochal research network “Disability, Pain and Emotions” will be initiated.