Pain, Pleasure and Perversity : Discourses of Suffering in Seventeenth-Century England (Hardcover)

Contents: Introduction; Part I The Suffering Self: Constructs of suffering in 17th-century England; Suffering and sexuality in Catholic hagiography; Polemic, pornography and romanticism: the subversion of catholic asceticism. Part II The Suffering of Others: Cruelty and compassion; The spectacle of suffering. Part III Suffering and Gender: The sexual politics of suffering; The erotics of suffering and cruelty; The emergence of the dominatrix; Bibliography of works cited; Index.