Pleasure in the Middle Ages Applying a variety of methodological perspectives the essays collected here analyse the role of pleasure in relation to a variety of subjects such as the human body love relationships education food friendship morality devotion and mysticism. They also integrate a wide range of sources including literature (monastic to courtly) medical texts illuminated prayer books iconography and theatrical plays. Each document each discipline and thus each essay combine to provide a complex and diversified picture of medieval joys and delights a picture that shows the extent to which pleasure is engrained in the periods culture. This collection shows how pleasure in the Middle Ages is at once a coveted feeling and a constant moral concern both the object and the outcome of a constant negotiation between earthly and divine imperatives. Back cover