The chapters of Painful pleasures offer new and worthwhile pathways of examination into medieval culture and invite further analyses into the kinkier side of human sexualities, a side that in fact could not be more central to a study of our culture. This timely volume ventures into the subject of sadomasochism in varied aspects of medieval life. Saint’s Lives and mystical treatises provide evidence of failed sadism and empowering masochism. Literary culture in the form of epics and courtly tales preserve stories of eroticised power. These exciting chapters join together to form a picture of medieval culture that is kinky in its practice and deeply psychological at its core.