Eroticism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery ed. by Ian Frederick Moulton

This collection of seven studies plus the editor’s introduction makes up an interesting but relatively slender volume devoted to aspects of the erotic in medieval and Renaissance European culture. As the book’s subtitle indicates, the term ‘eroticism’ is not intended in the narrow sense applicable, for example, to works like Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti or I Modi. Rather, it is used in a broad sense meaning anything having to do with love, sex, or libidinous attraction, ranging from the mystic’s ecstatic experience of divine love to the gentleman’s use of magical sex aids—literally from the sublime to the (in modern eyes, at least) ridiculous.