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IMC 2013: Sessions

Session 1116: The Pleasures of Vice and Virtue

Wednesday 3 July 2013, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:Barbara H. Rosenwein, Department of History, Loyola University Chicago
Moderator/Chair:Piroska Nagy, Département d'histoire, Université du Québec à Montréal
Paper 1116-aTaking Pleasure in Virtues and Vices: Alcuin's Manual for Count Wido
(Language: English)
Barbara H. Rosenwein, Department of History, Loyola University Chicago
Index terms: Lay Piety, Mentalities, Religious Life
Paper 1116-bSin, the Business of Pleasure, and the Pleasure of Reading: Exemplary Narratives and Other Forms of Sinful Pleasure in William Peraldus' Summa de vitiis
(Language: English)
Richard G. Newhauser, Department of English, Arizona State University
Index terms: Mentalities, Sermons and Preaching, Theology
Paper 1116-cThe Role of Pleasure in the Acquisition of Good Virtues: Giles of Rome's Idea of Education in his De regimine principum, c. 1279
(Language: English)
Noëlle-Laetitia Perret, Institut d'Études Médiévales, Université de Fribourg
Index terms: Education, Philosophy, Political Thought, Social History
Abstract

When medieval churchmen wrote about virtues, vices, and sins, they were not necessarily obliged to think about pleasure. And yet they did so. In this session some their various notions of pleasure and its relationship to morality will be explore via three exemplars across the medieval period. Paper 1 considers how and why Alcuin thought that his treatise for Count Wido might be a 'pleasure'; Paper 2 takes up sinful pleasures as reflected in the work of William Peraldus; and Paper 3 stresses the role of pleasure in the acquisition of virtue.