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Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream. Pain in Late Medieval Culture, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2010Repris du site des presses universitaires de ChicagoIn the late medieval era, pain could be a symbol of holiness, disease,  sin, or truth. It could be encouragement to lead a moral life, a  punishment for wrong doing, or a method of healing. Exploring the varied  depictions and descriptions of pain—from martyrdom narratives to  practices of torture and surgery—The Modulated Scream attempts to  decode this culture of suffering in the Middle Ages.Esther Cohen brings to life the cacophony of howls emerging from the  written record of physicians, torturers, theologians, and mystics. In  considering how people understood suffering, explained it, and meted it  out, Cohen discovers that pain was imbued with multiple meanings. While  interpreting pain was the province only of the rarified elite,  harnessing pain for religious, moral, legal, and social purposes was a  practice that pervaded all classes of Medieval life. In the overlap of  these contradicting attitudes about what pain was for—how it was to be  understood and who should use it—Cohen reveals the distinct and often  conflicting cultural traditions and practices of late medieval  Europeans. Ambitious and wide-ranging, The Modulated Scream is  intellectual history at its most acute.List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroductionSetting the StagePart I. Manipulating Pain1. The Uses of Suffering2. “Twisting the Mind”: Torture and Truth-Finding3. Alleviating Pain4. The Script of Pain BehaviorPart II. Knowledge from Pain5. The Vocabulary and Typology of Pain6. The Christian History of Humanity7. Human and Divine Passion8. ImpassibilityConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex