2. The Hygienic Justification

Abstract

If literature gives pleasure, one possible means of justifying that pleasure is to show that it has beneficial effects. The argument can be put very simply: entertainment is good for you. The most common expression of that idea in the Middle Ages appears in discussions of recreation, which I treat in Chapter 3. Here I want to focus on a somewhat more technical medical argument, implicit in the idea of recreation but usually not fully articulated there. I refer to the theory as "hygienic" because that is the medical area in ·which it lies, the science of maintaining health. I will also call it "therapeutic," since the theory applies as well to recovery from illness or disability and since "therapy" has both mental and physical meanings appropriate to medieval medical views of literature. If these terms initially seem jarring, it is because we no longer categorize some things as the Middle Ages did. I hope that by the end of this chapter the inclusion of literary pleasure within a conceptual context that also encompasses regularity and proper diet will seem thoroughly justifiable. To understand the hygienic argument fully we must understand that medieval context, and to do that we must begin with the medical theory of the nonnaturals. I treat it at some length because it is not well known outside the history of medicine and because it is fundamental to an understanding of medieval views of the emotional effects of literature.