The Inside Story

Among men it is in virtue of fineness of touch, and

not of any other sense, that we discriminate the
mentally gifted from the rest.
—thomas aquinas
Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima
Until the eighteenth century at least, touch remained
one of the master senses . . . It verified perception,
giving solidity to the impressions provided by the
other senses, which were not as reliable.
—robert mandrou
Introduction to Modern France

If a history could be written of touch, what would it embrace? Hot fire and cold
wind, smooth silk and rough wool, spinning wheels and threshing flails, relics
and frolics and the healing touch of a king? A world of meaning can lie within the
simplest gesture, a kiss, or the touch of a hand. If such a history could be writ-
ten, why hasn’t it? Touch lies at the heart of our experience of ourselves and the
world yet it often remains unspoken and, even more so, unhistoricized. Indeed,
in many historical accounts the past is so disembodied that it appears little more
than a shadow play, a procession of ghosts who surely never felt the pinch of a
shoe nor the cut of a sword. This omission of tactile experience is noticeable not
only in the field of history, but across the humanities and social sciences. It seems
that we have so often been warned not to touch that we are reluctant to probe
the tactile world even with our minds.
Touch—and sensory experience in general—is often downplayed or disre-
garded even within such fields as the history of the body or the history of medicine.
(Compare, for example, the centrality of touch in Daniel Defoe’s 1722 literary
rendering of the Great Plague to its marginalization in recent historical accounts.)
xii The Inside Story
The decision to omit tactile data is probably not a choice contemporary historians
have made as individuals. The decision would seem to have already been made
for them by a general, unspoken consensus among academics.
We can find this attitude already in the historical writing of the nineteenth
century when the notion that “high” culture requires the suppression of the “lower”
senses was formalized. Touch was typed by the scholars of the day as a crude and
uncivilized mode of perception. In the sensory scale of “races” created by the
natural historian Lorenz Oken, the “civilized” European “eye-man,” who focused
on the visual world, was positioned at the top and the African “skin-man,” who
used touch as his primary sensory modality, at the bottom. Societies that touched
much, it was said, did not think much and did not bear thinking much about—
except perhaps by anthropologists. To achieve respectability, societies needed to
be seen to have risen above the “animal” life of the body.To achieve respectability,
historians had to show that in their work they had done the same.
The potential benefits of reversing this tendency are considerable. Exploring the
history of touch makes the past come alive. It clothes the dry bones of historical fact
with the flesh of physical sensation. Sensuous history is more interesting and more
memorable. An embodied approach saves historical figures from being perceived
as lifeless puppets who move across the stage of the past without any real feelings.
When we allow historical figures to be of flesh and blood we make it possible to
relate to them as fellow beings and, therefore, to make meaningful comparisons
between their lives and situations and our own (see Hoffer 2005: Introduction).
The ways in which sensuous description can make history—and indeed any
cultural account—come alive might in itself be enough to justify the historical
study of touch.Yet, however valuable this descriptive dimension may be, it cannot
in itself reveal the significance of touch in other times and places. To understand
the sensory life of a society one must look at the cultural values that inform its
ways of sensing the world. The history of the touch involves not just a search for
experience, but for meaning.
In this book the quest for tactile meaning begins in the Middle Ages.The reason
for this is that the early Middle Ages was often included among the “uncivilized”
hands-on societies that did not bear much thinking about. This was a time when,
it was said, “Europe lay sunk in a night of barbarism which grew darker and darker
. . . a barbarism more awful and horrible than that of the primitive savage, for it
was the decomposing body of what had been a great civilization” (Briffault 1919:
164). The very use of the term “Dark Ages” to refer both to the centuries im-
mediately following the fall of Rome and to the entire medieval period conveyed
the notion of an age when people groped about blindly, feeling their way through
life. Indeed, according to this sensory classification of historical periods, it was
only in the Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century age of reason, that the light
 The Inside Story xiii
of learning finally dispelled the shadows of past ignorance and enabled people to
think clearly about the world.
The term Dark Ages, with its pejorative connotations, is no longer generally
used by historians, who now concede that, though most of the medieval popula-
tion may have been unlettered, they were not intellectually benighted. In the
words of the eminent historian Keith Thomas, “It would be utterly wrong to think
that [premodern] illiterates lived in some sort of mental darkness” (1986: 105).
Early admissions that the darkness of the Middle Ages was pierced by a few rays of
light have led to assertions that the Middle Ages had its own “enlightenment(s),”
prefiguring that of the eighteenth century. In recent decades so much work has
been done on the cultural achievements of the Middle Ages that the period might
now be said to be positively basking in the sun.
Despite all of the recent scholarship on the Middle Ages, there nevertheless
remains much to be learned about the tactile values that shaped the sensibility
and sociality of the period, the embodied life that so repelled earlier historians
that it seemed akin to savagery. By exploring the corporeal sensations and sym-
bols of the Middle Ages, The Deepest Sense attempts to both give readers a feel
for medieval life and to demonstrate the social and religious centrality of touch
during this formative period of Western civilization.
The emphasis in much of the present book is on the persistence of collective
practices and beliefs involving touch over the longue durée. At points throughout
the book and specifically in the last chapters, however, the reader’s attention
is directed to the interplay of tactile practices and cultural change as the West
undergoes its long transition from the structures of medieval life to those of
modernity (here used in the sociological sense to refer to the period beginning
with the eighteenth century). Among the subjects considered are the decline of
the medieval “tactile” cosmology, the development of a culture of comfort, the
“discovery” of the nervous system, and the industrialization of touch. As the reader
moves through the book from topic to topic and from period to period the plot
thickens and broader issues of social control and representation come to the fore.
The eight chapters of the book explore different tactile realms, from the feel of
the world to the (dis)comforts of home, from the rites of pleasure to the disciplin-
ary uses of pain, and from the gestures of faith to the postures of the drill. Each
chapter provides a general overview of its subject matter together with intimate
accounts of tactile experiences. Where citations are made from medieval texts,
translations or modernizations have been selected that give a good “feel” for the
original. Reading through poignant descriptions of the devastation occasioned by
the Black Death in the fourteenth century or the harsh conditions of nineteenth-
century prison life, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject,
touches us to the quick.
xiv The Inside Story
To some, exploring the history of touch may seem like an attempt to reas-
sert old stereotypes of earlier periods as crude and unenlightened—as dark ages.
However, it is precisely this engrained association of touch with irrationality and
primitivism that must be overcome before one can appreciate the tactile values
of any particular period. As regards the Middle Ages, it bears noting that many
people of the time were proud of the accomplishments of their age and quite
ready to use tactile metaphors to express it. The eleventh-century Abbot Guibert
of Nogent, paraphrasing a biblical text, declared that “our little fingers are thicker
than the backs of our fathers,” to signal the superiority of his own period (Guibert
of Nogent 1984: 10). A medieval critic of the later gloomy assessment of the age
might well have responded like one of the characters in a seventeenth-century play
by Shadwell : “I am not so dark either, I am sharp, sharp as a needle!” (1927: 263).
If the aim of the history of touch is not to denigrate premodernity as a primi-
tive world of mindless sensations, neither is it to romanticize it as a purveyor of
warm tactile experiences in contrast to the cold visual values of modernity. The
intention is rather to explore how the corporeal practices of any particular pe-
riod relate to the cultural context of the time, and how this relationship changes
under the influence of new factors. As the following chapters show, touch does
not simply recede from cultural life in modernity, it is reeducated, and while it
retreats from some domains, it expands into others.
The topic of touch is, of course, capacious, and the first question to ask before
undertaking its study is what one means by touch. While the sense of touch may
be most closely associated with physical contact, it can also include sensations
of heat, pain, pleasure, and movement, among others. To the extent possible, I
have tried to consider a range of tactile sensations in this work, while at the same
time taking into account those aspects of touch that were of particular relevance
in the periods under study.
Touch is not only highly complex in itself, it is also closely related to the other
senses (as well as to the emotions). Indeed, all of the senses can be, and have been,
thought of as having tactile dimensions—even sight involves eye movement. It is
not my aim here to try to disentangle tactile experience from its multisensorial
context, but rather to foreground sensations that have customarily been under-
stood to be so basic to bodily existence that they have been taken for granted.
The Deepest Sense does not intend to offer a comprehensive history of the culture
of touch. There are, inevitably, gaps in the material covered—tactile, cultural,
and temporal. The historical investigation I have initiated here might be taken
backward to antiquity or forward to the present day, or across to other cultures.
It might be fleshed out—reshaped—in numerous ways by further research.While
I have done my best to produce an informed and thought-provoking guide to the
 The Inside Story xv
tactile past, the exploration of past worlds of touch provides more than a handful
for any historian.
I have generally given less attention to topics that have already been the subject
of extensive research, such as the history of sexuality. On the other hand, I have
developed areas that thus far have received little consideration within the history
of the body and the senses, such as the relationship between humans and animals.
While I refer to scientific theories of perception within their cultural context,
I do not try to employ modern data about the physiology of touch to explain
the practices of the past. Sander Gilman has noted that works on touch tend “to
return over and over again to the physiological ‘realities’ for their understanding
of the history or culture of touch” (1993: 198).This remains the case today when
concepts and conclusions drawn from neuroscience tend to creep into, if not
dominate, cultural investigations of the senses across the humanities and social
sciences. Yet to rely on science for a true understanding of perception is both
to disregard the ways in which science is itself a social construct and to detract
from the significance of culturally specific models of sensation.
The history of touch presented here is grounded in the work of the Annales
School, which aimed to broaden our understanding of the past by investigating
collective beliefs and practices within their social, physical, and economic envi-
ronments. One of the founders of that school, Marc Bloch, explored medieval
structures of corporeal behavior and social organization in works such as The Royal
Touch (1973) and Feudal Society (1989). Another of its founders, Lucien Febrve,
provocatively suggested in 1947 that “a series of fascinating studies could be
done on the sensory underpinnings of thought in different periods” (1982: 436).
Other Annales historians—such as Philippe Ariès, Robert Mandrou, Jacques Le
Goff and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie—would take up the challenge, at least in
part, and bring perception into the historical domain. The first full-length his-
tory of the senses, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination,
was written by Alain Corbin (1986). This seminal work was later followed by an
influential exploration of the significance of sound in nineteenth-century rural
France titled Village Bells (1998; see also Corbin 1995 and 2005).
Some sixty years after Febvre first called for a historical investigation of per-
ception, work on the history of the senses is flourishing. The most recent books
on the subject include Robert Jütte’s A History of the Senses (2005) and Mark
Smith’s Sensing the Past (2007), along with a number of specialized studies (e.g.,
Woolgar 2006; Cowan and Steward, 2007; Nichols, Kablitz, and Calhoun 2008;
Schleif and Newhauser 2010). When it comes to works on individual senses,
however, there is a marked disparity in the amount of scholarly attention each
has received. While the cultures of sight and hearing have been the subject of
xvi The Inside Story
numerous important studies, much less has been said about the senses of smell,
taste, and touch. Yet the so-called lower senses have not been left completely
unhistoricized. As regards the history of touch, works dealing with issues in the
field include Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle’s (1998) examination of the significance
of hands and posture in the sixteenth century, Laura Gowing’s (2003) study of
women’s corporeal experience in the seventeenth century, Elizabeth Harvey’s
(2002) anthology of essays on touch during the same period, and my own edited
collection of writings on touch in history and across cultures, The Book of Touch
(Classen 2005a). Mark Paterson (2007) has recently explored the history of
philosophical treatments of touch and its relevance to the haptic technology and
digital culture of the present day.While not explicitly on touch, Stephen Connor’s
Book of Skin (2004) reminds us that the cultural meanings and sensory qualities
of the human skin are multifold.
Along with the work of the Annales historians, another formative influence
on this book has been the methodological approach known as the anthropology
of the senses. In the 1990s Canadian anthropologist David Howes, along with
others, advocated that attention be paid to how sensory experience is collectively
patterned to shape people’s understanding of and interaction with the world
(see Howes 1991; 2003; 2005). A knowledge of the groundbreaking work of the
anthropology of the senses is now essential for any one wishing to explore the
life of the senses in cultural context.
A distinguishing feature of an anthropological approach to the senses is that it
makes it possible to transcend the bounds of language.The historian of the senses
undertakes what could be called deep anthropology, seeking the unspoken mes-
sages of our bodies and exploring our most intimate relationships. Often people,
particularly in societies that feel no compulsion to “put it all into words,” don’t
talk about their experiences. A lack of words, however, does not mean a lack of
feelings or of social significance. Many feelings are difficult to put into language,
they are too subtle or too powerful or too complex. The anthropology of the
senses sensitizes us to the multiple ways in which humans communicate and
express themselves through nonlinguistic modalities.
Historians, unlike anthropologists, must rely a great deal on texts for their
material, though an exploration of the visual images and material artifacts of the
period under study can contribute enormously. Even when dealing with texts,
however, those who seek sensory references will find plenty to occupy them.
Take for example, the following passage concerning the life of the castle and the
countryside written in 1518:
Whether perched on a peak or situated in a plain, the castle was built not
for pleasure but for defense, surrounded by moats and trenches, cramped
 The Inside Story xvii
within, burdened with stables for animals large and small, dark buildings
for bombards and stores of pitch and sulfur, swollen with stores of arma-
ments and machines of war. Everywhere the disagreeable odor of powder
dominates. And the dogs with their filth—what a fine smell that is! And
the comings and goings of the knights, among them bandits, brigands and
thieves. Usually the house is wide open, because we do not know who is
who and do not take much trouble to find out. We hear the bleating of the
sheep, the mooing of the cows, the barking of the dogs, the shouts of men
working in the fields, the grinding and clatter of carts and wagons. And near
the house, which is close by the woods, we even have the cry of the wolf.
(Ulrich von Hutten, cited by Braunstein 1988: 540).

In this passage, castle life is presented as a conglomeration of (rather disagree-

able) sensations. The reader goes from feeling cramped—closed in by encircling
trenches and swollen rooms—to being exposed—open to all and sundry. The
ambience is pervaded by odors and sounds—of war, of work, of animals. All of
these sensations (few of which, notably, are visual) are set on edge by the fearsome
howl of the wolf just outside the bounds of human settlement. Such passages set
to rest the notion that the sensory life of the past is unavailable to the historian,
and also dispel any romantic ideas of premodern sensuality.
Despite the sensory richness of many period accounts, it is still often the case
that people leave no record of their feelings.The corporeal practices and sensory
values that define life may be so pervasive they are taken for granted and left
unmentioned. The history of touch is, consequently, often an inferred history. It
must move sideways from a suggestive phrase to a characteristic practice to an
informative artifact or site, and even inward to one’s own distinctive yet shared
corporeal experience, rather than in a linear fashion from narrative to narrative,
event to event. It is not just a history from below. It is a history from inside and a
history from in between—the kind of history one needs to explore the cultural
dimensions of our deepest sense.