Tracy's insights regarding writers' (often specious) rejections of torture as belonging to an alienated past, a pagan oppressor or a foreign enemy, serve as a timely rejoinder to the ways in which we do exactly the same, in labelling as 'medieval' the brutality that characterizes societies and governments now just as it did then.
REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES
... Read more[T]he ambitious scope of this project is impressive and laudable. [...] a truly impressive [book] in the range of its historical and geographic coverage.
THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW
The value of this book rests not only in its redefinition of medieval attitudes to torture, but also in its consideration of modern attitudes to torture. [.] Its wealth of detail and breadth of coverage ensure that it has the potential to become one of the seminal studies in the field.
ÓENACH: FMRSI REVIEWS
Tracey convincingly points to a persistent 'literary resistance' to unjust uses of pain for power. [...] Highly recommended.
CHOICE
Larissa Tracey's book constitutes an illuminating challenge to popular conceptions of the Middle Ages. [...] her study suggests that [...] modern times have more in common with the Middle Ages than most of us might like to believe.
TLS
Tracy's in-depth study historicizes torture, demonstrating that, as a rare topos of medieval literature, it predominantly articulated a distrust and rejection of violent judicial practices. Whatever its impact on modern-day detractors of medieval civilization may be, this argument should become part of medievalists' further reflection on the place and meaning of cruelty in the Middle Ages.
SPECULUM
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