The corporeal orientation: Understanding deviance through the object(s) of love

[Extract] In this chapter, I attempt to relate some common approaches to the history of the emotions to central concepts in medieval Western Christian theology, premodern theories of cognition and modern queer theory. I will first explore some of these theoretical approaches before analysing the essential framework of the corporeal orientation as found in the work of Augustine of Hippo. Next, I will interrogate how these ideas function in the twelfth-century account of human cognition offered by Hugh of St Victor. From Hugh, I will examine how Chaucer’s Pardoner, in the fourteenth century, exemplifies the idea of a corporeal love as described by Augustine and Hugh. Finally, I will briefly examine how the Fall of humanity in Milton’s seventeenth-century Paradise Lost follows the framework of the corporeal orientation outlined earlier by Augustine, Hugh and Chaucer.