| Description |
1 online resource (xi,164 pages) |
| Summary |
Based on legal case studies, this book focuses on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes in medieval Germany |
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Prostitution played a major role in structuring medieval gender relations. Prostitutes were seen to be an example of extreme female sinfulness which all women risked falling into, while at the same time prostitutes themselves were seen to play a vital social role in many towns by providing a sexual outlet to unmarried men. This book is the first full-length study of medieval prostitution to focus primarily upon how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes themselves. It is based on three legal case studies from the late medieval empire which examine constructions of subjectivity between the period c.1400 - 1500. This period saw the rapid rise of tolerated prostitution across much of western Europe and the emergence of the public brothel as a central institution in the regulation of social order, followed by its equally rapid suppression from the early 1500s. By analysing how individuals interacted with cultural discourses surrounding the body, sexuality, and sin, the book explores how the concepts that defined prostitution in the Middle Ages shaped individual lives, and how individuals were able - or not - to exert agency, both within the circumstances of their own lives, and in response to official attempts to regulate sexual behaviour |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed July 19, 2021) |
| Subject |
Prostitution -- Germany -- History -- To 1500
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Prostitution
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Germany
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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History
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| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780192607560 |
|
0192607561 |
|
9780191895272 |
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019189527X |
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