Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany PDF Author: Jamie Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192607553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Prostitution played an important part in structuring gender relations in medieval Germany. Prostitutes were often viewed as an example of the extreme female sinfulness which all women risked falling into, yet their social role was also seen as vital to the unmarried men for whom they provided a sexual outlet. Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany is the first full-length study of medieval prostitution to focus primarily on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes themselves. Based on three legal case studies from the late medieval Empire, Prostitutes and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany examines constructions of subjectivity between 1400 and 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 which 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.

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany PDF Author: Jamie Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192607553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Prostitution played an important part in structuring gender relations in medieval Germany. Prostitutes were often viewed as an example of the extreme female sinfulness which all women risked falling into, yet their social role was also seen as vital to the unmarried men for whom they provided a sexual outlet. Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany is the first full-length study of medieval prostitution to focus primarily on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes themselves. Based on three legal case studies from the late medieval Empire, Prostitutes and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany examines constructions of subjectivity between 1400 and 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 which 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.

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany PDF Author: Jamie Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198862784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on legal case studies, this book focuses on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes in medieval Germany.

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany PDF Author: Jamie Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192607561
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Prostitution played an important part in structuring gender relations in medieval Germany. Prostitutes were often viewed as an example of the extreme female sinfulness which all women risked falling into, yet their social role was also seen as vital to the unmarried men for whom they provided a sexual outlet. Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany is the first full-length study of medieval prostitution to focus primarily on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes themselves. Based on three legal case studies from the late medieval Empire, Prostitutes and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany examines constructions of subjectivity between 1400 and 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 which 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.

Micro Middle Ages

Micro Middle Ages PDF Author: Paul Edward Dutton
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031382676
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book Here

Book Description
Micro Middle Ages brings together five microhistorical case studies focusing on small or seemingly inconsequential evidence that leads to broader conclusions about medieval history and the way we do and understand history in general. Paul Dutton provides an overview of microhistorical approaches and theorizes about its use in pre-modern history. As opposed to studying history “from above” or history “from below,” Dutton shows the advantages for historians of doing history “from the inside out,” starting from some single, overlooked, but potentially knowable thing, delving deep inside, and then reattaching it to its time and place. Such an approach has one abiding advantage: its insistence on being grounded in the particularity of the evidence. The book highlights what the microhistorical is, its conceptual and practical challenges. Dutton argues that the attention to the micro has always been with us and is a constitutive, cognitive part of who we are as human beings.

Sexuality in Premodern Europe

Sexuality in Premodern Europe PDF Author: Franz X. Eder
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350341088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 537

Get Book Here

Book Description
How did sexual relationships work before, in and outside of marriage in the pre-modern era? What problems did contraception and sexually transmitted diseases pose? How did people deal with prostitution and pornography back then? What were the possibilities for same-sex and queer desire and practice? Using numerous examples and sources from across the continent, Sexuality in Premodern Europe shows that even in earlier centuries, sexual life had an elementary significance for the coexistence of couples and communities. It was just as decisive for how individuals saw themselves and others as it was for maintaining the social, economic and political order. Franz X. Eder interestingly emphasises the socio-historical view of sexuality, offering an apt foil for the cultural perspective which is so prevalent in the field. In this book, sexual behaviour is understood and thought about as social practice. From this vantage point, Eder deals with the function of the sexual in upbringing and socialization, its significance for the image of men and women, its role in marriage initiation, and the importance of sexual life for marital relationships and concubinage. Deviant and discriminated sexual forms such as prostitution, pornography and same-sex acts are also addressed throughout. The book explores the ways in which many people gained sexual experiences before, besides or beyond marriage, even if these experiences were forbidden in former societies. While research into the history of sexuality has so far dealt with such forms of the sexual primarily from the point of view of regulation and sanctioning, here they are understood as 'positive' practices that allowed people to understand and take ownership of their sexual desire.

Sources and Methods in the History of Sexuality

Sources and Methods in the History of Sexuality PDF Author: Anna Clark
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040103480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sources and Methods in the History of Sexuality outlines some of the challenges of retracing sexual acts, identities, and desires in the past, and shows how historians have responded to these methodological challenges with ingenuity and creativity. The volume acknowledges that the history of sexuality poses particularly interesting challenges in relation to sources due the peculiar nature of sexuality. On one hand, sexuality is frequently hidden and private, its practices often unknown, denied, and evaded, its desires fleeting or obsessive, its reality confused or illuminated by fantasy; yet on the other, sexuality consistently breaks into the public sphere through moral panics, waves of persecution, taxonomizing projects, and medical/juridical interventions. With vivid case studies from renowned contributors, the chapters provide different theoretical approaches along with more practical examples of how to study the history of sexuality. The volume has a broad chronology from the ancient world to the present, an extensive geography covering not only Europe and the Americas but also Latin America and Africa, and also includes a variety of gender and sexual expressions. The book also privileges texts that offer an intersectional approach, asking how sex and sexualities were constructed alongside/against other categories of difference. With accessible writing, this volume encourages the reader to think creatively about how to find evidence of sex/sexuality in the past and will be of value to students as well as scholars interested in the history of sexuality.

Flemish Textile Workers in England, 1331–1400

Flemish Textile Workers in England, 1331–1400 PDF Author: Milan Pajic
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108489206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book Here

Book Description
The story of immigrant textile workers from Flanders and their contributions to the English textile industry.

The Antechamber

The Antechamber PDF Author: Helmut Puff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503637034
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
Helmut Puff invites readers to visit societies and spaces of the past through the lens of a particular temporal modality: waiting. From literature, memoirs, manuals, chronicles, visuals, and other documents, Puff presents a history of waiting anchored in antechambers—interior rooms designated and designed for people to linger. In early modern continental Western Europe, antechambers became standard in the residences of the elites. As a time-space infrastructure these rooms shaped encounters between unequals. By imposing spatial distance and temporal delays, antechambers constituted authority, rank, and power. Puff explores both the logic and the experience of waiting in such formative spaces, showing that time divides as much as it unites, and that far from what people have said about early moderns, they approached living in time with apprehensiveness. Unlike how contemporary society primarily views the temporal dimension, to early modern Europeans time was not an objective force external to the self but something that was tied to acting in time. Divided only by walls and doors, waiters sought out occasions to improve their lot. At other times, they disrupted the scripts accorded them. Situated at the intersection of history, literature, and the history of art and architecture, this wide-ranging study demonstrates that waiting has a history that has much to tell us about social and power relations in the past and present.

Prostitution in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

Prostitution in Medieval and Early Modern Literature PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498585817
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Prostitution is known as the oldest profession in the history of humanity. While historians have already given due consideration to the profession’s social and cultural meanings across time periods, little has been written about literary representations of prostitution. Prostitution in Medieval and Early Modern Literature analyses the work of writers from an array of social positions, including courtly poets and even religious writers, dealing with the topic during the medieval and early modern periods. Its study shows that prostitutes and brothel owners were present on the literary stage far more often than we might have assumed. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach and incorporating relevant sources from across the entire European continent dating from the early Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, it examines the phenomenon of prostitution in a variety of contexts and highlights the extent to which the institution mattered for both the higher and the lower classes.

The Brothel of Pompeii

The Brothel of Pompeii PDF Author: Sarah Levin-Richardson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496873
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Offers an in-depth exploration of the only assured brothel from the Greco-Roman world, illuminating the lives of both prostitutes and clients.