Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval EnglandThrough a sensitive use of a wide variety of imaginative and didactic texts, Ruth Karras shows that while prostitutes as individuals were marginalized within medieval culture, prostitution as an institution was central to the medieval understanding of what it meant to be a woman. This important work will be of interest to scholars and students of history, women's studies, and the history of sexuality. |
Contents
| 3 | |
1 Prostitution and the Law | 13 |
2 Brothels Licit and Illicit | 32 |
3 Becoming a Prostitute | 48 |
4 The Sex Trade in Practice | 65 |
5 Marriage Sexuality and Marginality | 84 |
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Common terms and phrases
accused adultery Agnes bawdry BIHR bishop bishop of Winchester Book Bromyard brothelkeepers brothels Cal L-B Cal PMR Cambridge University Press charged Chaucer church courts CLRO commercial prostitutes common whore common women compurgators court records Court Rolls culture customers daughters defamation ecclesiastical economic example exempla fabliaux female feminine sexuality fifteenth century fined fornication fourteenth fourteenth-century gender Goldberg Golden Legend Guildhall Library harlot History husband indicate Joan John Karras King's Lynn late medieval Legend Liber Albus literature lived London lust male manorial Margaret Margery Margery Kempe marriage married Mary medieval England medieval English Middle English misogyny moral offenses Oxford University Press preachers preaching priests procurers pros prostitutes punished Record Office regulation Saint sermons servants sex trade sexual behavior Shipman's Tale sins social Society Southampton Southwark stewholders stews story term texts Thomas tion titutes towns Virgin vols whore whoredom wife wives woman York
Popular passages
Page 194 - David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras, "The Interrogation of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth-Century London," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1, no.