Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc By Leah Lydia Otis
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press 1985 | 258 Pages | ISBN: 0226640329 | PDF | 12 MB
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press 1985 | 258 Pages | ISBN: 0226640329 | PDF | 12 MB
Prostitution in Medieval Society, a monograph about Languedoc between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, is also much more than that: it is a compelling narrative about the social construction of sexuality. Leah Lydia Otis uses the implements of scholarship to reveal profound changes in prostitution, that trade in women's bodies. At first more or less tolerated, prostitution later became institutionalized. Various authorities sought to regulate, and to profit from, brothels. In so doing, such powers distinguished legal houses from illegal competition. Arguments against competition became models for a more general assault on prostitution that characterized a third stage: active repression by an increasingly misogynistic sixteenth century. During this period the prostitute became the marginal, criminal figure that haunts the modern imagination.