"In order to deal with both 'reality' and representation, Karras
had to discover and exploit a wide variety of sources. She has
skillfully woven together the records of town, manorial, and
diocesan courts with insights gained from literary sources such as
saints' lives, sermons, plays, and fabliaux....From the book's
title to its conclusion, Karras emphasizes that control of women's
independence, much more than sexuality, was at stake in the
unending
insistence on the shameful nature and image of women who were not
'safely under the dominion of any one man--husband, father,
master.' Karras is not the first to make this point, but she argues
it with authority
and with a wealth of illuminating detail....This book makes a
significant contribution to our appreciation of the social and
cultural history not of prostitutes alone, but of all women in
medieval England."--Clarissa Atkinson, American Historical
Review
"Karras has put together the definitive study of prostitution in
late medieval England....Avoiding the problems inherent in many
other studies, Karras treads a careful and well-articulated path
between seeing prostitutes only as victims or describing them as
agents in control of their own destiny....Karras has written an
original, stimulating, and important book that will become a
standard text on the history of prostitution."--Renaissance
Quarterly
"Ruth Karras's new book will become a standard text on medieval
prostitution, but it will also be required reading for anyone
interested in gender, sexuality, and women in the middle ages.
Drawing on literary texts, religious materials, legal
documentation, and other sources, Karras places prostitutes--so
often seen as marginal and atypical women--at the center of gender
relations in medieval England. Her sophisticated and compelling
argument is a major
contribution to women's history, gender history, and medieval
history."--Judith Bennett, University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill
"A study of prostitution should reveal the convergence of many
social forces: fear of female sexuality and venality, the fine line
between approved and condemned behavior, the regulation of
commercial activity, the double standard, and the distinction
between the moral economy of the neighborhood and that of the
fathers of society. Ruth Karras touches all these points and also
turns to the voice of creative and sermon literature, as well as
case studies, to put
flesh on the tale."--Joel Rosenthal, State University of New York,
Stony Brook
"Ruth Karras here again displays her extraordinary ability to
unpack the medieval meanings of twentieth-century terms that do not
adequately describe medieval phenomena. Her study replaces the
modern concept of prostitution with the more accurate and very
wide-ranging term 'whoredom', bringing to bear and synthesizing a
vast array of sources, from the legal and archival to the literary,
artistic, and theological."--Edward Peters, University of
Pennsylvania
"A worthy addition to Studies in the History of Sexuality. In
Common Women Ruth Karras argues that while it is clear enough that
commercial prostitutes inhabited [late medieval English] towns,
what marked these women was not 'money for sex' but their general
availability to men. Their behavior, viewed as both socially
necessary and individually depraved, is examined in terms of law,
society, the life course of a prostitute and prevailing ideas
about
sin. This thorough-going study yields valuable perspectives on
women's position in medieval society."--Susan Mosher Stuard,
Haverford College
"[A] major contribution to the growing literature on medieval
sexuality and will be read with profit by a wide spectrum of
scholars."--Shannon McSheffrey, Concordia College
"A particularly neat blending of the best techniques of medieval
scholarship with the interpretive insights of contemporary feminist
theory."--Judith P. Zinsser, Miami University
"[S]olid and refreshing work..."--The Medieval Review
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