Sex, Money, and Prostitution in Medieval English Culture

Author / Editor
Karras, Ruth Mazo.

Title
Sex, Money, and Prostitution in Medieval English Culture

Published
Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 201-16.

Description
Karras surveys depictions of female commercialized sex in the English late Middle Ages. It is difficult, she suggests, to separate kinds and degrees of prostitution, because prostitution was regarded as an "extreme case" of the general sinfulness of female sexuality. Chaucerian examples include the Wife of Bath and the wives in ShT, CkT, and ManT.

Alternative Title
Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
Shipman and His Tale.
Clerk and His Tale.
Manciple and His Tale.