Medieval Crime and Social Control

Medieval Crime and Social Control

Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, editors

$22.50 Paper
ISBN: 0-8166-3169-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3169-8

Crime is a matter of interpretation, and never was this truer than in the Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was—and what was a crime. This collection undertakes a thorough exploration of shifting definitions of crime and changing attitudes toward social control in medieval Europe.

These essays—by leading specialists in European history and literature—reveal how various forces in medieval society interacted and competed in interpreting and influencing mechanisms for social control. They also demonstrate how well the different methods of history and literature combine to illuminate these developments.

The essays show how the play with boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate actions took place not only in laws and courts, but also in the writing of social commentators such as John Fortescue and Jean Gerson, in the works of authors such as William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer, and in popular literature such as sagas and romances. Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary sources—legal treatises, court cases, statutes, poems, romances, and comic tales—the contributors consider topics including fear of crime, rape and violence against women, revenge and condemnations of crime, learned dispute about crime and social control, and legal and political struggles over hunting rights. Their work shows how medieval society also defined its boundaries in contested spaces such as taverns and forests and in the different rules applying to the behavior and treatment of men and women.

"This volume offers a coherent presentation of cultural studies. It will endure as a landmark of that approach to medieval studies." —The Historian

Contributors: Christopher Cannon, Elizabeth Fowler, Louise O. Fradenburg, Claude Gauvard, James H. Landman, William Perry Marvin, William Ian Miller, Louise Mirrer, Walter Prevenier, .

Barbara A. Hanawalt is professor of history at the University of Minnesota and the author of Chaucer's England. She has co-edited City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, Bodies and Disciplines, and Medieval Practices of Space.

David Wallace is Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

268 pages | 5 7/8 x 9 | 1998
Medieval Cultures Series, volume 16



Medieval Crime and Social Control Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, editors		$22.50 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-3169-7 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3169-8
Crime is a matter of interpretation, and never was this truer than in the Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was—and what was a crime. This collection undertakes a thorough exploration of shifting definitions of crime and changing attitudes toward social control in medieval Europe. These essays—by leading specialists in European history and literature—reveal how various forces in medieval society interacted and competed in interpreting and influencing mechanisms for social control. They also demonstrate how well the different methods of history and literature combine to illuminate these developments. The essays show how the play with boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate actions took place not only in laws and courts, but also in the writing of social commentators such as John Fortescue and Jean Gerson, in the works of authors such as William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer, and in popular literature such as sagas and romances. Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary sources—legal treatises, court cases, statutes, poems, romances, and comic tales—the contributors consider topics including fear of crime, rape and violence against women, revenge and condemnations of crime, learned dispute about crime and social control, and legal and political struggles over hunting rights. Their work shows how medieval society also defined its boundaries in contested spaces such as taverns and forests and in the different rules applying to the behavior and treatment of men and women. "This volume offers a coherent presentation of cultural studies. It will endure as a landmark of that approach to medieval studies." —The Historian Contributors: Christopher Cannon, Elizabeth Fowler, Louise O. Fradenburg, Claude Gauvard, James H. Landman, William Perry Marvin, William Ian Miller, Louise Mirrer, Walter Prevenier, . Barbara A. Hanawalt is professor of history at the University of Minnesota and the author of Chaucer's England. She has co-edited City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, Bodies and Disciplines, and Medieval Practices of Space. David Wallace is Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. 268 pages \| 5 7/8 x 9 \| 1998 Medieval Cultures Series, volume 16