Prostitution in Medieval Society is an exceptional work about an neglected topic in Medieval -
in any period infact--history. Otis has a clear and articulate style about a muddy and verbally
suggestive topic.

Series editor Catharine R. Stimpson summarizes the work best:

Quote:
It is a monograph about Languedoc between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries that presents
a compelling narrative about the social construction of sexuality. Otis reveals profound
changes in prostitution... 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.

...Prostitution in Medieval Society weaves the history of women with the histories of several
vast phenomena: sexuality; the growth of urban economies; the contest among municipal, state,
and religious authorities for the power to define public morality and order; and the struggle
within Christianity between Catholicism and an emerging Protestantism.

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