Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy, 1550-1730 (Studies in the History of Sexuality) - Hardcover

Farr, James R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195089073 ISBN 13: 9780195089073

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

A sociocultural analysis of the relationships among law, religion, and sexual morality in Burgundy during the Catholic Reformation, this book is divided into two, interrelated parts: the world of prescription and the world of practice. The first part examines the construction of authority, focusing primarily upon Burgundy's dominant elite legal community. The second part of the book examines the deployment of authority, and its appropriation by French men and women. The new moral order focused on sexuality and the imposition of this order involved a legal contest over the disposition of bodies, both male and female, be they priests, courting couples, victims of seduction or rape, or prostitutes. James Farr's book offers an unusually fertile approach to study the link between sexuality and criminality.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Focusing on a historical time and place rich with implications for the interactions among law, religion, and sexual morality, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy is an incisive analysis of the tension between the prescriptive and the practical aspects of law. As Catholic Reform penetrated and was institutionalized in Early Modern France, legal codes reached further than before into realms of moral behavior. James Farr reveals how Burgundy's dominant, elite legal community attempted to impose new laws and regulations to recover a social order they believed had been destroyed in the upheavals of the sixteenth century. Among their chief objectives was the imposition of patriarchy to be accomplished by the construction of a more rigorous gender hierarchy and a greater disciplining of sexual passions. As a series of moral codes governing the disposition of human bodies, the new order of morality established authority over the sexual behavior of priests, courting couples, victims of seduction or rape, and prostitutes, among others. In practice, however, the exigencies of criminal procedure transformed the written rules into a resource of strategic power, often used by judges and litigants to achieve ends quite different from those originally intended. Informed by recent theoretical insights from legal anthropology and French social theory, and making use of a variety of original sources, particularly the court records of moral crime, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy draws an important, systematic link between the histories of sexuality and criminality at a time when there was no clear distinction between sin and crime. It will be essential reading for scholars andstudents of French history, social history, legal history, and the history of sexuality.

About the Author:

James R. Farr is Associate Professor of History at Purdue University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0195089073
• ISBN 13: 9780195089073
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264