SEX AND SEXUALITY IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Take a peep beneath the bedsheets to look beyond the public piety of the Middle Ages and into the intimate worlds of men and women living between 1250 and 1450. Drawing on legal records, moral treatises, church courts, and everyday testimony, the book explores our ancestors' ingenious, surprising, bizarre often entertaining solutions to the challenges associated with maintaining a healthy sex life. The book examines prevailing attitudes toward male and female sexual behaviour, showing how definitions of virtue, vice, and respectability were shaped by powerful institutions such as the Church, the law, and patriarchal authority. From marriage and courtship and pre-marital sex, adultery and fornication to prostitution, from pregnancy, fertility, and illegitimacy to consent, same-sex relationships, and gender roles, this offers a compelling and nuanced portrait of private life in a world that is at once distant and strikingly familiar. 171 pages, fairly large print, 16 pages of archive photos of weddings and palaces, a Nobleman taking a bath and medieval couples entwined.