Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age—Mental-Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses

Literature scholars and historians draw from literary and historical texts to shed light on medieval and early modern perceptions of what constituted criminal behaviors, and how society responded punitively to those found guilty of violating normative patterns of behavior. The topics include the survival of customary justice and resistant to its displacement by the new Ordines Iudiciorum as evidence by francophone literature of the high middle ages, women as victims and criminals in the Siete Partidas, wardens and jailers in 14th-century southern France, equal opportunity vengeance in the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, and some cozeners in Shakespeare's England. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Albrecht Classen,University of Arizona, Tucson, USA;Connie Scarborough, Texas Tech University, Dallas, USA.