Sharon Farmer

Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris

Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor

Cornell Univesity Press 2002

Stron XIII+198, format: 16x24 cm

Książka nie była używana: brak obwoluty, na okładce z tyłu defekt po oderwaniu nalepki z cenami. Stan dobry plus.

This book about poor men and women in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Paris reveals the other side of the "age of cathedrals" in the very place where gothic architecture and scholastic theology were born. In Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, Sharon Farmer extends and deepens the understanding of urban poverty in the High Middle Ages. She explores the ways in which cultural elites thought about the poor, and shows that their conceptions of poor men and women derived from the roles assigned to men and women in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis--men are associated with productive labor, or labor within the public realm, and women with reproductive labor, or labor within the private realm.

Farmer proceeds to complicate this picture, showing that elite society's attitude toward an individual's social role and moral capacity depended not only on gender but also on the person's social status. Such perceptions in turn influenced the kinds of care extended or denied to the poor by charitable organizations and the informal self-help networks that arose among the poor themselves. Of particular interest are Farmer's discussions of society's responses to men and women who were disabled to the point of being incapable of any work at all.

CONTENTS

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii

Introduction i
Chapter i
Wealth, Migration, and Poverty 11
Chapter 2
Adam's Curse 59
Chapter 3
Men in Need 74
Chapter 4
Eve's Curse 105
Chapter 5
Women in Need 156
Conclusion 165

Appendix
Parisian Wills, 1200-[zasłonięte] 13481
Bibliography 173
Index 195