A Sense of Place: A Treatise on Prostitution in Seventeenth-Century Paris

La chronique scandaleuse de Paris ou Histoire des mauvais lieux explores the sites of prostitution where social control is exercised and marginal characters are the principal players. Based on documentary accounts, archives, and literary sources, Sauval’s treatise (published posthumously in 1883) examines particular places subject to legal regulations imposed by governing bodies. A series of case studies also demonstrates the impact of theological forces tolerating prostitution. In the time from Philip Augustus to Louis XIV there are shifts in patriarchal attitudes towards prostitutes marked by ambivalence between repressive measures and permissive allowance. Attempts to set aside specially designated areas for brothels were doomed as their location depended on patterns of settlement and expansion