Rituals of shame

Abstract

The paper will consider historical examples of the treatment by public shaming of certain behaviours perceived as offending against social norms. It will consider examples from late medieval Italy and Germany, and early modern England, to address whether such rituals of shame can be seen as formal or informal responses to anti-social behaviour; were they legal matters, a device of customary law, or did they have a wider role to play within society? The paper questions how far were they intended to function primarily as devices for social control. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on visual and literary sources and aspects of legal anthropology