Spatial theory—the study of the relationship between material and discursive spatial practices—has great potential for recasting our understanding of urban life in Europe during the late medieval and early modern period, a formative moment in the history of Western urbanity. Urban space—and spaces— acquired powerful, effective valences in this age, producing new social possibilities and new historical actors while simulataneously eliminating others. Examining spatial practices through the lens of legal space, ritual space, and textual space not only exposes the assumptions about early modern urbanity that underlay existing historiography on city space in the period but also points toward the spatial histories that have not yet been written on markets, gender, and the public.

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