Medieval Curfew: Poetic Space and the Governance of Time

“Medieval Curfew: Poetic Space and the Governance of Time” explores how medieval curfew regulations structured social time and shaped literary production in England from the Middle Ages through the early modern period. It advances a double historical argument: first, that curfews were central legal mechanisms in organizing daily life and literary imagination in medieval Europe; and second, that in post-medieval England, curfew was reimagined as a tool of conquest and social control. Both legal and literary sources reveal just how central the curfew laws were in governing urban life, setting limits on domesticity, regulating labor time, controlling markets, and laying the legal groundwork for modern forms of policing. This project positions literature as a lens through which to view a law that, despite its centrality to English legal history, has largely remained overlooked.