A detailed discussion of the meaning and significance of the terms used to describe the clothing of Chaucer's religious and academic pilgrims. Religious and academic dress in the middle ages functioned as a metaphorical signifier of spiritual and intellectual standards, implied a given social status, signalled the rejection or possession of garment wealth, and, in the details, suggested the wearer's spiritual state. This book presents the first sustained analysis of the characterizing dress worn by Chaucer's pilgrims who are in holy orders and/or affiliated with universities; the author uses approaches from a variety of disciplines [received criticism of late medieval literature, developments in political, economic and social history, the visual arts, and material culture] in order to present the complex ideas and rhetoric the pilgrims' dress expresses. She also makes the religious, intellectual, and material culture of Chaucer's day accessible to modern audiences through the reconstruction of the significance of fabrics, dyes, accessories, garments, and assembled costumes, and an explanation of technical details and specialist vocabularies for cloth-making, clothing, accessories, and their images in the visual arts.

Clothing and accessories in the middle ages functioned socially as status symbols, counted economically as portable wealth, and signified metaphorically the wearer's spiritual condition. Chaucer's costume descriptions suggest all of these connotations and more. This book presents the first sustained literary analysis of the meanings inherent in the costumes of Chaucer's secular pilgrims, illuminating the extent of their (non)conformity in their dress to fourteenth-century occupational, socio-political, and religious norms. The author discusses the significance of individual fabrics, dyes, accessories, garments, and assembled costumes, and explains technical details and specialist vocabularies for cloth-making, clothing, accessories and armor, drawing on a wealth of contemporary evidence including wills, household inventories, wardrobe accounts, manuscript illuminations and church decoration. LAURA F. HODGES has a doctorate from Rice University in medieval literature and an undergraduate degree in clothing and textiles from Auburn University; she has taught English literature for many years. As an independent scholar, she specialises in the semiotics of textiles and costume in literature.

An analysis of the ways in which Chaucer uses details of costume, clothing and fabric, enhancing our understanding of and shedding fresh insights into his work. The use Chaucer made of costume rhetoric, and its function within his body of works, are examined here for the first time. The study explores Chaucer's knowledge of the conventional imagery of medieval literary genres, especiallymedieval romances and fabliaux, and his manipulation of rhetorical conventions through variations and omissions. In particular, it addresses Chaucer's habit of playing upon his audience's expectations, derived from their knowledge of the literary genres involved - and why he omits lengthy passages of costume rhetoric in his romances, but includes them in some of his comedic works, It also discusses the numerous minor facets of costume rhetoric employed in decorating his texts. Chaucer and Array responds to the questions posed by medievalists concerning Chaucer's characteristic pattern of apportioning descriptive detail in his characterization by costume. It alsoexamines his depiction of clothing and textiles representing contemporary material culture while focusing attention on the literary meaning of clothing and fabrics as well as on their historic, economic and religious signification. Laura F. Hodges blends her interests in medieval literature and the history of costume in her publications, specializing in the semiotics of costume and fabrics in literature. A teacher of English literature for a number of years, she holds a doctorate in literature from Rice University.

Reproduction of the original: English Costume by Dion Clayton Calthrop

An extremely thorough, expertly compiled and crisply annotated comprehensive bibliography of Chaucer scholarship between 1997 and 2010

During the medieval period, people invested heavily in looking good. The finest fashions demanded careful chemistry and compounds imported from great distances and at considerable risk to merchants; the Church became a major consumer of both the richest and humblest varieties of cloth, shoes, and adornment; and vernacular poets began to embroider their stories with hundreds of verses describing a plethora of dress styles, fabrics, and shopping experiences. Drawing on a wealth of pictorial, textual and object sources, the volume examines how dress cultures developed – often to a degree of dazzling sophistication – between the years 800 to 1450. Beautifully illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, visual representations, and literary representations.