In this wide-ranging study of costume history contributors explore fashion, textiles, and the representation of clothing in the middle ages. Essays combine the perspectives of archaeology, art history, economics, religion, costume history, material culture, and literary criticism and explore materials from England, France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, and Ireland. The collection focuses on multiple aspects of textiles and dress - their making, meaning, and representation - and explores the impact of international trade and other forms of cultural exchange.

A vital sourcebook for information on clothing and textiles in the middle ages, containing many previously unprinted documents.

In the Preface of the 5th Edition of Survey of Historic Costume, Tortora and Eubank conclude with the following: "In the history of dress at the beginning of the 21st century, costume might be compared to a constantly moving river. This river divides into many narrower channels that separate, cross, come together, and separate again, and yet that river continually moves on." Building on the previous editions, the authors update their analysis of Western dress to 2008. Survey of Historic Costume has, from its beginnings, taken seriously the need to accompany the text with appropriate illustrations and the major change in the 5th Edition is the move to full color throughout the book to enrich the text and the concepts. Perfect for anyone interested in historic costume, fashion, textiles, drama, and design, this beautifully illustrated book is full of interesting facts and commentary.New to this Edition:-- Over 500 four-color photographs and illustrations-- Updated text to 2008-- Additional influences from one period or civilization to another, including influences from other cultures-- Index - updated and organized to be utilized as glossary with terms defined and page numbers printed in boldface-- Instructor's Guide provides sources for visuals, websites, teaching strategies and evaluation techniques-- PowerPoint® Presentation contains interactive visual presentation with links to Internet

Christianity is a religion of clothing. To become a priest or a nun is to take the cloth. The Christian liturgy is intimately bound with veiling objects and revealing them. Cloths hide the altar, making it all the more spectacular when it is revealed. Fragments of imported silk cradle the relic, thereby giving identity to the dessicated bone. Much of that silk came from the east, meaning that a material of Islamic origin was a primary signifier of sanctity in Christianity. Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing brings together twelve essays about text and textile, about silk and wool, about the formation of identity through fibre. The essays bring to light hitherto unseen material, and for the first time, establish the function of textiles as a culturally rich way to approach the Middle Ages. Textiles were omnipresent in the medieval church, but have not survived well. To uncover their uses, presence, and meanings in the Middle Ages is to reconsider the period spun, draped, clothed, shrouded, and dressed. Textiles in particular were essential to the performance of devotion and of the liturgy. Brightly dyed cloth was a highly visible maker of meaning. While some aspects of culture have been studied, namely the important tapestry industry, as well as some of the repercussions and activities of cloth guilds, other areas of textile studies in the period are yet to be studied. This book brings an interdisciplinary approach to new material, drawing on art history, anthropology, medieval text history, theology, and gender and performance studies. It makes a compelling miscellany exploring the nature of Christianity in the largely uninvestigated field of text and textile interplay.

Enide’s tattered dress and Erec’s fabulous coronation robe; Yvain’s nudity in the forest, which prevents maidens who know him well clothed from identifying him; Lanval’s fairy-lady parading about in the Arthurian court, scantily dressed, for all to observe: just why is clothing so important in twelfth-century French romance? This interdisciplinary book explores how writers of this era used clothing as a signifier with multiple meanings for many narrative purposes. Clothing figured prominently in twelfth-century France, where exotic fabrics and furs came to define a social elite. Monica Wright shows that representations of clothing are not mere embellishments to the text; they help form the textual weave of the romances in which they appear. This book is about how these descriptions are constructed, what they mean, and how clothing becomes an active part of romance composition—the ways in which writers use it to develop and elaborate character, to advance or stall the plot, and to structure the narrative generally.

This book examines the scholarly construction of Geoffrey Chaucer in different historical eras, and challenges long-standing assumptions to enhance the theoretical dialogue on Chaucer's historical reception.

Medieval writers were fascinated by fortune and misfortune, yet the critical problems raised by such explorations have not been adequately theorized. Allan Mitchell invites us to consider these contingencies in relation to an "ethics of the event." His book examines how Middle English writers including Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Malory treat unpredictable events such as sexual attraction, political disaster, social competition, traumatic accidents, and the textual condition itself - locating in fortune the very potentiality of ethical life. While earlier scholarship has detailed the iconography of Lady Fortune, this book alters and advances the conversation so that we see fortune less as a negative exemplum than as a positive sign of radical phenomena.