Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Medieval Fabrications

Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings

  • Book
  • © 2004

Overview

Editors:
  1. E. Jane Burns
    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (13 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Why Textiles Make a Difference

    • E. Jane Burns
    Pages 1-18

  3. Text and Textile: Lydgate’s Tapestry Poems

    • Claire Sponsler
    Pages 19-34

  4. Tristan Slippers

    • Kathryn Starkey
    Pages 35-53

  5. Dressing and Undressing the Clergy

    • Dyan Elliott
    Pages 55-69

  6. Uncovering Griselda

    • Roberta L. Krueger
    Pages 71-88

  7. “This Skill in a Woman is By No Means to Be Despised”

    • Ruth Mazo Karras
    Pages 89-104

  8. Tucks and Darts

    • Madeline H. Caviness
    Pages 105-119

  9. Limiting Yardage and Changes of Clothes

    • Sarah-Grace Heller
    Pages 121-136

  10. Material and Symbolic Gift-Giving

    • Kathleen Ashley
    Pages 137-146

  11. Cloth from the Promised Land

    • Janet Snyder
    Pages 147-164

  12. Almería Silk and the French Feudal Imaginary

    • Sharon Kinoshita
    Pages 165-176

  13. How Philosophy Matters

    • Andrea Denny-Brown
    Pages 177-191

  14. Flayed Skin as objet a

    • Sarah Kay
    Pages 193-205

  15. Back Matter

    Pages 207-279
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

The varied cultural functions of dress, textiles, and clothwork are used in this collection of essays to examine long-standing assumptions about the Middle Ages. At one end of the spectrum, questions of dress call up feminist theoretical investigations into the body and subjectivity, while broadening those inquiries to include theories of masculinity and queer identity as well. At the other extreme, the production and distribution of textiles carries us into the domain of economic history and the study of material commodities, trade and cultural patterns of exchange within western Europe and between east and west. Contributors to this volume represent a broad array of disciplines currently involved in rethinking medieval culture in terms of the material world.

Reviews

"Medieval Fabrications investigates the material and ideological history of clothing and textiles. Choosing dress as a category of analysis yields important data and insights concerning its cultural importance. These essays investigate such topics as the symbolic functions of dress, its social meanings, and its coparticipation with the body in producing identity." - Susan Crane, Columbia University

"A fitting sequel to Jane Burns's Courtly Love Undressed, this innovative collection makes a major contribution to the opening of a new and genuinely interdisciplinary field within medieval studies. Both building on and complicating the recent scholarly focus on the body, this collection explores the multifaceted coverings that overlay medieval sartorial bodies and through which, as the authors amply demonstrate, they must be understood. Especially significant is the way this careful attention to material culture participates in the current reconfiguration of our understanding of the valences assigned to Islamic and Byzantine cultures in the medieval West. This exemplary book irrefutably demonstrates the importance of clothing to medieval studies and has made this reader aware of how much she has taken for granted in representations of the clothed medieval subject." - Pamela Sheingorn, Baruch College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York

About the authors

SAHAR AMER Associate Professor of Asian Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA ATHLEEN ASHLEY Professor of English, University of Southern Maine, USA MADELINE CAVINESS Professor of Art History, Tufts University ANDREA DENNY-BROWN Graduate student, English, Columbia University, New York, USA DYAN ELLIOTT Professor of History, University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA SARAH-GRACE HELLER Assistant Professor of Romance Languages, Ohio State University, USA RUTH KARRAS Professor of History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA SARAH KAY Senior Lecturer, French, Cambridge University, UK SHARON KINOSHITA Associate Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA ROBERTA L. KRUEGER Professor of Romance Languages, Hamilton College, USA PAMELA SHEINGORN Professor of Art, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and Professor of Medieval Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA JANET SNYDER Assistant Professor of Art History, West Virginia University, USA CLAIRE SPONSLER Associate Professor of English, University of Iowa, USA

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation