Liveblogging Kalamazoo (the Saturday book haul)

Kennedy, Ruth & Simon Meecham-Jones eds. 2008. Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales. Palgrave, New York. ISBN 978-0-230-60295-3

Various papers, mostly on the Welsh-English interface in a wide variety of topics. Some of the papers that caught my eye were an edition and commentary on Higden’s Polychronicon (the Welsh section) and Trevisa’s English translation thereof; a comparison of the state of the dramatic arts in Wales vs. England; and conflicts between Welsh and English law.

Gleba, Margarita. 2008. Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy. Oxbow Books, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-84217-330-5

This is the one I got at an absolute steal because some of the pages were damage in transit. Lots of textile archaeology data on the title subject.

Van Winter, Johanna Maria. 2007. Spices and Comfits: Collected Papers on Medieval Food. Prospect Books, Totnes. ISBN 978-1-903018-45-3

I’d resisted this the first time I went through the David Brown display, but having kept my other purchases fairly low, decided to buy it after all. The collection focuses (although is not exclusive to) the Low Countries and features articles on particular dishes or ingredients, but also has broader topics. One article discusses a description of a mid 14th c. wedding feast at the court of Holland, with an analysis of what the named dishes are likely to have been, etc.

The one book I haven’t blogged (because it’s forthcoming and will be shipped when published) is Medieval Garments Reconstructed which is a reconstruction-oriented take on the Herjolfsnes garments by IIRC the author of Woven Into the Earth.

Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Sunday 8:30-10 am)

Well, the Pseudosession was delightful as always, especially the paper that – using a strict scrutiny of the documentary evidence and projecting recent changes in female fertility in a scientific fashion – determined that the death rate in the Middle Ages was far lower than it is today, that the birth rate was nearly zero, and that wealth appears to have been the primary underlying factor in mortality.

After that, I danced half the night away with my posse of scary textiles-and-clothing women. (If there were pictures, a number of my readers might be quite startled.)

Session 560: Dress and Textiles III: Heroes, Ladies, and Fools

Invisibility Cloaks and Magic Belts: Garments and Fashion Accessories in the Dietrich Cycle (Chiara Benati, Univ. degli Studi di Genova)

The text is a collection of “historical” stories featuring the 5-6th c. Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great. The stories combine historic and fantastical elements. The typology of garments are influenced by the nature of the texts: esp. the plot elements (warfare, tournaments, etc.) and gender (female characters are quite marginal in the historic tales, but more common in the fantastic ones). The purposes of clothing, when it is mentioned, include: providing a signal of sumptuousness or simply “dressing the set”; providing a magical function (see title); “symbolic” clothing providing information about roles and identity of characters. The vocabulary itself can be grouped in two: nouns identifying the garments (13 items) and modifying attributes of the garments.

* gewant = generic “garment”
* gurtel = belt
* handschouh = gloves
* hemd = the undergarment (e.g., shirt)
* (missed it)
* kleit = generic “clothing”
* kotte = a cheap fabric
* keppelin = cloak with hood
* tarnkeppelin = invisibility cloak
* tasche = bag
* wapenroch = silk surcoat worn over armor
* zendelkleit = a woman’s silk gown
* baldekin = a precious silk w/gold thread
* hermelin = ermine (animal or its fur)
* hermin = a garment made of ermine
* pfellel, pfeller = a refined sik (but sometimes wool?)
* scharlach = a specific type of fabric (scarlet?)
* side = silk
* sidin = made of silk
* zobel = sable (fur)

The terminology reflects medieval fashion (e.g., use of decorative belts and bags, the types of fabrics) but no garment is described in detail with regard to construction features – only the general attributes of beauty and luxury are featured.

Pulling the Wool over Our Eyes: How the Heroine’s Clothing (Un)Makes the Man in Jean Renart’s Roman de la rose (Kathryn Talarico, College of Staten Island and Graduate Center, CUNY)

Clothing features heavily in the relationships and action, e.g., the necessity of characters to acquire fine clothing (and go into debt for it). This results in self-consciously detailed descriptions of the characters’ clothing and the act of dressing. The initial description of the character Lionor is that of a generic romantic heroine, with the hearer expected to fill in the specifics in imagination. She’s “under the surface of the text” hidden by the words. But then the mode shifts to excessively detailed descriptions of decorations, fabrics, linings, and even the way they are arranged and fastened for particular effects. (Further, the narrator of the romance occasionally intrudes and comments on the level of detail that he’s using.) There is a common theme of things hidden, of every item having further layers beneath that give it meaning or value. Another theme is the importance of outward appearance of correct behavior (both in actions and attributes). Taken together, the impression is that of artificial roles, taken on by the character for effect and purpose, but in the guise of acting out the forms of a standard romance. Lionor does not give the impression of being in love, but rather of wanting to create the outward forms of being in love. Her clothing and manner of dress is an essential part of this. Even her moment of “unveiling” is only to unveil a fictional presentation of her own creation.

Getting Dressed in Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval in Ivory (Paula Mae Carns, Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign)

The paper specifically examines the story as depicted in a carved ivory casket of the 14th c. The initial scenes depict Perceval’s initial social gaucheries on his encounters with a group of knights, a lady, and on his entrance to Arthur’s court. It follows with his initial adventures after becoming a knight. In all of these, Perceval is wearing a rather peculiar description that looks like a one-piece bodysuit (although one view has some lines that could be a belt or the top edge of pointed hose) topped by a pointy hood. (In the text, his mother dresses him “in the Welsh manner” with one-piece hose, a shirt and hooded mantel.) At least one ms. illustration of Perceval of a similar era shows him in a similarly pointy hood. Otherwise, images of this type of pointed hood tend to be associated with fools/jesters. A state of undress is generally associated with folly or insanity. These characteristics fit well with the initial portrayal of Perceval when he acts against normal standards of behavior (although because of his mother’s confusing teaching, rather than through mental deficiency). When compared to other illustrations of this story, the ivory casket takes an unusual focus on Perceval’s folly.

Interestingly, the lid of the casket has images of Saints Christopher, Martin, George, and Eustace, and from the style it clearly was created to go with the Perceval images around the edge, rather than being a later cobbling together of unrelated carvings.

Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Sunday 10:30-12)

The last session, although I'll probably do a wrap-up post later this evening.

Session 595: Dress and Textiles IV: Long Ago and Far Away

Merovingian Fashion: Asking the Buried about What They Wore (Sarah-Grace Heller, Ohio State Univ.)

We start off with a dismissal of the generalization that clothing didn’t change throughout the Dark Ages, then a discussion of fashion theory and how it might be expressed (see yesterday afternoon’s panel discussion). In fact, so far the talk has been almost entirely a recap of yesterday’s introduction to theory of fashion. Now the content:

5-7th century provides rich grave goods. Unfortunately many grave contents have been lost or scattered due to plundering or carelessness. Some information about collections of grave goods and gender are based on highly interpreted composite interpretations. More recent finds have been more carefully extracted with greater attention to textile remains. Great variability in the richness of graves (although publicity has been on rich ones). Note that the existence of rich grave goods means that these goods have been taken out of social circulation while still in a useable form, requiring the living to create new goods for their own use. In the context of burials, the existence of “mass produced” moulded plaster sarcophagi supports a hypothesis of personal choice based on variation of superficial appearance – a characteristic of a fashion system.

A peplos style garment had continued in use in northern Europe while having been replaced by the tunic in the Mediterranean. But during the Merovingian period the tunic became more common while the use of brooches – athough now less functional for fastening clothing – remained common, suggesting that they had become fashion accessories. Brooches of cheap material only begin appearing in the 6th century, indicating a shift in which class wore them and what they signified. (The “democratization” of styles is another symptom of a fashion system.) The use of cut garnets in metal settings decreases and paired brooches decrease in favor of a single, central brooch (7th c.). Decorative garter fasteners (for women) begin appearing, with less decorated ones higher on the leg where they would be hidden from view.

At least 5 of the criteria of a “fashion system” can be discerned in the Merovingian data, although the intensity of the evidence is certainly less than that seen in the high middle ages or modern era.

Wefts and Worms: Silk Weaving and Sericulture in the West before 1200 CE (Rebecca Woodward Wendelken, Methodist Univ.)

Investigation of the production of silk as a raw material (as opposed to the production of silk textiles from existing thread) in the West. First pre-requisite is the culture of white mulberry trees, which take ca. 15 years to mature. Growth requirements mean that silk production was possible only in a relatively narrow geographic band which, fortunately, included much of southern Europe. Review of the physical and environmental requirements of the silkworm life cycle. Wild vs. cultured silk characteristics. Reeling vs. spinning. Gradual spread of silk culture westward. Arrived in Persia, Syria by ca. 2nd c. BCE to 5th c. CE. By 3-4th c., silk was available in Rome as a luxury good, but a commonly used one. Silk was being woven in Byzantium but from imported raw materials, creating a shortage. By the 8th c. the Islamic expansion had taken in all the traditional silk-producing regions in the West and culture moved further west into Greece and Cyprus, but primarily weavers use raw materials imported from now-Islamic regions. In 8-12th c., sericulture introduced to Venice and other parts of Italy and some attempts further north. Further expansion in Islamic regions as well (e.g., expending to Egypt and Yemen). Transfer of skilled silk workers due to warfare and invasion, e.g., from Byzantium to regions further West. Sericulture introduced to southern Spain. (Pretty slide-show of early silk fabrics.) [me: This presentation is pretty much a basic historic background on the history of silk production in regions affecting Europe, rather than argumentation towards any particular thesis.]

Imagined Fashion: Four Fifteenth-Century French Artists and Their Travel-Book Pictures (John Block Friedman, Kent State Univ.)

The manuscripts will be identified as P, C, M, and P2. The text is known as Secrets d’Histoire Naturelle. Two contributing descriptive texts were combined and moralized in a later version, but later on the moralization was stripped out and turned into something of an armchair travelogue. The illustrations are highly interpreted by the various artists and may be localized to the culture of their consumers or exoticized to emphasize the foreignness of the contents. Ms. P’s artist is clearly working directly from the text (or a good summary of it) and corresponds in interesting details. Ms. C copies the illustrations from P, possibly even by tracing in some cases. The illustrations correspond closely in layout and composition, but details are often “updated” to contemporary fashions and artifacts. Ms. M is fuller and more luxurious with some added text. It may have been made for Rene d’Anjou by the same artist as C. The illustrations may have been copied directly form P rather than C as some of the older details are retained, but there is a more sophisticated treatment of the details. Ms. P2 seems unrelated to the others and many of the illustrations are idiosyncratic. The illustrations focus more on women, possibly due to it being made for a female patron.

Question: how do the artists use clothing in support of Western ethnocentricity?

Stereotypical exotic “Eastern” styles, familiar from Biblical illustrations of Jewish or Saracen figures are used for non-European figures. Headgear is a special focus of identity representation. Turban-like headgear or headbands and “Jewish hats” are used indiscriminately to signify foreignness. Nakedness or non-textile clothing was a signifier of primitive or barbaric societies.

Turn out the lights, the party's over

The DISTAFF post-conference party was its usual pleasantly unwinding self, with lots of analysis, gossip, planning, and good munchies. It looks like I'll be putting in a proposal for a paper for next year (details if/when it firms up more). After that I did an airport run (Kalamazoo airport, that is) and had dinner with another late-stayer. I've reviewed all the comment threads on my session blogs to make sure I haven't left anything dangling. Now it's just a matter of hanging out for an hour or so in the lobby (where the wireless signal is reliable) then putting in a full night's sleep. I've plotted out that getting on the road by 7am should be sufficient, but what this means in reality is that at whatever point I wake up and it's light in the morning, I'll probably go ahead and leave. Ah, and a comment in another journal indicates that I still have one more social contact I can accomplish this evening!