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hrjWell, 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.
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.
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Date: 2009-05-10 06:53 pm (UTC)