Live-Blogging Kalamazoo: Friday 10:00
May. 11th, 2012 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjDress and Textiles II: What Not to Wear
Disorder in the Courts: A Reappraisal of Medieval Sumptuary Law -- Laurel Ann Wilson, Independent Scholar
Studies on sumptuary law tend to come to contradictory conclusions due to the differing focuses of scholars. "Laws that attempt to regulate consumption in accordance with social values" that is, they focus on visible, public consumption. No restricted to clothing; may cover housing, accessories, etc. Sumptuary laws differ from prescriptive dress codes (e.g., for identifying "others" such as Jews). Misconception that sumptuary laws "failed" as evidenced by repetition of highly similar regulations, but only if you take the goals at face value -- rather than viewing the creation of the laws as the goal rather than the change of behavior as the goal. Sumptuary laws of the Roman era disappeared with the fall of the empire, then reappeared almost simultaneously throughout western Europe around the 13th century and later disappeared everywhere at a similar time in the early modern period. So sumptuary laws are best studied as a large-scale phenomenon. Laws of the high medieval period (ca. 1200-1400) in western Europe were nonetheless variable in their focus (e.g., gender, nature of regulated item, enforcement) from region to region. A general focus in some way on knights as a class, but otherwise there might be a wide range of social caategories that the laws distinguish. Re: enforcement, sometimes the laws were treated as a licensing system rather than a regulatory system. The driving force behind creating the laws might be top-down from the king or bottom-up from town governments (e.g., in Italy) or from parliament (in England). One social dynamic behind S.L. seems to have been the friction between the upper bourgoisie and the lower nobility.
Angevin-Sicilian and French Sumptuary Laws of the 1290s: Furs, Trains, and New Clothes -- Sarah-Grace Heller, Ohio State Univ.
Promulgated by 2 justiciars who were close relatives of the royalty. Extensive preamble justifying the law. Covers materials (rare furs, purple, gold or silk cloth, etc.) Part of the first wave of medieval sumptuary laws. Also covered purchases of new garments, restricting to twice a year, excluding certain specific garments, including a garnache or cotehardie. Another excluded garment was the "houce" a wider surcoat with an open hanging sleeve, but could also refer to a horse's caparison. The excluded garments seemt to focus on military-type garments as opposed to luxury items. Similarly the laws restrict new sadles for palfreys, but are more generous for military horses' saddles. Women's clothing was a special focus, e.g., restricting trains to no longer than dragging four palms on the ground. Penalties were graded according to rank, with higher ranks paying more. Brief review of Sicilian history: regular turnover of cultural control, the Norman kingdom (12th c.) a high point of building and culture, passed to Hohenstaufens in 13th c., papal support for French control in late 13th, Aragonese takeover at end of 13th c., label "Kingdom of Sicily" was all southern Italy then split to insular vs. peninsular regions. Angevin-French rulers of Sicily not very popular, which is the context in which the sumptuary laws were created. The law should be treated as a hybrid creation, influenced both by the French court culture and the Italian city culture.
What Does Five Marks Buy?: A Comparison between the 1363 English Sumptuary Law and Fabric Prices in Late Medieval England -- Sarai Silverman, Ohio State Univ.
1363 laws focused on the expense allowed for clothing but doesn't touch on the specific types of fabric, so how much of what could those price limits buy? Sumptuary laws often follow local increases in wealth that made it possible for people to buy more and better fabrics. If expensive fabrics couldn't be restricted to the upper classes by economics, the distinction might be maintained by law. The focus was primarily on men's clothing, possibly because the smaller amounts of fabric required allowed for a greater potential for up-scaling? Wardrobe accounts are a good source of comparative proces. Wool: blankets and russets, low-class cloth for working men who were resticted to spending 12 pence per yard. A level of 40 shillings (for the whole length) was allowed for craftsmen. Various specifications for striped cloth. Categories of restrictiosn based both on class and annual income. Moving on to the more expensive fabrics, we include scarlet. Normalizing the various mentioned cloths to a per-yard basis, and allowing for some inflation between different account sources, there was a broad and gradual range of fabric prices, meaning that the sumptuary restrictions wouldn't have created clear and drastic differences in result. (Note: there were a lot of details of price and technical fabric terminology in this talk that I wasn't able to summarize well.)
Men in Tights: Shameful Fashion in The Parson’s Tale -- Mary C. Flannery, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
Parson's tale concerns itself with penitence, and reflects on "outrageous" clothing as an outward sign of pride. His diatribe focuses especially on "scanty clothing" that "covers not the shameful members of man, to wicked intent". He then focuses rather lovingly on the details of tight hose that show off men's ... accoutrements. But in general he rants against both superfluity and scantiness in clothing as showing sinful pride. The sartorial context of the mid 14th century was a significant shortening and tightening of men's garments from earlier styles. In the general context of Chaucer's description of this characters, it may be noteworthy that the parson's own clothing and accessories are not particularly noted. In terms of word-frequency, the word "shame" is very prominent in the parson's tale (and is only rivaled in Chaucer in the tale of Troilus and Cressida). Historically, there is a strong lexical association between reference to "shame" and to the genitals. The text's focus on both the wearer's prideful intent in displaying these "shameful" parts, and on their potential for inciting desire on the part of the viewer, makes the inordinate focus on them in the parson's text rather suggestive. Though the language asserts disgust, there is clearly an overriding fascination. Cf. various texts on pride that urge one who feels a stirring of pride to aggressively attack that feeling and despise it. (Does this mean the parson is not merely urging his audience to take an appropriate attitude but has to work hard to feel the proper disgust himself?) In dictating the "correct" response to the clothing, he is suggesting a guide to proper restrictions on what to wear. (But I still think he protests too much.)
Disorder in the Courts: A Reappraisal of Medieval Sumptuary Law -- Laurel Ann Wilson, Independent Scholar
Studies on sumptuary law tend to come to contradictory conclusions due to the differing focuses of scholars. "Laws that attempt to regulate consumption in accordance with social values" that is, they focus on visible, public consumption. No restricted to clothing; may cover housing, accessories, etc. Sumptuary laws differ from prescriptive dress codes (e.g., for identifying "others" such as Jews). Misconception that sumptuary laws "failed" as evidenced by repetition of highly similar regulations, but only if you take the goals at face value -- rather than viewing the creation of the laws as the goal rather than the change of behavior as the goal. Sumptuary laws of the Roman era disappeared with the fall of the empire, then reappeared almost simultaneously throughout western Europe around the 13th century and later disappeared everywhere at a similar time in the early modern period. So sumptuary laws are best studied as a large-scale phenomenon. Laws of the high medieval period (ca. 1200-1400) in western Europe were nonetheless variable in their focus (e.g., gender, nature of regulated item, enforcement) from region to region. A general focus in some way on knights as a class, but otherwise there might be a wide range of social caategories that the laws distinguish. Re: enforcement, sometimes the laws were treated as a licensing system rather than a regulatory system. The driving force behind creating the laws might be top-down from the king or bottom-up from town governments (e.g., in Italy) or from parliament (in England). One social dynamic behind S.L. seems to have been the friction between the upper bourgoisie and the lower nobility.
Angevin-Sicilian and French Sumptuary Laws of the 1290s: Furs, Trains, and New Clothes -- Sarah-Grace Heller, Ohio State Univ.
Promulgated by 2 justiciars who were close relatives of the royalty. Extensive preamble justifying the law. Covers materials (rare furs, purple, gold or silk cloth, etc.) Part of the first wave of medieval sumptuary laws. Also covered purchases of new garments, restricting to twice a year, excluding certain specific garments, including a garnache or cotehardie. Another excluded garment was the "houce" a wider surcoat with an open hanging sleeve, but could also refer to a horse's caparison. The excluded garments seemt to focus on military-type garments as opposed to luxury items. Similarly the laws restrict new sadles for palfreys, but are more generous for military horses' saddles. Women's clothing was a special focus, e.g., restricting trains to no longer than dragging four palms on the ground. Penalties were graded according to rank, with higher ranks paying more. Brief review of Sicilian history: regular turnover of cultural control, the Norman kingdom (12th c.) a high point of building and culture, passed to Hohenstaufens in 13th c., papal support for French control in late 13th, Aragonese takeover at end of 13th c., label "Kingdom of Sicily" was all southern Italy then split to insular vs. peninsular regions. Angevin-French rulers of Sicily not very popular, which is the context in which the sumptuary laws were created. The law should be treated as a hybrid creation, influenced both by the French court culture and the Italian city culture.
What Does Five Marks Buy?: A Comparison between the 1363 English Sumptuary Law and Fabric Prices in Late Medieval England -- Sarai Silverman, Ohio State Univ.
1363 laws focused on the expense allowed for clothing but doesn't touch on the specific types of fabric, so how much of what could those price limits buy? Sumptuary laws often follow local increases in wealth that made it possible for people to buy more and better fabrics. If expensive fabrics couldn't be restricted to the upper classes by economics, the distinction might be maintained by law. The focus was primarily on men's clothing, possibly because the smaller amounts of fabric required allowed for a greater potential for up-scaling? Wardrobe accounts are a good source of comparative proces. Wool: blankets and russets, low-class cloth for working men who were resticted to spending 12 pence per yard. A level of 40 shillings (for the whole length) was allowed for craftsmen. Various specifications for striped cloth. Categories of restrictiosn based both on class and annual income. Moving on to the more expensive fabrics, we include scarlet. Normalizing the various mentioned cloths to a per-yard basis, and allowing for some inflation between different account sources, there was a broad and gradual range of fabric prices, meaning that the sumptuary restrictions wouldn't have created clear and drastic differences in result. (Note: there were a lot of details of price and technical fabric terminology in this talk that I wasn't able to summarize well.)
Men in Tights: Shameful Fashion in The Parson’s Tale -- Mary C. Flannery, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
Parson's tale concerns itself with penitence, and reflects on "outrageous" clothing as an outward sign of pride. His diatribe focuses especially on "scanty clothing" that "covers not the shameful members of man, to wicked intent". He then focuses rather lovingly on the details of tight hose that show off men's ... accoutrements. But in general he rants against both superfluity and scantiness in clothing as showing sinful pride. The sartorial context of the mid 14th century was a significant shortening and tightening of men's garments from earlier styles. In the general context of Chaucer's description of this characters, it may be noteworthy that the parson's own clothing and accessories are not particularly noted. In terms of word-frequency, the word "shame" is very prominent in the parson's tale (and is only rivaled in Chaucer in the tale of Troilus and Cressida). Historically, there is a strong lexical association between reference to "shame" and to the genitals. The text's focus on both the wearer's prideful intent in displaying these "shameful" parts, and on their potential for inciting desire on the part of the viewer, makes the inordinate focus on them in the parson's text rather suggestive. Though the language asserts disgust, there is clearly an overriding fascination. Cf. various texts on pride that urge one who feels a stirring of pride to aggressively attack that feeling and despise it. (Does this mean the parson is not merely urging his audience to take an appropriate attitude but has to work hard to feel the proper disgust himself?) In dictating the "correct" response to the clothing, he is suggesting a guide to proper restrictions on what to wear. (But I still think he protests too much.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 03:42 pm (UTC)It's back to the one civil case I ever found in the Leet Court records, of a mayor's wife taking the former mayor's wife to court for dressing above the former mayor's wife's new station. The judge ruled that the current mayor's wife needed to calm down, and she couldn't expect that the former mayor's wife would throw away all the clothing she had acquired in her former position. Also, what is the mayor's wife doing bringing frivolous suit about clothing? The implication was that the judge wasn't going to enforce anyone breaking sumptuary laws.