Table Of ContentThe New Middle Ages
Bonnie Wheeler, Series Editor
The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to transdisciplinary studies of medieval
cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women's history and on feminist
and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs
and essay collections.
Published By Palgrave
• Women in the Medieval Islamic • Chaucer's Pardoner and Gender
World: Power, Patronage, and Piety Theory: Bodies ofD iscourse
edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly by Robert S. Sturges
• The Ethics ofN ature in the Middle • Crossing the Bridge: Comparative
Ages: On Boccaccio's Poetaphysics Essays on Medieval European and
by Gregory B. Stone Heian japanese Women Writers
edited by Barbara Stevenson and
• Presence and Presentation: Women Cynthia Ho
in the Chinese Literati Tradition
• Engaging Words: The Culture of
by Sherry]. Mou
Reading in the Later Middle Ages
• The Lost Love Letters ofHeloise and by Laurel Am tower
Abelard: Perceptions ofD ialogue in
• Robes and Honor: The Medieval
Twelfth-Century France
World ofI nvestiture
by Constant]. Mews
edited by Stewart Gordon
• Understanding Scholastic Thought
• Representing Rape in Medieval and
with Foucault Early Modern Literature
by Philipp W Rosemann edited by Elizabeth Robertson
and Christine M. Rose
• For Her Good Estate: The Lift of
Elizabeth de Burgh • Same Sex Love and Desire Among
by Frances A. Underhill Women in the Middle Ages
edited by Francesca Canade Saut
• Constructions of Widowhood and
man and Pamela Sheingorn
Virginity in the Middle Ages
edited by Cindy L. Carlson and • Sight and Embodiment in the Mid
Angela Jane Weisl dle Ages: Ocular Desires
by Suzannah Biernoff
• Motherhood and Mothering in
Anglo-Saxon England • Listen, Daughter: The Speculum
Virginum and the Formation of
by Mary Dockray-Miller
Religious Women in the Middle
• Listening to Heloise: The Voice ofa Ages
Twelfth-Century Woman edited by Constant]. Mews
edited by Bonnie Wheeler
• Science, the Singular, and the Ques
• The Postcolonial Middle Ages tion ofTheology
edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen by Richard A. Lee, Jr.
• Gender in Debate from the Early • Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to
Middle Ages to the Renaissance joan ofA rc
edited by Thelma S. Fenster and by Maud Burnett Mcinerney
Clare A. Lees
• The Persistence ofM edievalism:
• Malory's Marte Darthur: Remak Narrative Adventures in Contempo
ing Arthurian Tradition rary Culture
by Catherine Batt by Angela Jane Weisl
• The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on
• Capetian Women
Medieval Religious Literature edited by Kathleen Nolan
edited by Renate Blumenfeld
Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and • joan ofA rc and Spirituality
Nancy Warren edited by Ann W. Astell and Bon
nie Wheeler
• Popular Piety and Art in the Late
Middle Ages: Image Worship and • The Texture of Society: Medieval
Idolatry in England 1350-1500 Women in the Southern Low Coun
by Kathleen Kamerick tries
edited by Ellen E. Kittell and
• Absent Narratives, Manuscript Tex
Mary A. Suydam
tuality, and Literary Structure in
Late Medieval England • Charlemagne's Mustache:
by Elizabeth Scala And Other Cultural Clusters
ofaDarkAge
• Creating Community with Food
by Paul Edward Dutton
and Drink in Merovingian Gaul
by Bonnie Effros • Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality,
and Sight in Medieval Text and
• Representations ofE arly Byzantine
Image
Empresses: Image and Empire
edited by Emma Campbell and
by Anne McClanan
Robert Mills
• Encountering Medieval Textiles and
• Queering Medieval Genres
Dress: Objects, Texts, Images
by Tison Pugh
edited by Desiree G. Koslin and
Janet Snyder • Sacred Place in Early Medieval Nco
• Eleanor ofA quitaine: Lord and platonism
Lady by L. Michael Harrington
edited by Bonnie Wheeler and
• The Middle Ages at Work
John Carmi Parsons
edited by Kellie Robertson and
• Isabel La Cat6lica, Queen of Michael Uebel
Castile: Critical Essays
• Chaucer's]obs
edited by David A. Boruchoff
by David R. Carlson
• Homoeroticism and Chivalry:
• Medievalism and Oriental ism:
Discourses ofMale Same-Sex Desire
Three Essays on Literature,
in the Fourteenth Century
Architecture and Cultural Identity
by Richard Zeikowitz
by John M. Ganim
• Portraits ofM edieval Women:
• Queer Love in the Middle Ages
Family, Marriage, and Politics in
by Anna Klosowska Roberts
England 1225-1350
by Linda E. Mitchell
Medieval
Fabrications
Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and
Other Cultural Imaginings
Edited by E. Jane Burns
pal grave
macmillan
* MEDIEVAL FABRICATIONS
Copyright© E. Jane Burns, 2004
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-4039-6186-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case
of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2004 by
PALGRAV E MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAV E MACMILLAN IS THE GLOBAL ACADEMIC IMPRINT
OF THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and ofPalgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United
Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the
European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6187-7 ISBN 978-1-137-09675-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-09675-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Medieval fabrications : dress, textiles, clothwork, and other cultural
imaginings I edited by E. Jane Burns
p. em. --(The new Middle Ages)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Costume--History--Medieval, 500-1500. 2. Textile fabrics, Medi
eval. 3. Costume--Symbolic aspects--Europe. 4. Civilization, Medieval.
I. Burns, E. Jane, 1948-II. New Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
CT575.M435 2004
391" .009'02--dc22
2003067179
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by planettheo.com
First edition: September 2004
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to Flora McFLimsey,
who appreciated the pleasures ofc lothes
and the imagination.
I would like to extend special thanks to the founding editors of the
Medieval Feminist Newsletter (now the Medieval Feminist Forum) Roberta
L. Krueger and Elizabeth Robertson who agreed with me in 1985, during
an impromptu meeting at the Kalamazoo airport, to launch the news
letter and create an official forum for feminism within Medieval Studies.
Thanks also to Thelma Fenster, who joined us as co-editor of the
newsletter shortly thereafter, and to all those who have supported the
Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and kept medieval feminist
studies alive over the years. Not least among those scholars is Nancy
Jones whose important early work on the embroidery romances encour
aged us all to begin thinking about textiles and clothwork in a more
interdisciplinary frame.
Thanks also to the wonderful students in my honors class on
"Medieval Fabrications" in spring 2003 for their enthusiasm and invalu
able insights.
I thank my colleagues Judith M. Bennett and Barbara J. Harris and
other members of theN orth Carolina Research Group on Medieval and
Early Modern Women for their incisive comments on an earlier version
of the Introduction to this volume.
Thanks also to Brenda Palo, seamstress extraordinaire, for prepar
ing the index.
And, as always, extra-special thanks to Fred Burns and to Ned, this
time for their enduring commitment to comfortable clothes.
E.J. B.
The editor and authors wish to acknowledge those who gave permission
for use of images:
In Kathryn Starkey's chapter, Photo Rifksdienst voor het Oud
heidkundig Bodemonderzoek, Amersfoort, The Netherlands. In Janet
Snyder's chapter, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (all rights reserved).
In Andrea Denny-Brown's chapter, Bibliotheque nationale de France,
Paris.
Why Textiles Make a Difference ................................. 1
E. JANE BURNS
Text and Textile: Lydgate's Tapestry Poems ...................... 19
CLAIRE SPONSLER
Tristan Slippers: An Image of Adultery
or a Symbol of Marriage? .................................. 35
KATHRYN STARKEY
Dressing and Undressing the Clergy: Rites of Ordination
and Degradation ......................................... 55
DYANELLIOTT
Uncovering Griselda: Christine de Pizan, "une seule chemise,"
and the Clerical Tradition: Boccaccio, Petrarch, Philippe
de Mezieres and the Menagier de Paris ....................... 71
ROBERTAL.KRUEGER
"This Skill in a Woman is By No Means to Be Despised":
Weaving and the Gender Division of Labor
in the Middle Ages ........................................ 89
RUTH MAZO KARRAS
Tucks and Darts: Adjusting Patterns to Fit Figures
for Stained Glass Windows Around 1200 .................... 105
MADELINE H. CAVINESS
Limiting Yardage and Changes of Clothes: Sumptuary
Legislation in Thirteenth-Century France,
Languedoc, and Italy: .................................... 121
SARAH-GRACE HELLER
Material and Symbolic Gift Giving:
Clothes in English and French Wills ........................ 137
KA THLEEI\ ASHLEY
Cloth from the Promised Land: Appropriated Islamic
Tiraz in Twelfth-Century French Sculpture .................. 147
JANET SNYDER
Almeria Silk and the French Feudal Imaginary:
Toward a "Material" History of the
Medieval Mediterranean. ................................. 165
SHARON KINOSHITA
How Philosophy Matters: Death, Sex, Clothes, and Boethius ....... 177
ANDREA DENNY-BROWN
Flayed Skin as objet a: Representation and Materiality
in Guillaume de Deguileville's
Pflerinage de vie humaine ................................... 193
SARAH KAY
Notes ...................................................... 207
Works Cited ................................................ 252
Author Biographies .......................................... 273
Index ...................................................... 275
Why Textiles
Make a Difference
E. Jane Burns
ghe essays in this collection reveal the richness and importance of
using dress, textiles, and cloth production as categories of analysis in
medieval studies. Textiles and the representation of them in literary,
historical, art historical, legal, and religious documents provide a partic
ularly apt tool for medievalists of various disciplines because textiles
stand at the nexus of the personal and the cultural, often linking specific,
individual expressions to institutionalized and hierarchical social struc
tures. The spectrum of possibilities raised by the study of medieval cloth
and clothing in all their represented forms ranges widely from the use
and circulation of garments as a mark of visible wealth, social position,
or class status to the varied attempts by clerical and legal authorities to
regulate gender and rank by controlling dress and ornamentation. The
spectrum extends further into the production, distribution, care, use,
and decoration of textiles themselves, often as forms of gendered labor.
It also encompasses the cross-cultural and economic effects of trade and
