Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings

The New Middle Ages

by E. Jane Burns (Editor)

The varied cultural functions of dress, textiles and clothwork provide an especially cogent lens through which to re-examine our assumptions about the Middle Ages because of the topic's conceptual breadth. Its implications range from the highly theoretical to the very concrete. 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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Fashion, Medieval, Medieval History

287 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2004

Reviews

[Ella]

Read for FRN 320: Women Defamed, Women Defended