Introduction

Summary

Scholars, particularly in art and costume history, have argued and accepted that fashion was not really born before around 1350. Those who are familiar with the Old French literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may find that astonishing, since very concise descriptions of fashionable clothing abound in that corpus. Take for instance an opening passage in one of the most famous and influential of thirteenth-century texts, Guillaume de Lorris’ Roman de la Rose (c. 1225–40). The narrator-protagonist sets the scene in May. The earth and all the bushes are pleased to wear new clothes:

Avis m'iere qu'il estoit mais …

el tens ou toute rien s'esgaie

que l'en ne voit buisson ne haie

qui en may parer ne se veille

et couvrir de novele fuelle.

Li bois recuevrent lor verdure,

qui sunt sec tant come yver dure;

la terre meïsmes s'orgueille

por la rosee qui la mueille,

et oublie la povreté

ou ele a tot l'iver esté;

lors devient la terre si gobe

qu'el velt avoir novele robe,

si set si cointe robe feire

que de colors i a .c. peire;

l'erbe et les flors blanches et perses

et de maintes colors diverses,

c'est la robe que je devise,

por quoi la terre mielz se prise.

It seems to me that it was May …

That time when everything grows gay

because you see no bush nor hedge

that fails to put on fine array

and clothe itself in new leaves.

The recovering woods green out

after being dry as long as winter lasts;

Earth herself makes herself splendid

blushing moistened by the dew,

and forgets the poverty

she dwelt in all winter long;

This makes vain Earth swell up so proud,

she wants to have a brand new gown.

She is skilled at making stylish robes,

because her palate has two hundred hues:

the grass, and white and dark blue flowers,

and blooms of many varied colors.

Such is the robe that I describe

in which the earth takes so much pride.

The topos of praising nature and spring in descriptions of the locus amoenus (pleasance) is a classical one, and the theme of the reverdie or the May-tide reclothing of the earth in green is commonplace in medieval lyric poetry.