Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Documents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Conventions
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Wills
- II Accounts
- III Inventories and Rolls of Livery
- IV Moral and Satirical Works
- V Sumptuary Regulation, Statutes and the Rolls of Parliament
- VI Unpublished Petitions to King, Council and Parliament
- VII Epic and Romance
- Glossary
- Bibliography
VII - Epic and Romance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Documents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Conventions
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Wills
- II Accounts
- III Inventories and Rolls of Livery
- IV Moral and Satirical Works
- V Sumptuary Regulation, Statutes and the Rolls of Parliament
- VI Unpublished Petitions to King, Council and Parliament
- VII Epic and Romance
- Glossary
- Bibliography
Summary
Introduction
Clothing in epic is, as one might expect, mainly concerned with armour, though details about that are found in romances as well. Clothing in romance fulfils a number of functions, some conventional, some less so. One of its purposes is to define expectations associated with class and gender: we may note the costly garments offered to Gawain at Bertilak’s castle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
And þenne a meré mantyle watz on þat mon cast
Of a broun bleeaunt, enbrauded ful ryche
And fayre furred wythinne with fellez of þe best,
Alle of ermyn in erde, his hode of þe same (878–81)
In Lay le Freine, before Le Freine’s mother leaves her by a convent, she takes
a riche baudekine
That hir lord brought from Costentine
And lapped the litel maiden therin (137–9)
and fastens a gold ring to her arm by a silk thread in order that those who find the baby will see that she comes from a noble family (‘nee de bone gent’, 121–34, as Marie de France has it). Clothes often feature in lists of gifts signifying the wealth and generosity of the giver: Degrevant, for example,
lovede well almosdede,
Powr men to cloth and fede (81–2)
Launfal, too,
gaf gyftys largelyche,
Gold and sylver and clothes ryche’ (28–9)
When poverty descends on Launfal, Arthur’s nephews abandon him, saying
‘Syr, our robes beth torent,
And your tresour ys all yspent’ (145–6)
The importance of dress and textiles varies widely even within narratives telling all or parts of the same stories. Unlike the versions of the Constance story in the Vita Duorum Offarum, Trivet’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle, the English version of the Gesta Romanorum, Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, and Gower’s Confessio Amantis, the narrative in Emaré is propelled by an object, an elaborately worked cloth, the gift of the king of Sicily to the emperor, Emaré’s father, and subsequently, in the form of a robe, a gift from the emperor to his daughter. Particular objects such as these appear in so many Breton lays that they are considered a defining element of the genre (Hopkins 2000: 71): when Le Freine gives up her embroidered cloth, she unknowingly prepares the way for her mother to reclaim her.
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- Information
- Medieval Dress and Textiles in BritainA Multilingual Sourcebook, pp. 260 - 356Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014