Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (The Middle Ages Series) - Softcover

"Burns evinces a clear mastery of the subtleties of the array of primary texts she uses. . . . Her bibliography of both primary and secondary sources is substantial and well-rounded. Though history plays a part in her readings, her focus is squarely on the literary text. Her close readings are impressive in their analyses and command of the polyvalence of medieval vernacular."-Arthuriana "Courtly Love Undressed is unique in its extended interrogation of the ways rich clothing and luxury possessions of courtly characters may be seen to subvert and rewrite the very hierarchies and distinctions they would seem to promote. The book offers something entirely new to medieval cultural and literary studies: a materialist analysis of the fantasy of courtly love."-Peggy McCracken, University of Michigan "Burns enables us to see, and to be surprised totally by, what the texts themselves have to say."-Sharon Farmer, University of California, Santa Barbara. "Burns argues persuasively that fabric and clothing can create representations of both gender and status in selected French courtly texts. . . . While grounded in solid readings of medieval texts, Burns's book also reflects and adds to recent feminist rethinking of clothing's capacity to empower women."-Speculum "This study of material culture provides a fresh picture of courtly love. . . . Burns gives true life to French literature of the high Middle Ages and provides careful readings of a variety of texts."-Choice "An invigorating reassessment of the French literature of the High Middle Ages through the discourse of the dress and luxury adornments of court men and women. . . . The book sets very ambitious goals and accomplishes them with very dense readings, which vacillate from deceptively simple and clear analysis of twelfth- and thirteenth-century texts, to a much more profound understanding of those metaphors in a larger sociological context."-Comitatus

In the later Middle Ages clothing was used to mark religious, military, and chivalric orders; in the courtly milieu, more specifically, the ostentatious display of luxury dress was used as a means of self-definition for the ruling elite. In Courtly Love Undressed, E. Jane Burns explores the representation of this material culture in the literary texts and other documents that imagine various functions for elite clothing in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. "Burns argues persuasively that fabric and clothing can create representations of both gender and status in selected French courtly texts. . . . While grounded in solid readings of medieval texts, Burns's book also reflects and adds to recent feminist rethinking of clothing's capacity to empower women."--Speculum