Chaucer and Array: Patterns of Costume and Fabric Rhetoric in "The Canterbury Tales", "Troilus and Criseyde" and Other Works 1843843684, 9781843843689

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Chaucer and Array responds to the questions posed by medievalists concerning Chaucer’s characteristic pattern of apportioning descriptive detail in his characterization by costume. It also examines his depiction of clothing and textiles representing contemporary material culture while focusing attention on the literary meaning of clothing and fabrics as well as on their historic, economic and religious signification. LAURA F. HODGES blends her interests in medieval literature and the history of costume in her publications, specializing in the semiotics of costume and fabrics in literature. A teacher of English literature for a number of years, she holds a doctorate in literature from Rice University.

fol. 8, reproduced with the kind permission of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Chaucer Studies an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)

Hodges

Cover: The God of Love dancing, wearing floral-patterned gown, from the c.1405 MS Ludwig XV 7,

Chaucer and Array

The use Chaucer made of costume rhetoric, and its function within his body of works, are examined here for the first time. The study explores Chaucer’s knowledge of the conventional imagery of medieval literary genres, especially medieval romances and fabliaux, and his manipulation of rhetorical conventions through variations and omissions. In particular, it addresses Chaucer’s habit of playing upon his audience’s expectations – derived from their knowledge of the literary genres involved – and why he omits lengthy passages of costume rhetoric in his romances, but includes them in some of his comedic works. It also discusses the numerous minor facets of costume rhetoric employed in decorating his texts.

Chaucer and Array patterns of costume and fabric rhetoric in the canterbury tales , troilus and criseyde and other works

www.boydellandbrewer.com

•Laura F. Hodges• •

CHAUCER STUDIES XLII

Chaucer and Array Patterns of Costume and Fabric Rhetoric in The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and Other Works

CHAUCER STUDIES ISSN 0261–9822

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book

Chaucer and Array Patterns of Costume and Fabric Rhetoric in The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and Other Works

LAURA F. HODGES

D. S. BREWER

© Laura F. Hodges 2014 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Laura F. Hodges to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2014 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 368 9 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com The author and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and individuals listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions. The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

Contents Acknowledgments

vi

List of Illustrations

viii

Abbreviations

x

   Introduction

1

1   Dressing the Warrior and the Streets of Athens in the     Knight’s Tale      Part I: Dressing the Warrior      Part II: Dressing the Streets of Athens

14 32

2   Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde

54

3   Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale

91

4   Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale

118

5   Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “knight auntrous”

140

6   Conclusion: Other Facets of Chaucer’s Fabric and Costume     Rhetoric

167

Appendices

187

Works Cited

201

Index

223



Acknowledgments

As this is the third in a series of books concerned with Geoffrey Chaucer’s clothing and textile imagery in his works, I acknowledge my debt and gratitude to all who assisted me in the previous two volumes which form the foundation for this book. For the first time, I have concentrated on all of Chaucer’s works and found one overall pattern for his deployment of fabric and costume imagery and numerous smaller ones within this body of material. Numerous friends, colleagues, librarians, fellow medieval discussion list members, and even total strangers have sent me suggestions and questions, references and source materials, copies of unpublished conference papers, quotations from works I did not know and new perspectives on texts with which I am familiar, informative pro- and con debates on numerous topics via email, and both negative and positive critiques. Had they not done so, this book would be the poorer for their lack. I am vastly grateful for their contributions. In random order, I am happy to thank Alan Gaylord, Pete Beidler, Lorraine Stock, Gretchen Mieszkowski, Jane Chance, Kenneth Thompson, Robin Netherton, Andrea Denny-Brown, Mary-Jo Arn, Katherine French, Robert Simola, Fred Jelinek, Alan Baragona, Norman Hinton, Cindy Vitto, Rebecca Beal, Stephen Hayes, John Carmi Parsons, Susanna Fein, David Raybin, Caroline Palmer, John B. Friedman, Susan Yager, and last, and very important, my anonymous readers and the editorial staff of Boydell & Brewer Ltd. I wish to thank Mary Hamel and Jean Krochalis for their ongoing support through the years of my work on literary costume and its literary history. I gratefully acknowledge both Gretchen Mieszkowski and Kenneth Thompson who made complete manuscript critiques for me on earlier versions of the manuscript for this book and are directly responsible for improving its overall clarity. In addition, I especially wish to express my gratitude to the late Robert Frank, Lois Roney, D. S. Brewer, and Stella Mary Newton whose instructive works and influence I hope to have made visible in my own work. Also I wish to express my gratitude to the Pennsylvania State University Press for allowing me to reprint two articles previously published in Chaucer Review that now, with some changes, appear in this book as Chapter 2, “Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde,” and Chapter 3, “Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale.” I also wish to thank the following institutions who permitted the reproduction of images that make up the section of color plates: the Osterreich Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; the British Library, London; the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the Random House Group Limited; and the John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Acknowledgments  vii  As everyone who has ever had a book published knows, a finished book is a “group” project. No author works in isolation although, in the end, the author is responsible for any errors that make it through to publication. I claim this responsibility while acknowledging the numerous benefits derived from the generous assistance of those mentioned above. And I am also most grateful to my husband Charles Richard Hodges and daughters Laura Ivey Hodges, Elizabeth Hyland Young, Grace Leigh Tice, and Amanda Dow O’Quinn, who have endured, and even encouraged, my continued devotion to Geoffrey Chaucer matters through the years.

Illustrations Plates Placed between pp. 148 and 149 I II III IV V VI VII VIII

Arcitas and Palemon gaze at Emilia as she makes a rose garland, Osterreich Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Cod 2617, fol. 53. An armed knight of Prato in tournament dress, c. 1335–1340, British Library, MS Royal 6 E IX, fol. 24. Knights and ladies riding to the tournament, from a fifteenth-century French manuscript, British Library, MS Harley 4379, fol. 99. Fabric-draped viewing stand and John Astley (left) jousting, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.775, fol. 2v. Criseida in widow’s weeds, leaving Troy, in a French translation by Pierre de Beauveau of Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato (dated XV 3/4), Bodleian Library, the University of Oxford, MS Douce 331, fol. 52. Diomede’s battle coat adorned with Criseida’s brooch being displayed in Troy; Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, translated by Louis de Beauvare into French (c. 1455–56), in the Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 25,528, fol. 89v. God of Love dressed in flowers, from The Romaunt of the Rose: Rendered Out of the French into English by Geoffrey Chaucer Illustrated by Keith Henderson and Norman Wilkinson (Chatto & Windus, The Random House Group Limited, London, 1908). The God of Love dancing, wearing floral-patterned gown, c. 1405, John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, MS Ludwig XV 7, fol. 8.

Figures 1.1 Antique Athenian grave crater; pen sketch after plate 4 in D. C. Kurtz and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (Ithaca, New York, 1971). 1.2 Pen sketch of the principal procession routes in London (1300– 1600) and showing the customary stages for pageants, after figure 9 in Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300 to 1660 (London and New York, 1959; rpt. 1960). 3.1 Man’s linen shirt: pen sketch of Dorothy Burnham’s plate 4 in Cut My Cote (Toronto, 1973), a photograph of an Egyptian Coptic shirt (4th century), in the Walter Massey Collection, ROM 910.1.11, Royal Ontario Museum.

16 36

97

Illustrations  ix  3.2 Smock: pen sketch of color plate 300 in Jennifer Harris, 5000 Years of Textiles, (London, 1993). 3.3 A, b, and c, smocks: pen sketches of varying styles, from depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s chemise on medieval pilgrim badges, as provided by E. Jane Burns, “Saracen Silk and the Virgin’s Chemise,” Speculum 81 (2006), figures 1–3. 3.4 Undergarment, shirt, with underarm gussets, pen sketch from Burnham, Cut My Cote, figure 3. 3.5 Pen sketches of varying styles, from depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s chemise on medieval pilgrim badges, as provided by Burns, “Saracen Silk,” figures 6 and 11. 3.6 Pen sketch of Eve wearing an embroidered smock in a tapestry (1425–1450) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; sketched from Phyllis G. Tortora and Keith Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume (New York, 2005), figure 6.12. 3.7 Pen sketch of a seventeenth-century smock with all-over embroidery, from Burnham, Cut My Cote, figure 5. 3.8 Pen sketch of a late sixteenth-century smock embroidered in lavender silk and gold, from Tortora and Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume, figure 8.1. 3.9 Pen sketch of a smock embroidered in black work, from Tortora and Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume, figure 8.9, of a painting entitled Portrait of a Young Lady (Flemish, c. 1535) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

98 104

104 105 106

107 108 109

Abbreviations Abbreviations for the titles of Chaucer’s works are those listed in the Riverside Chaucer. AN&Q American Notes & Queries ArthL Arthurian Literature BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester CarmP Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society C&C Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue C&Cl Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales ChauR Chaucer Review CL Comparative Literature EETS Early English Text Society E&S Essays and Studies EHR English Historical Review ELH ELH Exemplaria Exemplaria Expl Explicator JEGP Journal of the English and Germanic Philology JMH Journal of Medieval History MÆ Medium Ævum MC&T Medieval Clothing and Textiles MED Middle English Dictionary MLN MLN MLQ Modern Language Quarterly MLR The Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology MS Mediaeval Studies N&Q Notes & Queries NLH New Literary History NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen OED Oxford English Dictionary PLL Papers on Language and Literature PMAM Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association

Abbreviations  xi  PQ RenQ Rom RR SAC SATF S&A SIcon SN SP Text Hist TSL

Philological Quarterly Renaissance Quarterly The Romaunt of the Rose Le Roman de la Rose Studies in the Age of Chaucer Société des Anciens Textes Français Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, I and II Studies in Iconography Studia Neophilologica Studies in Philology Textile History Tennessee Studies in Literature

Introduction

A

cross the decades of my research on his costume rhetoric, the question most often posed to me has been: is there a characteristic pattern of costume rhetoric in Geoffrey Chaucer’s work? Throughout my study of his General Prologue (GP) to The Canterbury Tales, I searched in vain for such a configuration or methodology,1 even though the GP is Chaucer’s tour de force for such descriptions. This single work (c. 1387) demonstrates Chaucer’s art of variety as he masterfully puts into poetic play evocative words and phrases that shape the dress of numerous pilgrims, each fashion term contributing to their characterizations. While this costume rhetoric provides sociological and economic information, it also offers meanings that are symbolic and that suggest the moral and spiritual status of each pilgrim. In the GP, Chaucer’s costume rhetoric draws on his cosmopolitan lifestyle as a London merchant’s son, courtier, husband of the queen’s lady in waiting, minor diplomat, European traveler, civil servant, valettus on military campaign, all of which supplement his knowledge of medieval literature and the descriptive conventions within those works. He does not so much employ contemporary literary conventions as he embroiders them – extracting telling bits, changing the focus of standard descriptions, and proffering new details for all of them without providing a standard structure of rhetoric for reader analysis. However, the GP is but one of Chaucer’s many works, and following the publication of two books on costume rhetoric in the GP, I now turn to a consideration of Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his entire corpus.2 Here, at last, it is possible to

This topic is explored at length in Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue, Chaucer Studies 26 (Cambridge, 2000), hereafter referred to as C&C, and Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Studies 34 (Cambridge, 2005), hereafter C&Cl. See my “Chaucer: dress,” Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, gen. ed. Gale Owen-Crocker with Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2012), pp. 118–21. 2 All references to Chaucer’s works are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston, MA, 1987). 1

2  Chaucer and Array discern patterns, major and minor, in his costume rhetoric. Chaucer and Array explores these patterns, presenting an overview of Chaucer’s major patterns of costume rhetoric in this Introduction, then offering deeper analyses of such imagery in selected works in Chapters 1–5. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes and illustrates Chaucer’s characteristic minor patterns, facets of his costume rhetoric, as they inform and decorate his texts. Chaucer and Array, although referring to earlier work on the GP, will primarily explore Chaucer’s usage of costume description and textile references – and their functions that go beyond rhetorical decoration of the text – within the larger body of his works. Working in a variety of genres, Chaucer employs costume rhetoric that is frequently fresh and innovative. His knowledge of contemporary literary genres and the audience expectations they arouse3 enables him to sometimes satisfy readers with traditional costume images and at other times to skillfully manipulate his costume rhetoric to achieve reversals of audience expectations.4 These reversals made through omissions or additions, would have both surprised and piqued the interest of his original, primary audience, whom he knew well – who were well-read, courtly, and who are described by Richard Green as courtiers “like himself”5 – and they continue to delight his modern audience.6 Further, it is possible to discern the pattern of these reversals in his works at large. As Paul Strohm puts it, “a successful artist adapts both content and style to the requirements and capacity of the intended audience.”7 Melissa Furrow discusses medieval readers’ expectations, especially those of readers of romances, but does not discuss expectations for costume rhetoric, in Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2009). For background discussion of audience expectations based on genre see Hans Robert Jauss, “Theory of Genres and Medieval Literature” in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature 2 (Minneapolis, MN, 1982), pp. 76–109. 4 Chaucer’s audience is a complex entity as described in “Chaucer’s Audience: Discussion,” ChauR 18.2 (1983): 175–81, hereafter referred to as “Discussion,” and Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, MA, 1989). I use the term audience in the sense of Chaucer’s contemporary “core audience,” as depicted by Strohm (pp. 50–55, 61–64, 71, 75), that “certainly has a sufficiently developed sense of literary tradition,” is “capable of recognizing the different generic patterns within which a narrative may be cast,” and able to comprehend Chaucer’s “play on his audience’s previous expectations.” I assume that Chaucer’s audience includes, as well, Chaucer’s present-day listeners and readers of the same ilk, unless I specify otherwise. At the same time, I acknowledge that Chaucer has always enjoyed a broader audience than this core group, shifting as it did throughout his career as described in “Discussion” and Strohm (pp. 47–83, esp. 50–51, 55), and, within this broader audience, members interact with his works in a variety of ways. 5 Richard Green, “Discussion,” p. 175. 6 James Dean, “Discussion,” p. 177, remarks on Chaucer’s concern for his “future audience whom he never met and never expected to meet.” 7 Strohm, Social Chaucer, p. 48. 3

Introduction  3  Expectations Met In general, beyond the examples mentioned below, Chaucer is careful to meet common audience expectations, familiar to him from his own wide reading,8 by furnishing appropriate, although abbreviated, illustrative costume details for characters in each of the social strata represented in his works. These mini-depictions of dress satisfy the reader’s need to know how these characters fit into the social milieu as represented in each poetic work – they identify the wearers. An example of this characteristic is Chaucer’s spare delineation of the noble costumes for Dido and Eneas in Legend of Good Women: Dido’s robe, “al in gold and perre wrye” gleams like the fresh new day, while Chaucer compares Eneas’s illustrious appearance to Phebus, god of the sun (lines 1201–2, 1206–7). Dido and Eneas shine, a term suggesting the silk, jewels, and precious metallic content, and possibly the rich colors of noble dress.9 The House of Fame provides other examples of Chaucer’s brief costuming in that the kings are marked by excessive embellishment of costume: they wear “crounes wroght full of losenges; / And many ryban and many frenges / Were on her clothes trewely.” His heralds and pursuivants wear heraldic garments proclaiming their allegiance and status, and each parades wearing “a vesture / Which that men clepe a cote-armure, / Enbrowded wonderliche ryche,” depicting “armes that ther weren, / That they thus on her cotes beren” (lines 1316–40). Also present are the fools dressed in their customary costume consisting of perpendicularly striped hose and hood with its tippet (pendant streamer) ending in a bell (lines 1840–41). And finally we learn of shipmen and pilgrims who carry satchels known as scrippes, and the pardoners, couriers and messengers who bear containers called boystes, all of which Chaucer claims are filled with “lesinges” (lies) (lines 2122–30). Abbreviated as they are, these descriptions are emblematic of social class and/or occupational grouping. Reversals of Expectation While Chaucer often satisfies expectations with brief but pungent costume descriptions, he also frequently startles his well-read audience10 with his r­ eversals, thus Throughout this book, I note Chaucer’s sources for his work as listed in Sources and Analogues of The Canterbury Tales, 2 Vols, ed. Robert M. Correale with Mary Hamel, Chaucer Studies 28, 35 (Cambridge, 2003, 2005); and Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, eds W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York, 1958). Chaucer’s reading list might be assembled, at least in part, from a list of these sources. 9 Regarding the sheen of noble dress, see Sarah-Grace Heller, “Light as Glamour: The Luminescent Ideal of Beauty in the Roman de la Rose,” Speculum, 76.4 (2001): 934–59. 10 Robert apRoberts, “Discussion,” p. 178, points out Chaucer’s “awareness that he is writing in a tradition of works that has been read since they were composed in anti­ quity and down to his own day” and, also, that “he is addressing an audience far beyond his local court.” 8

4  Chaucer and Array capturing their attention as he makes a point or underscores a theme. Appreciation for these reversals depends on an audience, primary and present-day, familiar with literary conventions and well able to recognize Chaucer’s deviations from and embroidery of the literary norm.11 Chaucer’s treatment of costume rhetoric in his romances illustrate his pattern of reversals within this genre. Melissa Furrow names a variety of romances included in Chaucer’s canon and, in doing so, provides extensive insight into Chaucer’s construction of this genre. Her choices are debatable, but serve to illustrate the fluidity of this genre’s characteristics: The romance of antiquity in the Knight’s Tale, Arthurian romance in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the Breton lay in the Franklin’s Tale, the popular tail-rhyme romance in Sir Thopas, the romance extracted and expanded from chronicle in the Man of Law’s Tale, [and] a sample of vast interlaced romance in the Squire’s Tale.12

Furrow also provides a list of characteristics from which a writer of medieval romances might choose or reject, yet she makes it clear that the genre of romance does not have “a fixed set of shared characteristics.”13 However, her list does not include the frequent character portraits, in descriptio, that depict character-­ revealing costume, and/or other shorter clothing descriptions. Nevertheless we are never surprised to find such portraits in numerous medieval romances and might have expected to find them frequently decorating Chaucer’s romances as well. Instead, we see Chaucer most frequently rejecting the option of including descriptio in his romances, and never including them for his protagonists, although he demonstrates his mastery of this convention in his portraits of the less important characters of Lygurge and Emetrius, in the Knight’s Tale (KnT). We find a characteristic reversal of reader expectations in Chaucer’s deployment of descriptio, the conventional extended depictions of the appearance of (mostly) aristocratic protagonists that is a prominent feature in many medieval romances.14 Remarkably, Chaucer eschews this often-anticipated rhetorical strat Jauss, “Theory of Genres,” p. 78, comments that such deviations serve to “broaden” critics’ concepts of a genre; he cites Benedetto Croche, Estetica, 2nd ed. (Bari, 1902), p. 49. 12 Furrow, Expectations of Romance, p. 201. Other critics disagree about the genre of Thopas. See Chapter 5, p. 142 and n. 9. 13 Furrow, Expectations of Romance, pp. 58, 60–61. Jauss, “Theory of Genres,” pp. 78–79, examines critical judgment of this process: “For how else can one answer in a controllable manner the single question considered legitimate by Croce – whether a work of art is a perfectly achieved expression, or only half so, or even not at all – if not through an aesthetic judgment that knows to distinguish within the work of art the unique expression from the expected and generic?” 14 This characteristic was apparently well represented in romances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; see Susan Frye, Pens and Needles: Woman’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), p. 178, in which she takes for granted that “opulent furnishings and the trappings of chivalry, … significant items of

11

Introduction  5  egy. His KnT furnishes an example: his audience could have anticipated long descriptions of Theseus, Arcite, Palomon, or Emelye, but they are not forthcoming. Instead, Chaucer’s descriptio highlights Lygurge and Emetreus – the leaders of the men fighting, respectively, under Palamon and Arcite in the tournament – who are minor figures in the overall plot. He elaborates on their array, their arms, dress, and animals (I, lines 2129–52, 2156–78).15 Conversely, among the major characters, neither Palamon nor Arcite is described at length, and Theseus is depicted in his palace wearing only a generalized costume: “Arrayed right as he were a god in trone” (line 2529).16 The details of Theseus’s regal-celestial robes must be supplied by audience imagination or personal knowledge of what rulers wear. Further, the heroine of this romance, Emelye, also lacks a lengthy portrait, and the only particularity we know of her court dress is that, on one occasion, it is green (lines 1048, 1696), a detail Chaucer borrows from Boccaccio.17 Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer’s diffuse romance, incorporates generous details concerning character development but lacks descriptio; Chaucer replaces it primarily with evocative diction and costume depictions consisting of a single line or only a suggestive phrase. For example, Chaucer initially depicts Criseyde “In widewes habit large of samyt broun” (Book I, line 109), and audience members are left to draw on their own knowledge of what medieval widows wore and knowledge of the qualities of the lustrous fabric samyt to comprehend that Criseyde is no ordinary widow, but is a beautiful and apparently affluent one. Later, he amplifies this description through Pandarus’s directive, “Do wey youre barbe, and shew youre face bare” (Book II, line 110), which highlights Criseyde’s widow’s headdress. Not until Book V does she remove her barbe and veiling in a significant costume event which tacitly and publicly acknowledges her change of lovers from Troilus to Diomede. Over the course of the poem’s plot, Chaucer distributes Criseyde’s jewels, too, in telling ways, first as gifts to Troilus and later to Diomede, illustrating the change of her loving allegiance. In addition, Troilus is described as a doughty warrior, but Chaucer does not depict him in the conventional introductory mode, in descriptio, wearing noble dress or shining armor and, significantly, he does not give Troilus a conventional arming scene.

clothing, cross-dressing, and disguise are often integral to romance narratives.” Also see Frye, pp. 180–81, regarding the literary presentation of textiles. 15 Discussed further in Chapter 1, pt 1, pp. 25–28. 16 Compare to royal costume in medieval romances discussed in Monica L. Wright, “What Was Arthur Wearing? Discrepancies in Dress Descriptions in Twelfth-Century French Romance,” PQ 81.3 (2002): 275–88, esp. 275, 278–79, 283. 17 See Chapter 1, pt 1, and n. 21, p. 22. In manuscript illuminations, Emelye is shown in a Boccaccio work dressed in a blue gown: Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, MS 2617, fols 53 and 76b. Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford, 2004), pp. 16–17, comments on Emelye’s description in lines 1034–42, 1048–55, stating that it contains no concrete image except the fact of her yellow hair. The topic of Emelye’s lacking a costume is not addressed.

6  Chaucer and Array Instead he likens Troilus to the God of War, Mars, portraying this Trojan prince in a battered helm hanging down his back by a “tyssew,” and carrying a broken shield (Book II, lines 624–44). Further, Pandarus, the third major character of this romance, wears clothing depicted only minimally by such terms as “lappe” and “hood” (Book II, lines 448, 1110, 1181).18 Additionally, the unfinished Squire’s Tale, which promised to become quite a lengthy interlaced romance had it been allowed to reach completion, exhibits only minimal costume signs. Presenting Cambyuskan reigning over a feast, the narrator describes him as wearing “roial vestiment … With diademe” (V, lines 59–60), a scanty treatment of royal appearance.19 Additional costume signs appear among the magical gifts brought by a mysterious knight, “Al armed, save his heed, ful richly,” wearing on his thumb a ring which allows the owner to understand the communication between birds, and bearing an unsheathed sword by his side. Both the ring and the magic sword20 are gifts for Canacee, the king’s daughter. Because the tale is unfinished, we never know what parts these two costume items might have played in the romance. None of the three major characters in this romance fragment receive full portraits, and, indeed, the Squire-narrator volubly proclaims his inability to describe Canacee’s beauty (which, in other literary circumstances, might have been enhanced by an evocative costume). Although Vincent DiMarco, who provides the notes for this tale, tells us that critics have found the narrator “excessively rhetorical,” this excess did not run to costume depictions, and while DiMarco claims that Chaucer makes this a tale with “gentle satire,”21 this satire does not concern itself with sartorial signs. In the Breton lay The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the Wife-narrator also fails to include descriptio; indeed, costume rhetoric is avoided altogether, although the lay is a sub-genre of romance that might well include fanciful or magical dress. This lack is especially notable because the Wife’s own costume is discussed at length in the GP, demonstrating her love of wearing fine dress and her economic ability to indulge in it. In addition, in the Wife’s Prologue, her care for her fine woolen clothing is humorously mentioned in that she wears these garments frequently in order to thwart the worms, moths,22 and mites that would damage them. This practice constitutes the Wife’s method of being thrifty. At the same time she enjoys wearing her elegant garments made of the luxury fabric scarlet (III, lines 559–61). However, none of this sartorial interest is manifest in the tale she tells.

Discussed further in Chapter 2, p. 64 n. 24, pp. 65–67, 71. See traditional treatment for royal costume in medieval romances according to Wright, “What Was Arthur Wearing?”: 275, 278–79, 283. 20 I include armor and arms as accessories within my consideration of costume rhetoric. 21 Riverside, pp. 890–91. 22 This detail is one of Chaucer’s realistic touches, and he echoes this materialistic reality in his Tale of Melibee that cites Solomon’s proverb that “motthes in the shepes flees anoyeth to the clothes” (VII, line 996). This proverb is Melibee’s only sartorial reference. 18 19

Introduction  7  Chaucer’s romances include a second Breton lay, the Franklin’s Tale, in which the Franklin-narrator, in his Prologue, describes himself as “a burel man” (V, line 716), a phrase that likens him to that “coarse, woolen cloth,” indicating that he is unlearned and a layman.23 Because he begins with the disclaimer that he knows only “swiche colours as growen in the mede, / Or elles swiche as men dye or peynte. / Colours of rethoryk been to me quynte” (lines 724–26), the Franklin’s audience should not expect him to employ descriptio in his tale, nor, perhaps, even brief costume descriptions and, indeed, there is no notable costume rhetoric in his tale. He provides one general reference to clothing, couched in conventional phrases, in which Squire Aurelius, Dorigen’s would-be lover, dancing in a garden, is described as “fressher” and “jolyer of array … than is the month of May” (lines 927–28). In addition, this narrator employs one common clothing figure of speech when Aurelius states that he will honor his debt to the philosopher he consulted even if it should mean that he would “goon a-begged in my kirtle24 bare” (lines 1578–80), a variation of the shirt metaphor, prominent in Chaucer’s time.25 Dorigen and her knight husband, Arveragus, lack all decorative costume, although Chaucer’s audience might have wished for costume descriptions to enhance this tale and/or illuminate its characters. There are no significant costume signs in the Man of Law’s Tale (MLT), which Furrow describes as taken from chronicle sources and enlarged by Chaucer as a romance.26 The tale begins with a mention of wealthy chapmen who sell, among other goods, “satyns riche of hewe” (II , lines 136–37). This promising beginning, characterizing the men as silk merchants, is not followed by longer references to fabric or costume, but only by general references to clothing. The beauty and goodness of the Emperor’s daughter, Custance, is described in a lengthy portrait (lines 155–61), but there is no mention of her dress. When Custance arrives at the port of the Sultan’s homeland, Surrye, she is greeted by Surryens and Romayns dressed in rich array, but no details are provided (lines 393–94); subsequently, and similarly, when she is exiled, she leaves with provisions of “tresor,” food, “and clothes eek” (lines 442–44). When Custance, through yet more cruel machinations, is again put out to sea, no sartorial details are provided except for her “coverchief” which she removes to shade her son’s eyes (lines 837–38). This garment is the symbol of her married status as “protected” by a husband;27 This fabric phrase is also employed by Friar John in the Summoner’s Tale (III, lines 1872, 1874), glossed as “lay, secular,” and describing common folk in general. Glossed, unless otherwise specified, refers to the Riverside bottom-of-the-page glosses. 24 Glossed as “tunic.” 25 Regarding the shirt metaphor, see Chapter 2, pp. 69–70, 79–80. 26 See Robert M. Correale’s description of the sources for MLT, especially the “life of the saintly Constance of Rome found in ‘Les Cronicles’ by Nicholas Trevet” which is part of the “Constance-saga,” deriving from “a much larger group of popular folktales and romance,” in “The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale,” S&A II, ed. Robert M. Correale with Mary Hamel (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 277–350, at 279ff. 27 I have discussed the social function of coverchiefs in C&C, pp. 164–72. 23

8  Chaucer and Array n­ evertheless, it was a protection that stood no chance of functioning against the malevolence of a member of her husband’s court and his mother. Subsequently, Custance’s coverchief becomes a protection for her child against the sun’s glare. Chaucer includes in this tale no equivalent of the decorative description of the beautiful cloth of gold fashioned into a robe which protects the heroine in Emaré,28 a romance that similarly recounts the tale of a lady who is cast forth on the sea to reach her fate by chance or providence. Further, the sources29 for Chaucer’s MLT contain no costume rhetoric which the narrator might either include or expand, or, as is Chaucer’s practice in romances,30 excise. Another unfinished work, the Tale of Sir Thopas, classified by Furrow as exhibiting romance characteristics, is described variously elsewhere as a bourd,31 or a parody or satire of the genre of romance.32 However, nothing makes a non-romance classification for this tale more certain than Chaucer’s about-face in rhetorical practice in this tale. In this piece, full of Chaucer’s “elvysh” humor and “drasty rhyming,” he lavishes costume rhetoric on his protagonist, supplying for Thopas two complete costumes depicted in detail (VII, lines 731–35, 752–53, 857–86, 906–08). Ironically, Chaucer deploys the rhetorical strategy, through which romance heroes are honored and their stature enhanced, to whittle Thopas down to a diminutive size.33 Primarily through descriptio, Chaucer as narrator reduces this knight, named for a brilliant jewel and initially described as known for his prowess, to a figure of fun by providing elaborate sartorial descriptions that turn Sir Thopas into a caricature. Dressed for his own court, and later more than liberally – and perhaps ineffectually – armed34 for a fight with the giant Sir Olifaunt, Thopas does not live up to his early billing as a knight of prowess. By Emaré in Six Middle English Romances, ed. Maldwyn Mills (London, 1973), pp. 46–74, possibly composed in 1400, according to Correale, “The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale,” at 287. 29 Correale, in “The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale,” specifies Innocent III, de Miseria Condicionis Humane (ed. Robert E. Lewis); Nicholas Trevet, “De la noble femme Constance” (from Les Cronicles: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS français 9687); and John Gower, “Tale of Constance” (from Confessio Amantis, ed. G. C. Macaulay), p. 277. 30 See Chapter 2, p. 82, regarding Chaucer’s omission of Criseyde’s exotic costume, worn when leaving Troy, that was present in Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s treatment of this story: Le Roman de Troie, one of Chaucer’s sources. 31 Melissa Furrow, “Middle English Fabliaux and Modern Myth,” ELH 56 (1989), p. 1018, at 15. A bourd is defined as “a comic poem of the late English Middle Ages, explicitly or implicitly opposed to romance.” 32 As denominated by critics mentioned in Chapter 5, p. 142 and n. 9. 33 A technique discussed further in Chapter 5. 34 There is no question in this, Chaucer’s only arming scene, that Thopas should be the recipient of the kind of counsel given to the priests by Cecile in the Second Nun’s Tale (SNT): “armeth you in armure of brightnesse” (VIII, line 385), signifying virtue, in accordance with Romans 13.12. SNT contains no other sartorial images. See the metaphorical treatment of armor as virtues in C&C, Chapter II. 28

Introduction  9  the time he actually nears the site of his avowed fight with this three-headed giant, we cannot imagine a happy outcome for Thopas from such an encounter. Because its rhetorical excesses produce a comedic effect, Thopas provides a sharp contrast to both the content and length of Chaucer’s depictions of romance characters, as his usual practice is to omit lengthy costume rhetoric, even when descriptio is present in his sources. However, in its profusion of details, Thopas bears some resemblance to Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his fabliaux,35 which sometimes is more generous than that which he bestows in his romances. While the usual descriptio in medieval romances emphasizes the beauty of noble dress, when Chaucer devotes special attention to costume particulars, he achieves a different effect. As he does in Thopas, Chaucer employs costumes for comedic, satiric effect in several of his fabliaux. The carpenter’s wife, Alison, in the MlT receives that descriptio oddly withheld from the romance heroine Emelye of KnT in a rhetorical depiction of Alison that constitutes satiric commentary. The comic effect of this satire in the MilT focuses on Alison’s elaborate headdress (her voluper) and decorative smock, items classified as body linen in the Middle Ages.36 A second fabliau, the Reeve’s Tale (RvT), also contains ­generous costume descriptions, although there is no descriptio. The tale depicts a social-climbing yeoman, deynous Symkyn (haughty Symkyn), who wears red hose, displays a fancy head-covering contrived from wrapping his typet around his head, and carries on his body no less than three weapons with blades.37 The traditionally high-fashion color red of Symkyn’s hose finds an echo in his wife’s robe.38 According to John Munro, red as a high-fashion color is on its way out of style toward the end of the fourteenth century, to be replaced with black. Perhaps we might think of Symkin and his wife as being a bit behind the current fashion. Such attention to decorative or fashionable dress forms a significant part of Chaucer’s satire in both fabliaux concerning commoners who seek to dress above their social status and sartorially broadcast their overreaching intentions.39

Furrow, Expectations of Romance, points out that “Not until Chaucer are there fabliaux in English … he undertakes to create in The Canterbury Tales the sort of interaction between genres [specifically, between romances and fabliaux] that was left behind in French literature by generations of writers before him,” p. 136. Keith Busby earlier comments on English fabliaux and advocates considering these works in their “relation to other contemporary genres, in particular the romance,” where their “true richness” might be found in such comparisons; see his “Conspicuous by its Absence: The English Fabliau,” Dutch Quarterly Review 12 (1982): 30–41, at 31–32. Also see Furrow, “Middle English Fabliaux,” pp. 7, 15. 36 See the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4, pp. 92–99, 102–10, 120–23, 128–32. 37 See the discussion of these weapons in C&C, Chapter VI, pp. 130–31. 38 Regarding the color red, see John Munro, “The Anti-Red Shift – to the Dark Side: Colour Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1550,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 3 (2007), pp. 55–95. 39 Colors in peasant clothing are discussed in C&C, pp. 190–91, 194–205. 35

10  Chaucer and Array In the Summoner’s Tale, Chaucer vilifies the protagonist, Friar John, by means of costume rhetoric: Friar John travels “With scrippe and tipped staf, ytukked hye (III, line 1737),40 and he also wears a hat (line 1776). Janette Richardson’s explanatory note regarding this costume points out that the Friar violates “Christ’s command that his disciples travel without bags and staves (Matt. 10.9–10; Luke 9.3, 10.4).”41 In a brief addition to the depiction of the Friar’s costume, Chaucer mentions the “gowne-clooth” which the lord’s squire Jankyn requests as payment for providing a solution to the problem of how to equitably divide a fart. When his solution is successful, he duly receives this award of a new “gowne” (lines 2247, 2293). In a fourth fabliau, the Shipman’s Tale (ShipT), however, Chaucer disappoints any audience expectations regarding costume rhetoric. Although a wealthy merchant’s wife’s desire for sartorial array animates much of the plot, the Shipman-narrator supplies no costume descriptions. A lust for dress motivates the wife’s two sexual encounters, as she pays twice with her “jolly body” for the pleasure of possessing array which she falsely claims she desires only for her husband’s honor (VII, lines 418–21). One of Chaucer’s many proverbial hood references42 completes the tale as Harry Bailly the Host speaks its moral: The monk putte in the mannes [husband’s] hood an ape, And in his wyves eek, by Seint Austyn!

(lines 440–41)

The merchant’s-wife’s premise is stated at the outset of this tale – that a husband never escapes paying for what his wife wants (lines 11–19) – and this tale bears out the maxim.43 But we see that the wife pays with her body not once, but twice (one of these yielding her double value as both manipulation of her husband and also as payment of her marriage debt), although it does not appear that she is anything less than satisfied when all is done. Chaucer’s costume rhetoric enhances yet another fabliau, the Friar’s Tale. This tale features a “feend” dressed in yeoman’s clothing – a green courtepy (jacket), a hat with black fringe, accessorized with well-dressed bow and arrows (III, lines 1392, 1448). The hat is a supplementary accessory for ordinary yeoman’s dress, and with its added fringe, Chaucer suggests vanity. When this “yeoman” blatantly

Glossed as “scrippe: bag, satchel; tipped staf: staff-tipped with metal, a symbol of his authority; ytukked hye: with the skirts of his coat tucked up under his belt.” 41 Riverside, p. 877, regarding line 1737, which mentions these forbidden items for the second time. This ruling resonates with the male (bag) in the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale that holds a miraculous mitten and other “holy” relics that he hopes to sell (VI, lines 372–76, 920), including “Oure Lady veyl” that is actually a “pilwe-beer” (glossed “pillow case”) and a “gobet” of St. Peter’s sail mentioned in the GP (I, 695–98). 42 See the discussion of this metaphor in Chapter 2, pp. 65–66, and in Chapter 6, under Figures of Speech, pp. 178–79. 43 Also see Roger A. Ladd, “The Mercantile (Mis)Reader in The Canterbury Tales,” SP 99.1 (2002): 17–32, at 28, regarding sex and business transactions. 40

Introduction  11  admits to the Summoner that he is a shape-shifter (lines 1461–68), it goes without saying that his dress might not signify his true identity: a shape-shifter might don any costume he chooses, but, for this occasion, he chooses to dress as a yeoman in his greenwood setting, “under a forest syde” (lines 1380–83). Dressed in green in this manner, the “feend” fits into this scene perfectly, but his unusually decorated hat catches the eye and hints at his false identity.44 The Merchant’s Tale, classified as a satire and fabliau,45 is another tale in which Chaucer’s audience might expect evocative costume descriptions because it possesses many of the elements of romance,46 but such descriptions are not forthcoming. We might wish to know what the youthful bride, May, wears to her wedding, or even how the aged bridegroom, Januarie, a knight of Pavia, is arrayed, but we learn only that May acquires “riche array” (IV, line 1699). Chaucer actually provides more information about the officiating priest’s ceremonial clothing: he wears a “stole aboute his nekke” (line 1703). Instead of knightly or noble dress description, this tale yields little more about costume beyond a few details concerning underwear and a gift of a silk purse to May from Squire Damyan (a member of Januarie’s court). We first learn about the husband-knight’s body linen: the elderly groom wears a “sherte” and “nyghtcappe” to bed on his wedding night (lines 1852–53). The full description of this knight, Januarie, with the “thikke brustles” of his beard “sharp as brere” (lines 1824–26), the “slakke skyn about his [“lene”] nekke,” and his croaking song following his night-long laboring (lines 1842–53), do not combine with his shirt and nightcap to make an admirable chivalric picture. A more erotic image is created in Damyan’s silk purse which contains his love letter to May, a purse that Damyan wears beneath his “sherte” where “He hath it put, and leyde it at his herte” (lines 1883–84). When May accepts the gift, she disposes of it similarly, hiding it “inwith hir bosom” (line 1944), presumably placing the purse beneath her smock. A familiar figure of speech in Chaucer’s works, the “sherte only” comparison,47 is deployed in this tale by May when she declares her preference for loving Damyan over all others “Though he namore hadde than his sherte” (line 1984). And finally we learn directly about May’s “smok,” for it is this intimate garment which, in the presence of a blind Januarie, and the invisible Proserpyna and Pluto, is tossed up and out of the way while Damyan swyves May in the pear The Friar’s Tale is further discussed under “Color symbolism” in Chapter 6, pp. 180–81. 45 By Ladd, “The Mercantile (Mis) Reader,” 21, 29. M. Teresa Tavormina in the explanatory notes for this tale describes its derivation from learned works concerning marriage, love, and luxuria, combined with elements of Giovanni Boccaccio and the Italian novella, and ending with the fabliau plot, the pear tree story. N. S. Thompson, “The Merchant’s Tale,” S&A 2, ed. Robert M. Correale with Mary Hamel (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 479–534, at 479–86, confirms these sources. 46 On romance elements in fabliaux, see Busby, “Conspicuous by its Absence,” pp. 32–34. 47 Discussed in Chapters 2, pp. 69–70, 79–80. 44

12  Chaucer and Array tree (line 2353). There the depiction ends. As the poet says, “I kan nat glose, I am a rude man –” (line 2353). However odd it seems when they are extracted and listed together, the only garments and accessories named in this tale are the priest’s stole, the squire’s silk purse, and body linen – Januarie’s, Damyan’s, and May’s respectively. Apparently, in a merchant’s tale, as the Wife of Bath states elsewhere (III, 412–14), “al is for to selle” – and, certainly in this tale, this “al” is barely wrapped. Surprising in a different way, because it presents yet another mode of treating noble and peasant dress primarily through a concentration on body linen, is Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in The Clerk’s Tale (ClT), designated by some critics as an exemplum and by others as secular hagiography, although it displays some characteristics of romance. The heroine of the tale, Griselda, a peasant first elevated by marriage to the rank of countess, then rejected, and finally reclaimed to noble status, is often described by critics as a secular saint.48 In this tale, Chaucer once again focuses audience attention on smocks, the nature of which would, necessarily, change as a result of Griselda’s changing circumstances.49 Griselda’s initial peasant clothing is later referred to as her “olde geere” and “povere array” (IV, lines 372, 467), and there is no detailed description of this dress such as Chaucer provides for Alison in MilT. We do not even receive a detail of color regarding her initial noble wardrobe as we do regarding Symkyn’s wife’s robe (RvT): “a gyte of reed” (I, line 3954). In ClT where we might expect descriptio of the bride, Chaucer summarily mentions Griselda’s wedding jewels and Walter’s forethought in having wedding attire made in advance, but does not describe Griselda herself, or the details of her garments and jewels (IV, lines 253–59). Further, during her tenure as countess, Griselda’s clothing is never the subject of Chaucer’s commentary until her final reinstatement as Walter’s wife, when brief phrases tell us that she is dressed in cloth of gold50 and a jeweled crown (lines 1117–19). This minimal treatment of a sumptuous costume worn by a member of the nobility is especially notable when compared to the fact that throughout the tale what this heroine wears is an important issue. Such scanty description is even more significant in light of Chaucer’s generous provision of the features of “noble” dress in his comic work about Sir Thopas.51 As in the MLT, costume rhetoric is absent in Chaucer’s exemplum the Physician’s Tale. Yet another beautiful damsel is in distress and a victim in this tale that illustrates bad government and its consequences. Virginia, daughter of the knight Virginius, receives a lengthy description that paints her beauty and virtues (VI, lines 7–71, 105–16) but does not address her clothing. The other characters similarly lack the characterization by costume that might enlighten the audience Regarding genre see Chapter 3, p. 109, and n. 59. Regarding smocks, see Chapter 3. 50 The metallic threads would be gold in color, but we are not given the color of the background (warp) threads of this fabric. 51 See Chapter 5. 48 49

Introduction  13  of this tale; they are dressed only in their deeds:52 Virginius who, with his daughter’s permission, chooses her death over her dishonor, values honor above all else; Apius the false judge demonstrates unrelieved corruption; and Claudius, the lecherous cherl who desires Virginia, illustrates the maximum in cherlish appetite. However, no costume rhetoric underscores these characterizations. The descriptio lavished on Chaucer’s fabliau peasant wife Alison and his minor romance characters Lygurge and Emetrius contrasts with that of his romance protagonists who lack distinguishing elaborate costumes. In this practice Chaucer’s costume rhetoric surprises and entertains. When he expands his descriptive technique to excess in order to dress Sir Thopas, rather than aggrandizing this protagonist, the length of Chaucer’s depictions is comedic and serves to reduce this knight in stature. Elsewhere, in the ClT and in the ShipT, clothing is a central feature of the stories, but Chaucer fails to single out any item of clothing or full costume for detailed description. And, out of all the garments he might have chosen, in several tales the garments receiving signal attention from Chaucer constitute body linen – the smok, the sherte. In Chaucer’s works this garment comes in all qualities, decorative and plain, old and new. Ostensibly worn by all, the highborn and the lowly, the smok or sherte mentioned as the only garment worn reduces its wearer to social nudity. Wearing only an undergarment, this character is revealed as what s/he is at base. Within the corpus of his works, Chaucer’s major pattern of costume rhetoric is his frequent reversals of the standard rhetorical practice in which romances are frequently decorated with descriptio and fabliaux most often are left bare of sartorial ornamentation.53 In addition, we find other lesser, but still significant, rhetorical techniques and devices in Chaucer’s use of clothing and textile imagery. These lesser features of costume rhetoric include his choice of discretionary omissions, his method of translation, his use of figures of speech, his innovative color symbolism, his deployment of the telling detail, and his choice and inclusion of fabric terms. The succeeding Chapters, 1–5, will primarily emphasize Chaucer’s major pattern of costume rhetoric, but will also allude to these lesser features as they appear in Chaucer’s texts. In conclusion, Chapter 6 will survey the variety of his lesser techniques and devices and their place in his works as a whole.

Regarding being dressed in one’s deeds, see the definition and discussion of Omitted Clothing, C&C, Chapters VI, IX. 53 See n. 8 above regarding Chaucer’s knowledge of contemporary literature. 52

1



Dressing the Warrior and the Streets of Athens in the Knight’s Tale

Part I: Dressing the Warrior

C

olorful, lavish dress is the hallmark of processional spectacles in the Middle Ages, according to accounts of processions in period chronicles, records, and secular romances. Although chronicle depictions of costume are never as detailed as present-day readers might wish, medieval romances often provide sumptuous details, and occasionally medieval records explain or testify to the accuracy of a portion of romance descriptions. Geoffrey Chaucer’s romance, The Knight’s Tale (KnT), both follows this tradition of costume depiction in its spectacular processions and deviates from it, simultaneously fulfilling and thwarting the audience’s expectations of tales which we, now, would classify as within the genre of medieval romance. Dressing the Major Characters The description of Arcite’s sumptuous funeral garments provides a case in point. In Chaucer’s account, tearful Greeks carry Arcite’s funeral bier1 in a manner that

Classical Greek funeral processions, quite similar to medieval funeral processions, including the portage of the deceased on his bier, are depicted on the sides of Athenian grave craters in D. C. Kurtz and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (Ithaca, NY, 1971), pls 4–5. See also B. S. Puckle, Funeral Customs (London, 1926), pp. 99–129, esp. 117–20, and figs 1–2, pp. 112–13, showing a bier in procession to a pyre. These ancient pictures portray a ritual procedure very like the illuminations of the funeral processions of Jeanne de Bourbon (d. 1378), in BN fr. 2813, fol. 480v, and of Charles VI (d. 1422) and Charles VII (1461), in BN fr. 5054, fols 27v and 1, respectively, as reproduced in Puckles’ figs 6–8.   The death-burial ritual in ancient Greece is described by Christiane SourvinouInwood in “To Die and Enter the House of Hades: Homer, Before and After,” Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. Joachim Whaley (New York, 1981), pp. 15–39, esp. 26–29. Also see Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 4–33. 1

Dressing the Warrior  15  echoes funeral procession depictions in antique Athenian grave craters (see Fig. 1.1). His bier is covered in cloth of gold (I, lines 2870–73): Theseus hath ysent After a beere, and it al overspradde With clooth of gold,2 the richeste that he hadde. And of the same suyte he cladde Arcite …

In equally opulent garb, in Boccaccio’s Teseida, Arcite’s body is displayed in garments made of the finest purple fabric: E acciò che Teseo intero segno di nobil sangue desse di costui, tutti vi fè gli ornamenti da regno venir presenti, e adornarne lui; li le veste purpuree, con ingegno fatte, si videro addosso a colui … .3

(Book 11, stanza 36)

[Theseus had all the insignia of royalty brought there so that the full honors of Arcites’ noble blood might be given Arcites and with these he decorated him. Purple robes, ingeniously woven, were placed on him … .]

The named fabrics differ, but the intent of their choice is the same – to clothe Arcite’s body in royal robes. Thus Arcite’s body, elaborately dressed4 in cloth of Cloth of gold makes a very rich pall. Late-fourteenth-century palls are generally plainer. There are presently eight extant medieval or Tudor palls composed of “Italian velvet brocade and embroidered with English work” (c.1500), and each has “a central panel of a pomegranate and foliate design,” according to Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550 (London, 1997), but he also mentions a “‘hearse cloth of gold with the arms of the Vinters [sic] and the arms of … Mr Husee’,” pp. 47–49. Gloria K. Fiero, p. 279ff., in “Death ritual in fifteenth-century manuscript illumination,” JMH 10 (1984), pp. 271–94, mentions an embroidered pall and a black pall, as well as the occasional pall with a gold ribbon cross on the top; The Flowering of the Middle Ages, ed. Joan Evans (1966; 1985; New York, 1998), describes various palls including a scarlet pall, and a blue pall with gold bands crossing, pp. 176–77, 197.   A cloth of gold covered the lower portion of the body of Edward I (d. 1307) when he was buried, according to Phillis Cunnington and Catherine Lucas, Costume for Births, Marriages & Deaths (London, 1972; rpt. 1978), pp. 170–71. 3 Giovanni Boccaccio, Teseida: Edizione critica per cura Di Salvatore Battaglia (Florence, 1938), hereafter Tes.; and Teseida delle Norze d’Emilia, trans. Bernadette Marie McCoy, as The Book of Theseus (New York, 1974). All translations are McCoy’s. 4 R. H. Nicholson, “Theseus’s ‘Ordinaunce’: Justice and Ceremony in the Knight’s Tale,” ChauR 22 (1988), pp. 192–213, discusses Arcite’s funeral array, listing and commenting on both Arcite’s robe and pall, his white gloves (a requirement for medieval royalty listed in the Liber Regis Capelle), his ceremonial arms borne in the procession, and his head wreathed in green laurel (203). Of this wreath, he comments 2

16  Chaucer and Array

1.1  Antique Athenian grave crater; pen sketch after plate 4 in D.C. Kurtz and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (Ithaca, New York, 1971).

Dressing the Warrior  17  gold,5 white gloves,6 laurel wreath,7 and ritually armed,8 is borne atop that bier to the site of the pyre where it will be burned in an elaborate funeral ritual. Curiously in a romance densely populated with nobles and royalty, the deceased Arcite is the only character who is dressed in a complete costume made of cloth of gold. Cloth of gold is an umbrella term9 used for a variety of fabrics



5



6



7



8



9

that “Arcite wears the victor’s laurel crown … when he is arrayed for his funeral, as in Boccaccio; the effect here is to convert the funeral procession into the triumph which might have been his” (202). Lorraine Kochanske Stock in “The Two Mayings in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale: Convention and Invention,” JEGP 85.2 (1986): 206–21, states that a laurel garland is “more appropriate to a martial victor than to the winner of a tournament of love”; but she also claims that Arcite “equates possession of Emelye with military victory” (220). Nicholson, “Theseus’s ‘Ordinaunce’,” p. 203, posits that both pall and Arcite’s garments are “black cloth of gold,” that is cloth woven of a combination of black threads and gold threads. However, nothing in Chaucer’s text indicates that these fabrics had any coloration other than gold. For their burials, gloves were worn by English kings Henry II (d. 1189), John (d. 1216), Edward I (d. 1307), and Edward II (d. 1317), according to Cunnington and Lucas, Costume, pp. 170–71, 173. For King Edward II’s burial robes and inclusion of gloves, see Joel [F.] Burden, “Re-writing a Rite of Passage: The Peculiar Funeral of Edward II,” Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, eds Nicola McDonald and W.M. Ormrod (York, 2004), pp. 13–29, at 17; for John’s burial, at p. 23 n. 41. Ten garlands, according to William F. Woods, are mentioned in the text of the KnT, and he comments briefly on their significance in “‘My Sweete Foo’: Emelye’s Role in The Knight’s Tale,” SP 88 (1991), pp. 276–306, esp. 285, 290–1; however, he only lists 8 at this point in his essay. With his sword (line 2876); his shield, spear, and “bowe Turkeys” were borne by three warriors on horseback in the procession (lines 2893–95). The range achieved by Turkish bows was known to exceed that of the Tartar, Chinese, Persian, and Indian bows, according to Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, Projectile Throwing Engines of the Ancients with a Treatise on the Structure, Power and Management of Turkish and other Oriental Bows of Medieval and Later Times (London, 1907; rpt. Totowa, NJ, 1973), p. 18; noting, p. 4, the red lacquer with gold tracery decor of these bows. See Jacques LeGoff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1988), pp. 110–15, esp. 111–13, 254–55 nn. 24 and 33, regarding the circumstantial significance of bows in literature. LeGoff claims that bows are “ambiguous” as a symbol and must be interpreted in context. Keiko Hamaguchi in “Domesticating Amazons in The Knight’s Tale,” SAC 26 (2004), pp. 331–54, esp. 342, depicts a bow and arrow negatively as part of Hippolyta’s “Amazonian costume,” but Chaucer’s lines (I, 1683–87), cited by Hamaguchi, describe no costume and no weapons; they state only that Theseus, with Hippolyta and Emelye (in green), ride out to hunt. See Lisa Monnas, “Silk Cloths Purchased for the Great Wardrobe of the Kings of England, 1325–1462,” Text Hist 20.2 (1989): 283–307, esp. 290. Monnas names, as does J. P. P. Higgins, Cloth of Gold: A History of Metallised Textiles (London, 1993), pp. 7–35, a long list of fabrics, all of which would be called cloths of gold, regardless of which type of gold threads were woven into the fabric or employed in embroidery.

18  Chaucer and Array whose specific names sometimes told, to the most knowledgeable, the place of fabric origin, the type of gold thread used in weaving or decoration, and their relative value.10 Even so, Chaucer’s brief depiction of this funeral robe might well confound audience expectations for this romance, if they are accustomed to Monnas, in “Textiles for the Coronation of Edward III,” Text Hist 32.1 (2001): 2–35, describes the types of silks and their costs, many of them cloths of gold, employed variously for this coronation.  Higgins, Cloth of Gold, pp. 7–29, describes types of gold thread developed and used during the Middle Ages: 1. “threads of gold … bound around a core of silk” (technique originating in China); 2. silver gilt thread, made from gold bonded to silver (technique developed in medieval Europe, c. 12th c.); 3. “membrane gold” or “skin gold”, “produced by binding gilded animal membrane around a core of thrown silk yarn”; 4. gold thread made from “flat gilded leather strips (used in damasks and brocades in Damascus, Persia); 5. “Iraquian gold thread, manufactured of gilded vellum on linen”; 6. gold embroidery thread, made by wrapping a metal strip around a “brown transparent animal hair, together with an untwisted coloured silk thread”; 7. “Cypriot gold,” a yarn produced with gilded membrane of animal gut and wrapped around various cores: silk, cotton, or linen thread (produced in Constantinople); 8. pure gold (used in Opus Anglicanum); 9. Roman gold thread, with a wide strip of membrane, more heavily gilded than in Cypriot gold, wrapped around a core of yellow silk (used in Byzantium cloth).   Clearly some producers of cloth of gold developed individualized types of metallic thread and fabric. For types of gold used and regarding the difficulty in determining cloth of gold weaves, see Kay Staniland, “Medieval Courtly Splendour,” Costume 14 (1980): 7–23, esp. 9, 15. Staniland states, “Linking a term to an actual example of a woven silk is a very uncertain business, and may indeed now be impossible to prove for certain.” See also Ancient and Medieval Textiles: Studies in Honour of Donald King, ed. Lisa Monnas and Hero Granger-Taylor (London, 1989), regarding the many kinds of silks woven with a variety of gold threads, some decorated with pearls. Concerning fabrics woven with two kinds of gold threads, see Anne E. Wardwell, “Panni Tartarici: Eastern Islamic Silks Woven With Gold and Silver (13th and 14th centuries),” Islamic Art 3 (1988–89): 95–173; and Raschid-eldin, Histoire des Mongols de la Perse, trans. and ed. É. Quatremère (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 149, 159.   See also, Alexandria Abarria, “Cloth of Gold,” Complex Weavers’ Newsletter: Medieval Textiles 31 (March 2002): 8–10; and Gina M. Barrett, “Metallic Threads – A Background to Their Use in Textile Work,” at Welcome to Soper Lane website, www. et-tu.com/soper-lane/ (see “research,” then “metallic thread,” to get abstract or complete article). 10 The lucrative practice of embroidering cloths in silk and gold is highlighted in a 1304 legal settlement between two female embroiderers who sold such work, with one Thomasin receiving 300 marks sterling for her share in the dealings after they ceased working together. Unfortunately, no value is specified for the one cloth described in this record that measured 8 ells by 6 ells, as recorded in Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries [1276–1419], Selected, trans., ed. Henry Thomas Riley (London, 1868), pp. 52–53. Hereafter Memorials.   Tapestries (arras) woven in silk, silver, and gold are recorded under “Paymentes in Decembre” [1529], from the “Household Book of Henry VIII,” in Trevelyan Papers,

Dressing the Warrior  19  romance authors’ lengthy treatments of a major character’s dress and accoutrements. For instance, Arcite’s funeral dress comes nowhere near to matching the complexity and detail of that of Pallas in the Roman d’Eneas: Vestu li ont dras de cheinsil que la mere dona son fil, blialt de porpre li vestirent que trois de lor deesses firent, et d’or l’rent tot antissu, et sandaires ot de bofu ; esperons d’or ot an ses piez, de bon orfrois ancorroiez. Tot lo conroient come roi, and li mistrent an son doi, pierre i ot bone, un chier onicle. Vestu li ont sor en tonicle, el chief li metent la corone ; li rois son escherpe li done, et quant il l’ont tot conreé, al tenple as deus l’an ont porté. Iluec firent grant sacrefise a la lor loi et grant servise. … Iluec dedanz fu mis li cors, li biaus, li genz, li proz Pallas, toz conreez o reaus dras et o l’escepre et o l’espee.

(lines 6391–6408, 6460–3)11

[They dressed him (Pallas) in clothes of fine linen which the mother gave her son; they dressed him in a tunic of purple which three of their goddesses had made, and had woven all with gold. He had sandals of embroidered silk and spurs of gold strapped to his feet with good orphrey.12 They equipped him wholly like a king; they put a ring on his finger with good stone, an expensive onyx. Over all they clothed him with a robe, and on his head they placed a crown. The king gave him his alms purse. When they had prepared him completely, they carried him to the temple of

Prior to A.D. 1558, ed. J. Payne Collier, Camden Society, First Series 67 (London, 1857), p. 145: Item, to Harman Hullesman, merchaunt of the Hawnce, upon a warr. &c. in five peces of Arras of the passion of Christ, wrought with silke, silver, and golde, cont. xxiiijxx iij Flemyshe elles and iij quart. at iijls sterling the elle … ccljli vs.

Eneas: Roman du XIIe siècle, ed. J.-J. Salverda de Grave (Paris, 1964), trans. by John A. Yunck, as Eneas: A Twelfth-Century French Romance (New York and London, 1974); also see the less detailed funeral dress of Camille, lines 7638–42. 12 James Robinson Planché defines orphrey as “Gold embroidery,” and gives Menage’s derivation of “the Latin aurifrigium from aurum Phrygium” as the source of this term in An Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Costume: From the First Century B.C. to c.1760 (Mineola, NY, 2003), pp. 381–82.

11

20  Chaucer and Array the gods, where they made a great sacrifice and offered a great service, according to their faith. … There within was placed the corpse – the noble, the brave Pallas – all arrayed in royal clothes, with both scepter and sword.]

Pallas’s funeral dress makes an interesting comparison to Arcite’s, as it highlights the descriptive restraint of Chaucer’s four-line account. Because more poetic attention is given to Pallas’s attire and more provenance and fabrication details are supplied, Pallas’s burial array outshines that of Arcite as described in the Knight’s Tale. Pallas’s tunic was constructed by three goddesses who used fabric dyed with Tyrian purple,13 interwoven or embroidered with gold threads. The attribution of supernatural production for this fabric, alone, would designate it as extraordinary, costly, and suitable for royalty. For this twelfth-century romance, and others of its time period, the wearing of Tyrian purple fabric designates royalty,14 but by the late fourteenth century, it is more usual to signify the dress of royalty as “cloth of gold.”

Earlier, the poet emphasizes the value and significance of Tyrian purple with an explanation:

13

En cele mer joste Cartage, iluec prent l’an, a cel rivage, d’une maniere personez, ne gaires granz, mes petitez; l’en les taille sor les coetes, si an chient roges gotetes; de ce toint l’an la porpre chiere. Pou sont peison de lor maniere; l’an les nome conciliuns. Del sanc de ces petiz peisons, dunt iluec avoit a mervoille, de ces ert la porpre vermoille;

(lines 471–82)

[In the sea by Carthage, near the shore, they catch a sort of fish, not large but small; they cut these fish at their tails so that red drops fall from them; from this they extract the precious Tyrian purple.* There are few fish of this kind; people call them conchylia. From the blood of these small fish, which are very plentiful there, comes the royal purple color.]



*Yunck, in his notes to Eneas, p. 65 n. 13, adds: “This merveille could have been derived directly or indirectly from Isidore of Seville,” Etymologiae xii. 6.50.

We note that, in Eneas, Hecuba’s gown is also purple; it is among three gifts that Eneas gives to Dido:

14

Tel vestement iluec avoit com a raine convenoit ; de porpre estoit, estelez d’or. Li rois Prianz an san tresor faisoit cez garnemenz garder, quant il se devoit coroner ;

Dressing the Warrior  21  Although Chaucer, through his Knight-narrator, dresses Arcite in this most royal of fabrics, not only does he omit any supernatural origin or fabrication15 for Arcite’s burial robe, but he also deprives this robe of the sartorial rhetorical embellishment that he earlier bestowed on Emetrius and Lygurge and which Chaucer might have supplied for Arcite’s robe from his experiential knowledge of royal costume. For example, Richard II, in 1377, owned a girdle made of gold and a “coat of cloth of gold, with a green ground,16 buttoned with bells of gold, and embroidered with large pearls around the collar and the sleeves,”17 and while Chaucer might not have seen this particular costume, over the years he would have had ample opportunity to see and to hear of many of Edward III’s and Richard II’s elaborate outfits.18 In comparison with Pallas’s funeral garb and with Richard II’s cloth of gold costume, the narrated account of Arcite’s funeral robe is restrained. Chaucer depicts this robe as royal but simple; it is fetys, well-made of appropriate fabric, but possesses no additional embellishments. Further confounding the reader’s romance expectations in the Knight’s Tale, the description of Arcite’s funeral costume, although limited, is one of only three costumes in this romance that is described in any detail at all. We might have expected that Emelye, as the focus of the romantic triangle in this tale, would be the recipient of a decorative19 costume description; instead, the Knight only provides: “Yclothed was she fressh” as she constructs a garland of red and white, as depicted in Plate I, from Osterreich Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Cod 2617,

sa fame Ecuba les avoit lo jor que coronee estoit.

(lines 753–60)

[There was also a gown which would become a queen, of purple starred with gold. King Priam had placed these adornments with his treasure when he was about to be crowned; his wife Hecuba wore them on the coronation day.]

Arcite’s burial robe is made of the best the Knight possesses, but it is not fabulous fabric (that is, woven by goddess, fairy, or magician – the stuff of fables). 16 For this fabric, the author may either have meant green fabric embroidered with gold thread, or fabric for which the warp threads (basic threads strung lengthwise on the loom) are green, most likely of silk, while the weft threads of gold would have been woven over and under these green threads, producing a two-color fabric. 17 These items are included in an inventory of goods given into the city’s keeping as security for a loan of £5,000 to Richard II by the city of London, according to Riley’s Memorials, pp. 410–12. See also Kay Staniland’s description of Richard II’s clothes, including scarletto (fabric named scarlet) and embroidery of pearls and gold thread, in “Extravagance or Regal Necessity? The Clothing of Richard II,” The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, eds Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas and Caroline Elam (London, 1997), pp. 90–93. 18 Regarding elaborate garments for Queen Philippa and King Edward III, see Kay Staniland, pp. 244–5, in “Court Style, Painters, and the Great Wardrobe,” England in the Fourteenth Century, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1986), pp. 236–46. 19 Decorative in the sense that costume descriptions were considered rhetorically decorative elements in a text. 15

22  Chaucer and Array fol. 53.20 Later, he says she is “clothed al in grene” (lines 1048, 1686). The green of her minimal dress description is evocatively treated by Lorraine Kochanske Stock; she posits that Emelye’s green garb assists her mythic “identification with the highly evocative month of May,” her presentation “as a flower,” her association with the fertility goddess Flora, her “emulation of Diana,” and the liklihood that she might “mimic” Venus (208–11).21 Emelye’s ritual redressing in the temple of Diana22 receives only the briefest treatment by the Knight; he mentions a ritual bath, “clothes,” and a green oak garland (lines 2276, 2283, 2289–91), thus shortening a description that was already relatively brief in Tes., Chaucer’s source.23 A French translation of Boccaccio’s Teseida, illuminated by Van Eyck. Stock’s “Two Mayings” explication of Arcite’s song (lines 1510–12) further probes the significance of green. His desire to “some grene gete” is characterized as sexual, lusty (115–17). Stock, p. 117, claims that Chaucer “invented” Emelye’s green gown, but it is more likely that he merely borrowed it from Boccaccio’s original feast scene or wedding scene (Tes. Book 4, Stanza 51; Book 12, Stanza 65), a relocation and resignification that underscores Chaucer’s emphasis on the Maying rites explicated by Stock.   Regarding Boccaccio’s choice of a green dress for this Amazon, see D. S. Brewer’s comment that “A green dress seems to be the favourite [excepting Geoffrey de Vinsauf] in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries” [in descriptions of courtly ladies], and Brewer cites examples: Idleness (Romaunt, 573), Beatrice (Purg. XXX, 32), Emilia (Teseida, XII, 65), Alceste (Prologue to Legend of Good Women, BF 214, AG 146), the ladies in Dunbar’s Goldyn Targe (60), in “The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, Especially Harley Lyrics, Chaucer, and Some Elizabethans,” MLR 50 (1955): 257–69, at 259 n. 2.   Other comments on green dress include those of Frédérique Lachaud who claims that green is “emblematic of knightly rank:” and “aristocratic birth,” in “Liveries of Robes in England, c.1200–c.1330,” EHR 111.441 (1996): 279–98, at 291–92; John Trevisa who states that “hunters cloþeþ hemself in grene, for þe beste loueþ kyndeliche grene coloures,” in On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum (Oxford, 1975), Bk. 19, vol. 2, 1291; and the designation of green as a fairy color by Martin Puhvel, “Art and the Supernatural in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Arthurian Literature 5, ed. Richard Barber (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 8–12, 37–44.   Regarding the May observance of dressing in green, see Susan Crane, “Maytime in Late Medieval Courts,” The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia, PA, 2002), pp. 39–72. 22 The goddess Diana and a worshipful Emelye within Diana’s temple are depicted in a pencil drawing by Edward Coley Burne-Jones. Another one of his drawings depicts Arcite in the temple of Mars. Both drawings are part of eleven preparatory drawings for the illustrations of the 1896 Kelmscott edition of Chaucer. These drawings are part of the Pierpont Morgan Library Department of Drawings and Prints collection. 23 In Tes., this ritual dressing includes slightly more detail (Book 7, Stanza 72): 20 21

e poi in loco a poche manifesto, di fontano liquore il dilicato

Dressing the Warrior  23  Other characters one might expect to receive evocative costume treatment24 are Duke Theseus and the rival lover-princes of Thebes, Arcite and Palamon. Instead, Theseus, early in the tale, is “clad” for going hunting (line 1677), and when dressed for the tournament, is “Arrayed right as he were a god in trone” (line 2529).25 All of these are Generalized Costumes.26 Arcite and Palamon, when found half-dead on the battlefield, wear only “cote-armures” “wroght ful richely”27 that identify them as “of the blood roial” (lines 1012, 1016, 1018). Upon Arcite’s secret return to Athens, he wears a disguise, but it, too, is generalized – the garments of “a povre laborer” (line 1409). When Theseus makes him a squire and provides the clothes for that social rank, Chaucer does not describe them (lines 1440–41). Both royal cousins might have been described in full, as their champions are, when garbed for the tournament, and this might have provided a poignant scene, indeed, because, although here they are opponents, they would be clad in their respective familial and all-too-familiarly-blazoned cote-armures. No matter what the designs were on their individual blazons or how they differed or resembled each other, each would be known to the other through long family and comradesin-arms experience, with the difference now that this fight was to be blood against blood. Later, and finally, Palamon, grieving for Arcite, appears with “flotery berd and ruggy, ashy heeres, / In clothes blake, ydropped al with teeres” (lines 2883– 84), a conventional mourning description little better than the earlier minimal depiction of the Theban widows who also wore “clothes blak” (lines 899, 911). Further resisting romance conventions, Chaucer does not decorate this romance with a traditional “arming scene,” although the plot offers numerous opportunities to do so, most notably, even painfully, when Arcite provides two suits of armor for his fight with Palamon, and the cousins, now comrades only corpo lavossi, e poi, fornito questo, di bianchissima porpora vestissi, e’biondi crin dalli veli scoprissi. [in a place revealed to few, she bathed her delicate body in a fountain of water, and adorned herself, dressing in deepest purple and covering her blond curls with a veil.]

For example, Glynne William Gladstone Wickham provides a helpful summary of costumes (designed to identify or to disguise), color significance, emblems, and accessories, for tournaments and spectacles of all kinds, in Early English Stages 1300 to 1660 (New York, 1959; London, 1959), pp. 45–49. 25 Regarding literary dress of royalty, see Monica L. Wright, “What Was Arthur Wearing? Discrepancies in Dress Descriptions in Twelfth-Century French Romance,” PQ 81.3 (2002): 275–79, esp. 275, 278–79, 283. 26 A Generalized Costume is “a stereotypic literary description of costume, lacking detail,” as I discuss in Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue, Chaucer Studies 26 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 6, 15–16 (hereafter referred to as C&C). 27 Riverside defines cote armure (Tr V, line 1651): “A tunic embroidered with a heraldic device, worn over the armor.” 24

24  Chaucer and Array in acrimony, arm each other (lines 1630, 1651–52). Perhaps in lieu of such an arming scene, the narrator provides a scene of group arming, consisting of evocative fragments. Tournament Procession Costumes Having eschewed the conventional romance costuming of central figures in the Knight’s Tale, as well as an arming scene, the poet lavishes costume details on a depiction of the arrival in Athens of knights who will do battle for Palamon (lines 2117–24) and whose arms are individualized28 (200–05). Medieval writers of chronicles consistently present the procession participants’ costumes as part of the festive decor, a colorful part of the spectacle. In the Knight’s Tale, as the narrator lists the participants’ arms, he includes a “haubergeoun,” a “brestplate” coupled with a “light gypoun,” a “paire plates large,” a “Pruce sheeld or a targe,” leg armor, and weapons such as the ax or steel mace (lines 2119–24). These arms would naturally be part of the array seen again in the tournament procession to the lists on the following day. This depiction would also be true for the ensembles of Arcite’s knights and the more detailed costumes and arms of Lygurge and Emetreus, none of which are the costumes of some chivalric literary motif29 that was adopted only for this tournament.30 Meanwhile, the poet concludes this list with a comment on Palamon’s forces: “Armed were they … / Everych after his opinioun” (lines 2126–27), and then embellishes his account with the description of Lygurge, Palamon’s champion.31

As Lois Roney points out. Roney analyzes the appearance and costume details of Arcite’s and Palamon’s king-champions, Lygurge and Emetreus (lines 2117–89) in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Theories of Scholastic Psychology (Tampa, FL, 1990), pp. 145–46, 164, 186–205, esp. 193–200 concerning their possessions, and pp. 200–05 regarding Chaucer’s Knight’s different treatments of the arming of the “two rival companies of one hundred men each.” See also her Appendix C, pp. 286–89, for specific analysis of the cote-armure worn by each king-champion; and p. 326 n. 35 for citations of other commentators on Lygurge’s and Emetreus’s appearance. 29 Regarding the adoption of literary motifs for tournaments, see Richard Barber, The Knight and Chivalry (Totowa, NJ, 1975), pp. 169, 174. For the interaction between tournaments and romances, see Larry D. Benson, “The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes & L’Histoire de Guillaume Le Maréchal,” Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle (Kalamazoo, MI, 1980), pp. 1–24. 30 As mentioned by numerous historians. See, for example, Wickham, Early English Stages, pp. 20–21, 28–29, 38–39, 44–50. 31 According to Roney, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, Lygurge and his individually armed (each according to his own liking) knights suitably fight for Palamon who represents the “voluntarist theories of the Augustinian Franciscans.” See especially her analysis of his possessions, pp. 193–95, 198, and 286–89. 28

Dressing the Warrior  25  Lygurge,32 whose daunting physiognomy and physique are amply described (lines 2130–36), enters Athens driving a golden chariot pulled by four white bulls, according to the custom of his country (lines 2137–39), and accompanied by more than twenty huge white wolfhounds (“alauntz”) and one hundred wellarmed, battle-hardened knights (lines 2148–54). The poet dresses Lygurge in “harnays” covered not by the usual “cote-armure,” as Chaucer points out – thus emphasizing the difference – but instead by “a beres skyn, col-blak for old”33 (lines 2140–42), and wearing on his long raven-black hair, a “wrethe of gold, arm-greet [‘thick as an arm’], of huge wight [‘weight’] / … set ful of stones brighte / of fyne rubyes and of dyamauntz” (lines 2143–47).34 The richness of his weighty ruby- and diamond-studded wreath-crown, the acme of stout sovreignty, complemented by the gold-yellow rivets of his “harnays” and his bull-propelled golden chariot underscore the fearsome wildness of his ancient bearskin. Chaucer leaves his audience to wonder about the style, cut, and other details of this bearskin covering Lygurge’s harness, or armor. Conversely, in the Tes., we find other such garments worn by warriors entering Athens, and Boccaccio provides informative details. For example, Agamemnon is descriptively defined by his rusty35 armor, mostly concealed by a smooth bearskin that has shining claws, which was fastened circling his neck (Book 6, Stanza 22). In addition, Hercules’s son Chromis, armored and armed with a huge knotty club, wears a Neamean lionskin from a lion killed by his father36 (Stanza 27). We also find the son of Mercury, King Evander of Arcadia, described as “rusty,” displaying a Libyan “shaggy” bearskin mantle with its black claws covered in gleaming gold, and we are told that a number of his adherents wore cloaks of bearskin, lionskin,

See Vincent J. DiMarco’s Explanatory note for line 2129, Riverside p. 837, regarding Lygurge’s identity as Lycurgus of Nemea whom Chaucer mistakes for Lycurgus of Thrace. 33 Glossed “for old: because of age.” A May 28, 2011 discussion on Medtextl yielded B. S. Lee’s comment, “He’s killed a fully mature experienced and wily old bear, his [Lygurge’s] hair is as black as the bear’s, and he’s just as dangerous, or more so”; and Thor Ewing’s contribution, “Very dark or even black-colored bears are almost always old bears,” citing http://tonyruss.com/PageBookBearHuntinginAlaska.html. 34 Glosses from Riverside. 35 This rustiness is known as râme. Boccaccio’s attitude toward begrimed armor appears to be favorable: it is deemed evidence of appropriate physical activity.   Regarding other medieval attitudes toward a knight’s dirtiness or cleanliness, see my “Costume Rhetoric in the Knight’s Portrait: Chaucer’s Every-Knight and his ‘bismotered’ ‘gypon’,” in C&C, 22–54, esp n. 13, regarding cleaning armor. 36 This is a most renowned lionskin, symbol of strength, courage, and prowess: Hercules, in the first of his twelve Labors, strangled this lion. This feat places him in the heroic-mythic company of Gilgamesh and Samson. According to James Hall, the tradition begins in classical art of portraying Hercules (Heracles) wearing this lion skin as a cloak with a cowl or helmet made of the lion’s head, in Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (London, 1974; rpt. 1984), pp. 147–48. 32

26  Chaucer and Array “moon-horned” bullskin with expensive edge trim, and boarskin37 (Stanzas 36–7, 40).38 Boccaccio’s Lycurgus, unlike Chaucer’s character of the same name, dresses in black mourning weeds in honor of the death of Opheltes (Stanza 14), and other notables entering Athens’ gate are dressed in a variety of precious fabrics, metals, and jewels. Perhaps combining bits from Boccaccio, Chaucer dresses his Lygurge in a costume that portrays exotic, glittering, brute force. In any case, at least in Boccaccio, animal skins with fur-side-out take the shape of mantles or cloaks, some of them decorated with the animal’s gilded claws, rather than being fashioned into tunics or tabards, and Chaucer suggests nothing to the contrary so far as his Lygurge’s bearskin is concerned. Further, while in the Tes. any number of tournament participants arrive in Athens dressed in animal-skin mantles, in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, so far as we are told, Lygurge is the sole warrior so dressed. If his retinue is similarly dressed, we do not read of it, and thus Lygurge is doubly singled out by the narrator’s description of his costume. Contrasting with Lygurge’s combination of rich, wild array, Arcite’s champion Emetreus,39 “kyng of Inde” (line 2155), is more elegant, in the modern sense of that term, but also forceful. He rides a red-brown “steede” in steel trappings and draped in well-”dyapred” cloth of gold. Lois Roney describes this fabric as having a small uniform pattern made by weaving the threads to cross diamond-wise so as to reflect light differently from the different surfaces. The diamond-shaped spaces so made were filled up randomly with parallel lines, dots, and simple patterns. Ordinarily such cloth was made of linen. But here [because this fabric is named cloth of gold], … the slightest movement of his horse would reflect instead a remarkable amount of rippling light.40

Chaucer favorably compares this gleaming combination of steel and golden fabric with Mars (lines 2157–59). Further, his saddle is decorated with pure gold (line 2162). Unlike Lygurge, Emetreus does wear the customary cote-armure, and

These skins are perhaps reminiscent of other mythic beasts captured or slain. Hercules captured the Cretan bull that, with Parsiphae, produced the Minotaur, in his eighth Labor; he slew the Erymanthian boar in Arcadia in his third Labor; and he killed a competing suitor for Deianeira, Achelous, who had, through shapeshifting, assumed the form of a horned bull in the twenty-second of his life events as listed by Hall, Dictionary, p. 152. 38 All quoted descriptive terms are taken from McCoy’s trans. of Tes. 39 Roney, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, xiv, characterizes Arcite and his champion Emetrius, and his costume, as portraying the “intellectualist theories of the Aristotelian Thomists,” pp. 189, 195–98, 286–89. 40 Roney, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, p. 196. Planché defines diaper, in Illustrated Dictionary, pp. 169–70, as a “fine species of linen” produced in Ypres, and as an all-over pattern. Regarding linen in the Middle Ages, see The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 364, 369, 473–92, 478–79. 37

Dressing the Warrior  27  the Knight tells us that it is made of cloth of Tars,41 and embroidered with “grete” or very large “rounde” and white “perles” (lines 2160–62) – an unusually lavish garment.42 Worn hanging, over his cote-armure, his “mantelet” [“short cloak”] glitters with the added adornment of rubies that were believed to prevent being “vanquished” in battle43 and that possessed a sparkle which Chaucer likens to fire (lines 2161–62). And, finally, his head is confidently, perhaps prophetically crowned with a green laurel garland44 (lines 2175–76) well in advance of Arcite’s tournament victory. Completing his array, Emetreus carries upon his hand a tame white eagle and leads a hundred “lordes,” all armed except for fighting headgear (lines 2177–80).45 The array of each champion is more elaborate than that for any other knight in Chaucer’s works. In addition, both knights’ array equals or

Regarding this fabric, see Wardwell, “Panni Tartarici,” p. 144, items 104–11, described as “Panno de Tharse or Panno Tarsico,” and described as items constructed from elaborately patterned fabric; see also the depiction of what is “probably” Tartar silk in Margaret Scott’s Medieval Dress & Fashion ([London, 2007]), p. 95, color pl. 55, of the goddess Juno, reproduced from the Address of the City of Prato to Robert of Anjou, Tuscany, c.1335–40, BL, MS Royal 6 E IX, fol. 22r.   Tars is glossed in Riverside as “silk from Tarsia in Turkestan.” MED examples couple cloth of Tars with the adjectives “full rich,” “fine,” and “dere.” Such fourteenth-­ century silk cloth might display Chinese, Persian, or Islamic designs. The Riverside Index of Proper Names places Tars (Tarsia) in Chinese Turkestan. This geographical entity is in a region included in former Persian, Muslim, and Mongol empires, known more recently as part of the former Soviet Union-controlled Central Asia. The Cambridge History of Western Textiles does not mention “cloth of Tars,” but does mention “Tartar silks” and “Tartar-influenced” designs, pp. 325, 351, 353. Regarding medieval silks, see also Byzantine silks, pp. 325–31, 350. Consult Planché, Illustrated Dictionary, p. 503, concerning disagreement about the origin of this fabric of silk and gold and his preference for Tarsus, capital of Cilicia, in Asia Minor. Roney, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, p. 288, defines cloth of Tars as a “rich, costly Oriental fabric of woven silk and cashmere … the downy fleece underlying the long coarse outer hair of the cashmere goat.” 42 As compared to the Black Prince’s achievements, where his gypon displays his coat of arms with gold-embroidered lions and fleur de lis on red and blue backgrounds, lacking jewels. See color photographs in Dorothy Mills, Edward the Black Prince (Canterbury, 1985), pp. 12–13; and Herbert Norris, Medieval Costume and Fashion (Mineola, NY, 1999), p. 322, and fig. 446 on p. 319 (black and white). 43 As well as possessing other powers. I have listed the vertus of rubies, in Chapter 2, nn. 43, 48; citing especially Joan Evans and Mary E. Serjeantson, English Medieval Lapidaries, EETS, OS 190 (London, 1933). 44 Daniel J. Ransom describes the laurel as an agent of prophecy in “Apollo’s Holy Laurel: Troilus and Criseyde III, pp. 542–43,” ChauR 41.2 (2006), pp. 206–12, and in n. 22 suggests its possible significance to the Parliament of Fowls line 182 and the House of Fame lines 1106–09. 45 As previously mentioned, the narrator provides no distinguishing individual characteristics of the armor of Emetreus’s hundred lords. 41

28  Chaucer and Array exceeds that depicted in manuscript illuminations for other knights dressed for tournaments; for example, see Plate II.46 In addition, the throngs of Athens would possibly see both Lygurge and Emetreus displaying these same dramatic arrays in the next day’s tournament procession.47 Charles Muscatine aptly states that “a great deal of this descriptive material has a richness of detail far in excess of the demands of the story,” citing for example, “sixty-one lines of description of Emetrius and Lygurge; yet so far as the action of the poem is concerned, these two worthies do practically nothing.” Later, however, Muscatine posits that although the imagery in these descriptions is “conventional, framed in the flat, to express the magnificence that befits nobility,” these portraits are not “a waste” or only decoration: they perform a function that is not directly related to the action and is independent of the question of character … . Their varicolored magnificence … makes the whole field glitter up and down, … And practically every other detail is a superlative, the quality of which contributes to martial or royal magnificence.48

Thus, where one might least expect them, Chaucer provides sumptuous descriptive detail for two functionally minor characters. In what amounts to a costume rhetoric sleight-of-hand, instead of being descriptively generous with the two cousins, the poet, through the separate costumes and arms of their champions, provides sartorial glamor – a glamor which both reflects, and reflects upon, the estate of the major characters, Palamon and Arcite, as well as that of their accompanying one hundred knights. Pre-tournament Procession Dress In addition to the details provided in Chaucer’s depiction of the tournament participants’ entry into Athens, he reminds us of both Arcite’s and Palomon’s companies in further depictions of these knights en route to the palace on the day of the tournament (lines 2494–2505). Clearly, following their entry into Athens, their array has been cleaned and polished for display, eliminating all signs of travel grime. As Chaucer narrates this trek, he evokes the dramatic energy of this procession in his description of armorial array, including knights with “harneys / So unkouth and so riche, and wroght so weel / Of goldsmythrey of ­browdynge,49 Illumination from a fourteenth-century address by the people of Prato to their protector, Robert of Anjou, King of Naples; reproduced in Evans, The Flowering of the Middle Ages, p. 117, from BL MS Royal 6 E IX, fol. 24. 47 See Dorothy Yamamoto’s “Heraldry and the Knight’s Tale,” NM 93 (1992): 207–15, for a discussion of the possible implications of the animal imagery associated with these two champions’ array, including the white eagle, the “alauntz,” the “grifphon,” the bearskin, and the lions and leopards. 48 Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1957; 1973), pp. 177 and 182. 49 Staniland defines “goldsmith work” as “rich ornament on clothing” done with five varieties of gold including: auri de cipre (thread gold), folia auri (fine leaf gold), papir. 46

Dressing the Warrior  29  and of steel” (lines 2496–98), “sheeldes brighte” (line 2499), “Gold-hewen helmes, hauberkes, cote-armures” (line 2500), “Lordes in parements” (“richly decorated robes”) (line 2501), and the sights and sounds of readying arms, of strapping and lacing of helms and shields (lines 2503–04).50 Garlands No other of Chaucer’s works is so decorated with garlands as is the Knight’s Tale, and his use of this costume sign, although sometimes conventional, is also, on occasion, unique. The conventional garland of medieval romance is most often the insignia of lovers, a gift from one to the other. Although no such scene appears in the Knight’s Tale, it acknowledges this motif subtly in the description of the statue of Venus in her temple wearing a “rose gerland, fressh and well smellynge” (line 1961).51 Garlands are the most frequently mentioned costume accessory in the Knight’s Tale – a tale garnished with garlands of all types,52 each suited to de auro (possibly also leaf gold), auro sondiz/sondat (undefined), and auro in plate, in “Medieval Courtly Splendour,” pp. 15–18. 50 Although in Tes. there is no description of a formal entry or procession to the tournament site, the people of Athens watch the costumed participants enter Athens and no doubt would watch again as they process to the tournament site: Erano i campi, l’argine e le strade, le porte de’ plazzi e li balconi, come che fossero o ispesse o rade, piene di donne tutte e di baroni, per veder di Minòs la dignitade; e vecchi antichi e giovani garzoni tutti venuti v’erano a minare il gran baron nella lor terra entrare.

(Book 6, stanza 49)

[The fields, the embankments, and the streets, the gates of the palaces and the balconies were all crowded with ladies and barons in small groups and large to see the dignity of Minos. Ancient old men and young boys all came to watch the great baron [King Minos] enter their land.]

See Sarah Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 2007), pp. 102–03, for a discussion of Chaucer’s description of Venus. Reminiscent of Chaucer’s portrait of Fortune is the description of Fortune in a later work (ms. dated 1439–40), Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s English Book of Love: A Critical Edition, ed. Mary-Jo Arn, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 138 (Binghamton, NY, 1994), lines 4974–5036; also see the depiction of Venus, lines 5170, 5183–85; and Arn’s discussion of Venus and Fortune, pp. 65–66 and nn. 185–87. 52 A garland was a multi-purpose symbol in this period. It was, on occasion, the symbol of final acceptance into a guild or the symbol of group identity in guild processions, according to Benjamin R. McRee, “Unity or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities,” City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, eds Barbara Hanawalt and Kay Reyerson (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), pp. 191, 193. See also John Stow, Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1908), 1:95, regarding 51

30  Chaucer and Array the person or the occasion.53 First, Theseus, returns to Athens, after conquering Thebes, wearing a “laurer” wreath (line 1027). Then Emelye gathers red and white flowers54 “To make a subtil55 gerland” (line 1054,56 as illustrated in Plate I. Following this, Arcite, as Theseus’s principal squire, makes himself a garland out of either “wodebynde” or “hawethorn” [May tree] branches (lines 1507–08).57 “Jalousye,” in a likeness “wroght” on the wall of Venus’s temple, wears a garland of “yelewe gooldes” (lines 1928–29).58 The statue of Venus is adorned with a London maidens dancing “for garlandes hanged thwart the streets,” deemed one of many youthful “open pastimes” in the thirteenth century. 53 Critics vary about reasons for this suitability, although Maria Katarzyna Greenwood classifies Chaucer’s use of garlands as “un-ironic” and “conventional” in “Garlands of Derision: The Thematic Imagery in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Tudor Theatre: For Laughs? Puzzling Laughter in Plays of the Tudor Age / Tudor théâtre: pour rire? Rires et problèms dans le thèâtre des Tudor, Centre d’ Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Bern, 2002), pp. 21–39, esp. 22. 54 Brewer, in the “Ideal of Feminine Beauty,” mentions this garland as the only feature of Chaucer’s depiction of Emyle normally included in a conventional description of a heroine in the mode of Geoffrey de Vinsauf (p. 259). He comments that Chaucer “almost entirely omits the description of the heroine” (p. 265), but that “Yclothed was she fresh, for to devyse” (line 1048), and “fressher than the May with floures newe” (line 1037) were lines more pleasing than would be a depiction of her dress that might not be “particularly precise” (266). 55 Subtil is defined by the MED in 2 (b) as “of an act, a craft, etc.: cunning, clever, refined, skilled, of ingenuity, clever, inventive,” and in (c) “cleverly designed, skillfully executed, intricately made, finely wrought, delicate”; Chaucer’s Emilye’s making of a garland is given as an example.   Greenwood, “Garlands of Derision,” p. 24, comments on “subtil,” the “intricate nature of the young girl’s project of making a garland expressive of her hopes for happiness. The word ‘subtil’ … suggesting the personal and aesthetic choices to be made in the dreamily creative mood,” states Greenwood, is also a symbol of a free choice to be made. Later, pp. 28–29, she sees this making as an enactment of “a mere Maytime ritual” but also states that ‘subtil’ “suggests something secretive and even negative about it, of which Emily herself … is only implicitly aware and more or less consciously hides; that this Maytime garland calls for mental maneuvering and spiritual compromise and … pertains to sexual dalliance and therefore to sin,” citing G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (1933; New York, 1961; rpt. 1966), pp. 300–01, 393–95, regarding sermons against May revels and “garlanding for purposes of allurement.” See also Greenwood, “Garlands of Derision,” p. 32, regarding the garland and Emily’s self-love. 56 This line is illustrated in another of Burne-Jones’s previously mentioned drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library collection. 57 Hawthorn is “a badge of promiscuous revels and the night-time license of Maying,” according to Greenwood, “Garlands of Derision,” pp. 33–34, citing Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (n.p., 1923; 1993), pp. 122, 125. 58 The explanatory note in Riverside explains “gooldes” as “Marigolds (St. Mary’s Gold). The yellow here symbolizes jealousy (cf. RR 21772–73).”

Dressing the Warrior  31  fresh and aromatic rose garland (line 1961). And Lygurge, as mentioned earlier, wears “A wrethe of gold,” very large and bejeweled (lines 2145–47). Also, Emetreus, Arcite’s champion, flaunts, before he is among the winners of the tournament, an anticipatory garland of “laurel grene” (lines 2175–76). Emelye, in Dyane’s temple, wears in her “brighte heer” “A coroune of a greene oak cerial” (lines 2289–90).59 Arcite’s body, on his bier, wears the symbol of his tournament victory – “a coroune of laurer grene” (line 2875). The wearing of a laurel wreath symbolically connects the three victors of martial arts in the Knight’s Tale – Theseus, Arcite, and Emetreus. And finally, mourners cast “Gerlandes, hang­ ynge with ful many a flour” upon Arcite’s funeral pyre (line 2937). Conclusion The Knight’s Tale depictions of specific costume details in the accounts of spectacular processions emphasize the epic aspects of this poem, as these costume details are most often distributed between the two champions, Lygurge and Emetreus and their knights on the one hand, and, on the other, upon the deceased tournament victor Arcite and the funerary sacrifices honoring him. Within this distribution, the costumed portraits of Lygurge and Emetreus are by far the most character-revealing of any descriptions in this tale; we read their array, and we know, at the least, the public image theoretically chosen by these king-warriors, although we recognize that their depictions may well have been authorially designed not for characterization, but, rather, for their contribution to the general spectacle. In contrast, while Arcite’s funeral attire and the offerings made in his honor reflect his royal status and repute as well as the generosity of Theseus, they tell nothing of a more personal nature about Arcite. They represent only the accessories of funereal splendor honoring a royal prince and ultimately reflect Theseus’s royal magnificence. Theseus’s magnificence is spread over the entire tale but, by the author’s design, is not specifically manifest in Theseus’s own clothing. And Emelye, never “dressed” for procession, literarily wears, elsewhere, a green gown, constructs a red and white floral garland, and later wears an oaken one. These are all items of dress that befit a romance heroine, but they do not combine to make up the conventional sumptuous attire of such a literary personage – an adored lady, a royal princess, a prize of a tournament, and a bride. Readers of medieval romances find their expectations of costume rhetoric variously rewarded but also thwarted in this tale, while admirers of epic depictions of dress and arms, even given that the conventional arming scene is lacking, may

Woods describes Emelye, garlanded, as a “priestess of Nature,” in “‘My Sweete Foo’,” 284. Early in the tale we see her constructing a garland but not wearing it; the Knightnarrator actually depicts her wearing a garland only in the temple of Diana, where she wears oak leaves which Woods characterizes as being “funereal” (284). He posits that Emelye’s “garland of oak leaves foreshadows the oak grove, cut down to make the funeral pyre (2865–67)” (293), although in this conclusion he disregards the many other kinds of trees used to construct this pyre.

59

32  Chaucer and Array well feel that Chaucer’s narration satisfies all desire for the rhetorical decoration of this text by costume descriptions. Part II: Dressing the Streets of Athens Chaucer limns the scenic drama of two processions in his Knight’s Tale: the festive two-part procession of tournament participants entering Athens and subsequently parading to the tournament site,60 and the later solemn procession to that same location for Arcite’s funeral. Chaucer’s depiction of each procession is studded with material objects which evoke the import of the occasion. The list of objects, in spite of the tale’s ancient Athenian setting, primarily reflects medieval chivalric life – arms, armor, costumes, musical instruments, luxurious fabric, banners, bier, pall, burial clothes, and arms for Arcite, mourning weeds for Palamon, horses, horse trappings, either mourning drapery for the funeral route and/or widespread wearing of mourning weeds. Secondarily, this list gives the nod to ancient Greek funerary practice in mentioning ceremonial vessels, a variety of ceremonial offerings, and the torch to light the funeral pyre. Altogether, we find here an array of objects that reflect the material culture. Of all these items, however, I will discuss only those designated as street decor – the costumes that embellish the entry-tournament procession to the lists, the cloth of gold decorating Athens for the tournament and, in the funeral procession itself, the “blak” spreading over the “maister strete” for the funeral. While Chaucer writes about the expected, those details with which his audience would be familiar, as he depicts these romance processions, he often also describes the unexpected. Alternatively, he depicts the expected in an unexpected manner. Out of this process, Chaucer creates two processions that portray the verisimilitude of late-fourteenth-century processions but which, in their decor, possibly go far beyond the customary arrangements of his day: in describing lavish cloth-of-gold street decor, Chaucer elevates the status of the entry-tournament procession and emphasizes its importance beyond any tournament procession known to him or to his contemporaries. Literarily this elevation is justified. After all, Duke Theseus institutes this tournament to settle major political issues and even royal dynasties. Similarly, the depiction of Arcite’s funeral procession decor most likely anticipates and possibly exceeds contemporary English practice, even for a state funeral. This tale both represents aspects of contemporary practice at the same time as it deviates from them.61 We must note also that Chaucer’s characteristic ambiguity raises some doubts about the details of each procession’s decor.

I refer to this two-part procession as the entry-tournament procession. However, Maurice Keen claims that both tournament and funeral procession in this tale are “drawn from the life,” in “Chaucer and Chivalry Re-Visited,” Armies, Chivalry, and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France: Proceedings of the 1995 Harlaxton

60 61

Dressing the Streets of Athens  33  Historical Context for the Entry-Tournament in Procession Knowledge of the medieval context for the Knight’s Tale illuminates Chaucer’s description of Athens dressed in cloth of gold. This depiction of sumptuousness more closely resembles medieval chronicle accounts of royal entries than accounts of tournament processions. For royal entries, huge expenditures were made for dressing the city and its citizens in finery, with richly robed guildsmen,62 and with banners and also luxurious textiles of various sorts decorating the streets.63 John Stow describes the dress of citizens riding to welcome King Henry III and his queen to London, in 1236. The citizens wore “long garments embrodered about with gold, and silks of diuerse colours, their horses gallantly trapped to the number of 360. euery man bearing a cup of gold or siluer in his hand.”64 In contrast, for tournament processions, as part of an overall scripted tournament fiction (often drawn from Arthurian legends), the arms, armor, cote-armures, banners, accoutrements, and dress of tournament participants and selected ladies provided the only decorative element as they paraded from a gathering point to the tournament site.65 Chronicle accounts of tournament processions mention no fabric hangings or street decor other than banners, costumes or props (see Plate III),66 although tournament sites, with fabric-decorated reviewing stands (see Plate IV),67 appear in medieval illuminations and in civic accounts of expenses.68 Thus, normally in the Middle Ages, it would have been easy to tell the difference in town decor between a royal entry and a tournament procession. In his Knight’s Tale narration, however, Chaucer combines elements of both and blurs Symposium, ed. Matthew Strickland, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 7 (Stamford, 1998), pp. 4, 11. 62 Craft guildsmen “marched in all large processions held in their town,” according to Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, “Craft Guilds in Comparative Perspective: the Northern and Southern Netherlands, a Survey,” Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power, and Representation, ed. Maarten Prak, et al. (Burlington, VT, 2006), pp. 1–31, at 25. Lis and Soly recommend a 1520 depiction by Albert Dürer of guildsmen in the Feast of Assumption procession. 63 Appendix A includes descriptive passages from historical accounts of royal entries. Historical accounts of processions often do not make clear the nature of textiles included in street decor. 64 Stow, Survey, 1:95. 65 Appendix B includes descriptions of processions to tournament sites. See Ruth Huff Cline, “The Influence of Romances on Tournaments of the Middle Ages,” Speculum 20 (1945): 204–11, regarding tournament “imitation of romance,” especially Arthurian, and the use of the term “round table” as early as 1235 and continuing through the fourteenth century; and Léon Gautier’s summary of town decor for twelfth- and thirteenth-century tourneys in Chivalry, trans. D. C. Dunning (New York, 1965), p. 275. 66 BL MS Harl. 4379, fol. 99, in a Dutch edition of Froissart’s Chronicles (1470–75). 67 Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.775, fol. 2v. 68 For example see the illumination in a Lambeth Palace Library ms. of Richard II depicted in a 1394 tournament scene, reproduced in C. J. McKnight, Chivalry: The Path of Love (London, 1994), p. 50.

34  Chaucer and Array the lines between them. In this Tale, some of the noble tournament participants are kings, and, under the rules proclaimed by Theseus, one of the two primary contenders will be the future king of Thebes. Contextually, this is no ordinary tournament where the combatants joust only for personal honor and a prize jewel: in addition to the reward of a kingdom, the victor also receives a queen to grace it. Thus, the occasion is an affair of state, politically important enough to merit extraordinary arrangements. Chaucer tells us that “By ordinance,” Theseus arranges for Athens to be decorated especially for the tournament pitting the forces of Arcite against those of Palamon, a directive that is a Chaucerian addition to his source for the Knight’s Tale, Boccaccio’s Tes.69 However, an earlier passage in Tes. may have suggested such decor: Boccaccio states that before Theseus ever goes to Thebes, he returns victorious to Athens and, in this triumphal and “royal entry,” is greeted by the Athenians celebrating his victories: “Fu la lor terra tutta quanta ornata / di drappi ad oro e d’altri paramenti”70 [“The whole country was adorned with golden tapestries and other decorations”].71 These arrangements in the context of yet another type of important procession – their ruler’s triumphal entry – were made by the Athenians, not by Theseus. In contrast, in the Knight’s Tale, Theseus initiates a comparable dressing of Athens for the tournament in which Palamon and Arcite will compete. By his orders, Athens should be: “thurghout the citee large, / Hanged with clooth of gold, and nat with sarge” (lines 2567–68). A literal reading of this directive yields the impression that all of Athens was draped in very expensive golden cloth, making a most expansive display of Theseus’s magnificence. A survey of research regarding medieval processions72 suggests the customary use of a more limited area of sumptuous display: the traditional parade routes along which rulers, royal visitors, and high priests normally traveled when participating in significant political and religious processions. The primary civic route usually included at least one city gate, passed by the most important buildings of the city, and eventually led to the ruler’s palace (see Fig. 1.2).73 The precise order See Boccaccio, Tes., Book 7, stanza 104ff.; trans. McCoy, p. 186. Book 2, stanza 19, lines 6–7. Robert A. Pratt, “Was Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale Extensively Revised after the Middle of 1390?” PMLA 63 (1948): 726–36, at 733–34 cites Boccaccio’s lines as the source for Chaucer’s Theseus’ street decor of cloth of gold. 71 Nicholson comments on street decor for royal entries, apparently assuming (perhaps incorrectly?) that England had habitually, even before Chaucer wrote the Knight’s Tale, followed this practice of draping streets, or procession routes, with luxurious fabrics: “Theseus’s ‘Ordinaunce’,” pp. 192–213; see 205. 72 Historians have produced a wealth of publications on this topic. In this Chapter I cite a representative sample; selective timelines of English and French processions appear in my appendices A and B. 73 See Wickham’s fig. 9 for London’s primary parade routes, in Early English Stages, p. 60 (sketched in my Fig. 1.2). Also, Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János Bak (Berkeley, CA 1990), p. 96, fig. 6.4, shows the traditional procession route in late sixteenth-century Paris, notes the place of entry 69 70

Dressing the Streets of Athens  35  of persons in these processions was specified by rank and their costumes were prescribed; a list of ceremonial objects and their bearers was given and placed within the procession.74 The same public spaces were adapted and used across the Middle Ages for processions and symbolic purposes, both political and religious, even though the cityscape changed over time and the notable sites may have changed in character.75

where notables were greeted and where pageants were enacted en route, as well as the final two geographical sites, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Palace of Justice, the banquet site. 74 Regarding traditional procession routes, see Coronations, ed. Bak, pp. 52–55, 67, 69, 78–83, 88–113, 242–43. Coronations makes it clear that any ceremonial dressing during the procession is scheduled, with each ceremonial garment named and its significance explained. Where a stop at the cathedral is incorporated in the procession, there is usually another procession that issues from the cathedral, having its own protocols, in which the cathedral’s treasures are paraded as part of a religious ceremony; for a period of time, there is a blending of both groups.   Echoes of such processions appear in medieval fiction, for example: Conrad’s and Liénor’s wedding procession, in Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or Guillaume de Dole, trans. Patricia Terry & Nancy Vine Darling (Philadelphia, PA, 1993), pp. 90–91; as well as in descriptions of Richard II’s coronation procession and the 1366 Pageant of the Lady of the Sun, in William Langland, Piers Plowman: The B Version, ed. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson (London, 1975), Prol. 112–17; see also the A, 2.8–13, and C versions of the portrait of Lady Meed’s costume in The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts together with Richard the Redeless by William Langland, ed. Walter W. Skeat, 2 vols (Oxford, 1886; rpt. 1954). And see Lawrence M. Clopper’s comments on Langland, in “The Engaged Spectator: Langland and Chaucer on Civic Spectacle and the Theatrum,” SAC 22 (2000): 115–39, esp. 116. Chrétien de Troyes, too, provides a description of an entry procession in Yvain vv. 2331 ff. in (Yvain) Le Chevalier au Lion, ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1982); Yvain. Arthurian Romances, trans. W. W. Comfort (London, 1975). William of Palerne, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS, ES 1 (London, 1867; rpt. 1987), lines 5015–16, includes the street decor for a triple wedding procession: “Þe stretis were alle strewed . and stoutli be-honged, / with gode cloþes of gold . of all gay hewes.” This c. 1350–61 romance, based on the c. 1200 Guillaume de Palerne, is discussed by Helen Phillips, “Rites of Passage in French and English Romances,” Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, eds Nicola F. McDonald and W. M. Ormrod (York, 2004), pp. 83–107, esp. 89. For other literary treatments of processions, see n. 85 below. 75 See Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, eds Mayke De Jong and Frans Theuws, with Carine Van Rhijn (Leiden, 2001), pp. 35–43, esp. 38–41, reporting that “the symbolic topography of Constantinople was established in the early medieval period … [and despite some shifts] the pattern of symbolic space remained largely unchanged.” Significant sites are listed.

36  Chaucer and Array

1.2  Pen sketch of the principal procession routes in London (1300–1600), showing the customary stages for pageants, after figure 9 in Glynne Wickham’s Early English Stages 1300 to 1600 (London and New York, 1959; rpt. 1960).

Dressing the Streets of Athens  37  Contextually, “Each kind of procession … had an accepted ‘ritual choreography’ that enacted the status and power relationships of participants.”76 The same kind of “ritual system,”77 although designed for a time later than the Middle Ages, is illustrated in the Printed Book Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library in a chart by John Bowles (1701–79),78 printed for him in London in 1723. This chart depicts the persons, in proper costumes, who should be in a coronation procession as well as their order of presentation, beginning with the herbwomen who sprinkle their herbs along the way, and progressing through all of the social ranks up to the king. For medieval tournaments, the normal choreographed procedure was that knights, singly or in company, should arrive at the designated site and be housed according to their rank, a practice followed by Theseus: “Theseus … inned hem, everich at his degree” (lines 2190–92). Such housing is depicted in René d’Anjou’s treatise (BN MS Fr 2693, fols 54v–55).79 The tournament participants would then be feasted by the host, be entertained and given gifts; the narration of Theseus’s Athenian tournament depicts this same practice (lines 2193–2204). Later, paralleling normal medieval procedure, the Athenian tournament ­participants gather at Kathleen Ashley, “Introduction: The Moving Subjects of Processional Performance,” pp. 7–34, esp. 18, in Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, Ludus: Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 5 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 2001), hereafter referred to as Moving Subjects.   The tradition of such processional choreography is lengthy. For an early record of the order of processional participants, see Averil Cameron, “The Construction of Court Ritual: The Byzantine Book of Ceremonies”, Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, eds David Cannadine and Simon Price (New York, 1992). Costumes for each person or group are frequently specified. The Book of Ceremonies is a tenth-century work compiled by Emperor Constantine VII of Byzantium (with no street-drapery specifications). 77 Louis Marin, “Notes on a Semiotic Approach to Parade, Cortege, and Procession,” Time Out of Time: Essays on the Festival, ed. Allesandro Falassi (Albuquerque, NM, 1987), pp. 220–28, esp. 223, describes all types of parades as “ritual systems.” 78 John Bowles, “The magnificent form usually observed in the procession to the coronations of the kings and queens of England: also the representation of several royal and sacred habits, imperial crowns, scepters, orbs, rings, &c. with which their Majesties are crowned and invested, likewise a draught of St. Edward’s chair, in which the king is crowned, the draughts of the Eaglet, which contains the Holy Oyl, the anointing spoon, the curtana, the two pointed swords, & the ceremony of the Champions Challenge … / collected from … Sandford and other best authorities” (London, 1723), Accession no.: PML 9915. For other such charts and images of processions, from 1500 to the present (but predominantly Victorian), consult the Guildhall’s website, a reference supplied by Lorraine Stock, for which I am most grateful: http://collage. cityoflondon.gov.uk/search.htm. 79 See black and white reproductions of these facing page illustrations of tournament housing in Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (New York, 1989), p. 184. 76

38  Chaucer and Array a designated starting point, in this case, Theseus’s palace, where they learn of the tournament rules, then process to the lists in an order set by protocols: Theseus leads the procession with Palamon and Arcite flanking him; next comes Ypolita and Emelye; “And after that another compaignye / Of oon and oother, after hir degree” (lines 2569–73). By the 1380s, tournaments in London had an established processional route and “ritual choreography.” For example, “So common did the tourneyers’ parade through the streets become that, according to Stow, the route from the Tower to one of the most popular tournament sites at Smithfield acquired the name of Knightriders Street.”80 Smithfield continued to be the site of jousts in the fifteenth century, as depicted in Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.775, fol. 2v (Plate IV), a painting of jousters observed by the judge, Henry VI, and courtiers sit on a platform decorated with textiles.81 The tourneyers’ parades82 were often mentioned in chronicle accounts as part of the tournament pageantry, and costumes are sometimes briefly described. However, these accounts include no street drapery. For example, Froissart mentions only the 1390 London tournament procession route: “The sixty knights were to set out at two o’clock in the afternoon from the Tower of London, with their ladies, and parade through the streets, down Cheapside, to a large square called Smithfield” where they awaited challengers.83 Conversely, for royal entries or other state events, records and chronicles tell us that traditional city-wide routes were dressed up with fabric and tapestry decorations, especially from the 1380s forward, becoming progressively more elaborate in decor in the ­fifteenth century.

As Juliet R. V. Barker notes in The Tournament in England, 1100–1400 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1986), p. 99, citing in n. 60, Stow, Survey, 1: 245; see Stow, Survey, 2: 22 who supplies a second name for this street – “Guilt spurre,” glossed “Giltspur.” Also The Brut, Part 2, ed. F. W. D. Brie, EETS, OS 136 (London, 1908), p. 343, specifies the parade route from the Tower to Smithfield for the 1388 jousts held by Richard II. 81 See this English manuscript (probably 1449–61) at: Pierpont Morgan Library website http://utu.morganlibrary.org/medren/single_image2.cfm?image. Altogether this manuscript has three jousting scenes, fols 2v, 275v, and 277v. Spectators, watching from the public space behind the nobles this Smithfield spectacle, may be seen in fol. 277v 82 See the descriptions of processions to Smithfield, listed in Appendix B, as provided in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, eds Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2002; rpt 2003) pp. 10, and 220–22. Hereafter referred to as Heraldry. 83 Sir John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and The Adjoining Countries, trans Thomas Johnes (London, 1839), 2:477, quoted in Appendix B, concerning the 1390 London tournament procession. 80

Dressing the Streets of Athens  39  Literary Context Augmenting and illustrating the “historical” or chronicle records,84 literary or fictional accounts in the Middle Ages provide additional context for a consideration of the entry-tournament procession and the funeral procession in the Knight’s Tale. However, literary depictions of all kinds of medieval processions vary and disappoint in the amount of descriptive detail provided. Clare Vial analyzes Chaucer’s and Malory’s descriptive techniques in portraying royal and triumphal entries and states that these authors make no attempt to provide a complete or “realistic” account of such entries because they presume a familiarity with great processions to be “common knowledge on the reader’s part,” thus eliminating the need for copious detail. She mentions also Chaucer’s technique of referring to a well-known procession, such as Lucan’s account of Julius Caesar’s triumph mentioned in the Man of Law’s Tale (400–03), thus “sparing the author the trouble of giving a fully-detailed tableau.” Further, she cites the code words “solempn,” and “greet” that function as a kind of shorthand summoning the medieval audience’s memory of large, formal royal entries, an “elliptic” technique used by both Chaucer and Malory. In contrast, according to Vial, the earlier medieval author Chrétien de Troyes dwelt “at leisure on” celebratory processions, but she provides no illustrative romance title or line references to support her evaluation.85 In fact, Chrétien’s Erec et Enide86 offers three processions: an informal convergence of nobles upon King Arthur’s court for the Pentecost feast, Erec’s and Enide’s wedding, and a tournament (lines 1930–2293); a formal royal entry of Erec and Enide into his father King Lac’s country of Further Wales, complete with a stop at the church and a religious procession, followed by a feast at the palace (lines 2329–2406); and, finally, a coronation and procession to the cathedral followed by the traditional palace feast (lines 6856–6946). Most notable in terms of the discussion of street decor is that, for Noting this caveat: writers of medieval chronicles had their own (or their patron’s) priorities for presentation of events and, on occasion, their records may be deemed “fictional” in some respects. 85 Claire Vial, “Images of Kings and Kingship: Chaucer, Malory, and the Representations of Royal Entries,” “Divers Toyes mengled”: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Culture in Honor of André Lascombes, eds Michel Bitot, Roberta Mullini, and Peter Happé (Tours, 1996), pp. 44–54, esp. 47–49. Vial lists Chaucer’s references to various royal entries and celebratory processions: The Knight’s Tale, lines 869–964, 1026–27; Anelida and Arcite, lines 22–45; Man of Law’s Tale, lines 386–411; and Legend of Good Women, F version lines 212–307, G version lines 144–233. On p. 46, she contrasts Chaucer’s treatment of these entries with that of Thomas Malory, referencing: Arthur’s victorious return to London, p. 143 (lines 39–44); Palomides’ victorious welcome in the Red City, p. 438 (lines 18–24); and Guinevere’s return to London, pp. 693–94 (line 37, and line 8), as they appear in Thomas Malory, Malory Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver (Oxford, 1977). 86 Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, Arthurian Romances, trans. W. W. Comfort (New York, 1975), pp. 1–90; OF text and trans. Erec and Enide, ed. and trans. Carroll. 84

40  Chaucer and Array Erec and Enide’s formal royal entry (line 2329ff.),87 his father prepares to welcome them with streets “draped with hangings and silken cloths.”88 Reading Chaucer’s Processions Chaucer’s practice of counting on his contemporary audience to supply details from their own experience deprives his modern readers of facets of the entry-tournament procession that we might need to know and certainly would relish. However, recognizing this writing strategy does lend support to the idea that in reading “thurghout the cites large, / Hanged with clooth of gold … (lines 2567–68), or in hearing these lines from the Knight’s Tale, his contemporaries, knowing current processional practice, would picture only Athens’ usual processional route hung with cloth of gold. This scaled-down plan for street decor still represents a sumptuous display, with a cost usually borne by the organizer of the event.89 Modern readers of the Knight’s Tale might assume, not necessarily correctly, that, of course, as the organizer of this tournament, Theseus would both receive the praise for the street decor and pay for the pleasure. After all, he pays for building the lists, as the Knight-narrator points out, believing that he would be negligent if he omitted “tellen the dispence of Theseus, that gooth so bisily / To maken up the lystes roially” (lines 1881–84).90 Does Theseus also spend liberally in making up the street decor royally? An entire parade route traversing Athens, hung with golden fabric, would constitute a magnificent outlay of funds. The poet is not talking about coarse cloth bunting E. Jane Burns discusses this entry and silken street decor in Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), pp. 34, and 196 n. 41, the welcoming street decor for the king’s entry in Chrétien’s Yvain vv. 2342–46. 88 Another literary example of street drapery for a welcome procession is mentioned by Sharon Kinoshita in “Almeria Silk and the French Feudal Imaginary,” Medieval Fabrications, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York, 2004), pp. 167 and 242 n. 2, where she describes silks of Almeria that “festoon the streets of Saint-Quentin” to welcome the returning son of the countess of Vermandois, in Le Siège de Barbastre. 89 Sheila Lindenbaum asserts that the organizer bore the general expenses for processions, in “The Smithfield tournament of 1390,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 1–20, esp. 8–9, 15, 19; note her description of control and financial arrangements, 8–9. See Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and its Context, 1270–1350 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1982), pp. 25, 27–28, 32, 34, regarding the following tournament expenses: The “feste of the thirty-one kings” (see my Appendix B), paid for by its patrician organizers, listing, among other costs, expenses for civic decoration and the enclosure of the market place. For the feste de l’espinette at Lille, the front of the loges for the échevins, consuls, governor and bailiff of Lille, etc. was covered in cloth, according to municipal accounts; the loges were rented to these notables. 90 See Alastair Minnis regarding Theseus’s “‘footing the bill’” for the new lists and temples, in “‘I speke of folk in seculer estaat’: Vernacularity and Secularity in the Age of Chaucer,” SAC 27 (2005): 25–58, esp. 55. 87

Dressing the Streets of Athens  41  here but cloth of gold, and, to emphasize this point, he provides the comparison with the much cheaper fabric “sarge”.91 Any way that we look at it, Theseus and his tournament participants would witness a lavish display of wealth as they traveled from palace to the tournament grove along a luminous, glittering processional route, “Hanged with clooth of gold.” Records indicate that cloths of gold functioned as currency that, in practice, could be spent more than once, and which might be exchanged also for the coin of the realm or credit on a bill. Further, accounts of cloth purchases indicate the practice of certain economies achieved even in the display of luxury materials: In 1330, in the year of Queen Philippa’s coronation as Edward III’s queen, of the twelve cloths of gold (marramaz) purchased, three were used in the coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey to cover pulpit and throne, seven were carried over in the inventory to the succeeding year, and two were sold at year’s end.92 Three cloths were reemployed in other ways: the used decorative cloth draperies were dispersed as payments to participants, in lieu of fees, and distributed as alms. The two cloths deemed in excess of need were returned to their suppliers.93 Even if Theseus did bear the expense of lining Athens’ parade route with cloth of gold, this fabric might have already highlighted numerous processions; after its

Serge had long been a metaphor in medieval literature for fabric of poor quality. It was mentioned negatively as a fabric directly contrasting with the finest quality in Chrétien’s Erec et Enide (lines 6667–72) when King Arthur, designated as “puissant and lavish,” gives gifts to 400 newly-made knights: “the mantles he bestowed were not of serge, nor of rabbit-skins, nor of cheap brown fur, but of heavy silk and ermine, of spotted fur and flowered silks, bordered with heavy and stiff gold braid,” in Chrétien’s, Erec et Enide, Arthurian Romances; Erec and Enide, ed. and trans. Carroll, lines 6622–23. “[S]erge reveals meanness in all,” according to a late fifteenth-century Venetian folk poem, collected in a group of anonymous poems (Sanudo, transcriber; quoted in Vittorio Cian’s Del significato dei colori e dei fiori nel Rinascimento italiano [Turin, 1894], p. 36), and trans. by Carole Collier Frick in Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, & Fine Clothing (Baltimore, MD, 2005), p. 173.  Serge/sarge, is glossed in Riverside as “a woolen fabric apparently held in low esteem … used primarily for hangings, covers, etc.” It is a fabric name in use from the Middle Ages to 1900, described as “A loosely woven twilled worsted,” and later the term was combined with the cloth’s places of origin, according to C. Willett Cunnington, Phillis Cunnington, and Charles Beard, A Dictionary of English Costume (London, 1960). Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 1:183–5. This work states that cloths known as serges were a synonym for worsteds and were classed as a “hybrid product” being made up of both “dry, long-stapled worsted warps” plus “greased, short-stapled woolen wefts”; they are classed among the “dry draperies” or draperies sèches, or droge draperies (Flemish), or “light draperies,” and they require no fulling (a fabric finishing process). See 1:190–4 regarding the weaving of woolens versus worsteds. 92 Lisa Monnas, “Silk Cloths,” p. 284. 93 Lisa Monnas, “Textiles for the Coronation of Edward III,” pp. 19–20. 91

42  Chaucer and Array use it would go into storage94 to serve festive occasions yet to come. The records of John of Gaunt provide an example of this type of practice. For the twenty-nine remaining years of John of Gaunt’s life, he celebrated the anniversary of the death in 1369 of his duchess Blanche, in St. Paul’s Cathedral.95 The Duke’s arrangements included a “ceremonial procession, the distribution of alms to the poor and the giving of hospitality.” In 1394, the recorded costs of this celebration included black cloth. However, twenty years earlier in 1374, and more explicitly, the expenditures listed black draperies “brought from the duke’s town house, the Savoy.”96 Presumably, these draperies for the inside of the church were used year after year, and carted back and forth, as were the twenty-four gowns and hoods, also described among the costs of 1374, made up of blanket (white) and bluet, the Duke’s colors, and worn on loan by designated persons, for which costs of both tailoring and cartage to and from the Savoy are given.97 Large expenses for ceremonial trappings, then, might be thought of as not only involving a huge onetime expense, but also as being a cost supporting usage spread across many years. Quite possibly, Chaucer’s contemporary audience, knowing how such things were done, would not have found Athens dressed in cloth of gold, a splendid outlay of cloth, to be quite as conspicuous as do present-day readers who read of this practice for the first time. Modern historians who have researched the subject of medieval processions often take the presence of street drapery for granted but disagree about the date of origin for this practice. Was street drapery common practice for processions in the 1380s when Chaucer was writing the Knight’s Tale? The writers of chronicles do not make this point clear. We cannot know when street drapery was part of a civic celebration but went unmentioned by the chronicler because he deemed it to be unworthy of note or a detail ­everyone would take for granted.98 Later, if circumstances caused street drapery to become noteworthy, then this same author would describe it and perhaps habit Eventually in England, the providing of commercial storage facilities for procession decorations, including both costumes and draperies, was an established practice that most likely began much earlier than the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century records discussed by Mary Erler, in “Palm Sunday Prophets and Processions and Eucharistic Controversy,” RenQ 48.1 (1995), pp. 58–81, esp. 67, 69. Erler also discusses the renting of these decorative resources for a variety of occasions and processions. 95 See Elizabeth B. Edwards, “Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and the Work of Mourning,” Exemplaria 20.4 (2008): 361–84, at 373–74, regarding Blanche’s funeral arrangements and other such funerals. 96 N. B. Lewis, “The anniversary service for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, 12 September 1374,” BJRL 21 (1937): 176–92; esp. 177–79, and n. 24 which cites Dugdale’s History of St. Paul’s, p. 25, mentioning the custom of draping both church and choir in black for funerals of “distinguished Englishmen and foreigners.” Drapery of the street area is not mentioned. 97 Lewis, “The anniversary service,” 21, 187–89, n. 3. 98 John Lydgate’s verses describe Henry VI’s 1432 royal entry and procession through London, in BL Julius B II (dated 1435), fols 89r–100v, and published in Chronicles of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (Oxford, 1905; rpt. Dursley, Gloucestershire, 94

Dressing the Streets of Athens  43  ually include it thereafter.99 Further, we cannot know whether or not Chaucer himself had witnessed processional street drapery before writing this romance sometime in the 1380s. Only one thing is certain – we do know that he read about this practice in his source, Tes. All else is conjecture: it is possible, but not certain, that he was familiar with Chrétien’s Erec et Enide and Yvain, both of which include processional street drapery.100 And it is likely that he heard through the court grapevine a description of the 1380 decoration of Paris for Charles VI’s royal entry. Donald Perret summarizes this Paris entry, mentioning musical performances, fountains running wine, and streets decorated with tapestries as if they were temples [“les rues et les carrefours étaient tendus de tapisseries comme

1977), pp. 96–116. Lydgate depicts the processional route, costumes, pageants, and their sites’ decor but mentions no street drapery. 99 Froissart’s Chronicles offers a case in point. Street drapery is not mentioned by Froissart in his account of the 1380 crowning of Charles VI of France in the Church of Our Lady at Rheims. However, Froissart does mention the “richly decorated” church in which the newly-crowned king sits on “an elevated throne, adorned with cloth of gold” and his newly-knighted knights who occupied “low benches, covered also with the same, at his feet.” He also tells of an outdoor feast at the palace that followed the coronation during which the king sat on a raised dais and was served by nobles whose horses wore draperies of gold brocade in his Chronicles, 1:621. Clearly, dressing the street for a royal procession, if it occurred, was not deemed worthy of mention in this account of a royal coronation in 1380.   Another case of failing to record street drapery may be found in The Brut, where no street drapery is recorded between Part 1, ed. F.W.D. Brie, EETS, OS 131 (London, 1906), p. 179 (for Edward I, 1272) and Part 2, pp. 426, 558 (for Henry V and Kateryne 1421). See my Appendix A for these royal entrees. 100 Regarding the (possible) influence of Chrétien on Chaucer’s work see D. S. Brewer, “Chaucer and Chrétien de Troyes,” Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. B. Rowland (London, 1974), pp. 255–59; Mary Hamel, “The Franklin’s Tale and Chrétien de Troyes,” ChauR 17 (1983): 316–31; and P. J. Frankis, “Chaucer’s ‘Vavasour’ and Chrétien de Troyes,” N&Q 15 (1968): 46–47.   Roy J. Pearcy does not posit that Chaucer, in his portrait of the Franklin, is influenced by Chrétien’s depictions of vavasours, but rather that he makes use of the literary tradition of vavasours as it had evolved through time, in “Chaucer’s Franklin and the Literary Vavasour,” ChauR 8 (1973), pp. 33–59. Regarding “vavasor,” see also Sandra Hindman, Sealed in Parchment: Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrètien de Troyes (Chicago, 1994), pp. 54–55, 77–78, and figs 27, 38.

44  Chaucer and Array des temples”].101 Further, Chaucer may have read chronicle accounts or heard of street drapery that decorated earlier English processions.102 Beyond these conjectured possibilities of Chaucer’s knowledge of draped street decor, there exists a probable source. Later in this decade, Chaucer surely heard a report of the 1389 entry into Paris of Queen Isabeau of France. Froissart’s description depicts costumes, pageants, both music and musicians, and the fabric draping of pageant structures and litters as well as the bridges and streets along Isabella’s processional route. He provides an effusive depiction of the street of Saint Denis: The whole street of Saint Denis was covered with a canopy of rich camlet and silk cloths, as if they had had the cloths for nothing, or were at Alexandria or Damascus. I, the writer of this account, was present, and astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments could have come; for all the houses on each side [sic] the great street of Saint Denis, as far as the Châtelet, or indeed to the great bridge, were hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histories to the delight of all beholders. Donald Perret, in “The Meaning of the Mystery: From Tableaux to Theatre in the French Royal Entry,” Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, Ludus: Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 5 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 2001), pp. 187– 211, esp. p. 207 n. 12, and citing Bernard Guenée and Françoise LeHoux, Les entrées royales françaises de 1328 à 1515, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 5 (Paris, 1968), p. 56.   Hangings and tapestries as street decor are also mentioned by Gordon Kipling in “Richard II’s ‘Sumptuous Pageants’ and the Idea of the Civic Triumph,” Pageantry in the Shakesperean Theater, ed. David M. Bergeron (Athens, GA, 1985), pp. 83–103, esp. 93 where Kipling quotes John Bromyard’s proposal to his readers that they “prepare themselves for Advent in the same manner that a city prepares itself for a royal adventus:” 101

For with the coming of the king [in Advent] the streets are cleaned and whatever should offend his sight is carried away; the homes are decorated and hung with tapestries and hangings; the citizens are dressed up. Therefore put away sins from the street of the mind: let the house of the mind be adorned and decorated with virtues; and let hangings be hung upon the backs of the poor.



Kipling cites Bromyard, “Summa Praedicantium,” A. 13. 33, and Richard Maidstone, trans. Charles Roger Smith, “Concordia: Facta Inter Regem Riccardium II et Civitatem Londonie, Sacre Theologie Doctorem, Anno Domine 1393, Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Notes,” Diss., Princeton University, 1972, at p. 146.   See also Bernard Guenée, States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, trans. Juliet Vale (Oxford, 1985), p. 27, regarding the 1389 royal entry of Charles VI of France. 102 See the English processions for 1272 and 1308, in Appendix A, as reported in The Brut, Part 1, p. 179; Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford, 1998), p. 15 and n. 31 (hereafter referred to as Enter the King), citing William Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles of Edward I and II, Rolls Series 76, vol. 1 (London, 1882), p. 152; and Alison Weir, Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in England (New York, 2005), pp. 28–33.

Dressing the Streets of Athens  45  According to this report, the bridge of Notre Dame, too, was enhanced with drapery – “covered with a starry canopy, of green and crimson, and the streets were all hung with tapestry as far as the church of Notre-Dame.” Then Froissart tells us that “The great bridge of Paris was hung all its length with green and white sarcenet.”103 In Froissart’s account of Queen Isabeau’s 1389 entry, we have his first description of a series of events and their decor that rivals, perhaps even surpasses, Chaucer’s account of the decor for Theseus’s tournament in Athens. Such a lavish display as that for Isabella was undoubtedly the subject of international discussions, and Froissart makes use of such reportage, stating that “The king of England and his three uncles had received the fullest information of them: for some of his knights had been present, who had reported all that had passed with the utmost fidelity.”104 Following the French Queen Isabeau’s royal entry, street decoration expanded in both quantity and quality in late-fourteenth-century English processions,105 but, given the presently accepted dates of composition, events from 1390 onward would have occurred too late to have influenced Chaucer’s descriptions in his Knight’s Tale. Vincent J. DiMarco summarizes possible dates of composition of this tale and the arguments for each, ranging from 1380 to 1389.106 More important, William E. Coleman discusses Chaucer’s two journeys to Italy in the 1370s, and his likely acquisition of a copy of Boccaccio’s Tes. in 1378, after which he would write his Knight’s Tale.107 If Coleman’s arguments are valid, then Chaucer, writing during the years following 1378, could have drawn on the street decor metioned in Tes.108 However, if the theorized 1389 date for Chaucer’s composition of the Knight’s Tale is accepted, then its entry-tournament possibly also reflects the influence of reports of Queen Isabeau’s entry into Paris.

Froissart details the ensuing religious ceremony, the notables’ palace apartments, and subsequent festive events, Chronicles, 2:398–405. 104 Froissart, Chronicles, 2:477–81, claiming accuracy from these first-hand accounts. 105 For example, Richard II’s lavish London reconciliation entry in 1392 featured street drapery which is described in Richard Maidstone’s Concordia, as presented in Smith’s edition and trans. of “Concordia,” and also in Helen Suggett, “A Letter Describing Richard II’s Reconciliation with the City of London, 1392,” EHR 62 (1947): 209–13, at 213. Maidstone describes the 1392 decorating activities of the citizens of London, as cited in my Appendix A. 106 Explanatory notes for the Knight’s Tale, Riverside, pp. 826–27. 107 William E. Coleman, “The Knight’s Tale,” Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, ed. Robert M. Correale with Mary Hamel (Cambridge, 2005), 2:97–98. 108 See also Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, WI, 1991), p. 169, n. 10, regarding Chaucer’s possible use of the 1390 Smithfield tournament, or earlier tournaments, as a model for the Knight’s Tale tournament. Patterson mentions no procession or street drapery as part of this model. 103

46  Chaucer and Array Further, Chaucer may have put this knowledge to good use elsewhere. Chaucer was clerk of the works and, as such, was responsible for the physical arrangements and facilities of the tournaments at Smithfield in May and October of 1390,109 arrangements which Froissart suggested imitated Queen Isabella’s royal entry: “In imitation of this, the king of England [1390] ordered grand tournaments and feasts to be holden in the city of London.”110 However, while Froissart relates the actual tilts that occurred in England, he describes no decor for street or lists.111 Within the history of decorated processions, there may reside some core of inspiration that manifests itself in Chaucer’s account of the entry-tournament procession in the Knight’s Tale, but we cannot be certain. Perhaps he knew of earlier grand occasions for which streets were draped.112 But there is no doubt that in his description of the entry-tournament procession in the Knight’s Tale,

Chaucer-Life Records, eds Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson (Austin, TX, 1966), pp. 456, 472–76. 110 Despite Froissart’s enthusiasm, Queen Isabeau’s entry was not the first notable procession held on French streets draped with expensive fabric. See Appendix A for processions in 1267, 1271, 1275, and 1313. See Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Nancy Freeman Regaldo, “La grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of His Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313,” City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, eds Barbara Hanawalt and Kay Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 6 (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), pp. 56–86, esp. 57. Also see Brown and Regaldo, “Universitas et communitas: The Parade of the Parisians at the Pentecost Feast of 1313,” Moving Subjects, pp. 117–54, esp. 118, 121, and 126, citing the metrical chronicler of this event, and their n. 30, as well as Les Grandes Chroniques, Viard, ed., note 8:288; and Perret, Moving Subjects, p. 207 n. 12.   For descriptions of additional processions, see Guillaume de Nangis, Gesta Philippi Regis Francorum, Filii Sanctae memoriae Regis Ludovici, ed. P.C.F. Dannou, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France (1840), 20:488–90, 496–97; and Les Grandes chroniques de France, selon que elles soni conserváes en l’Eglise de Saint-Denis en France, ed. Paulin Paris, 6 vols (Paris, 1937), esp. pp. 29–30, 39–40; and Catherine Jean Parsoneault, “The Montpellier Codex: Royal Influence and Musical Taste in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris,” Diss. University of Texas at Austin, 2001, p. 178.   Drapery of streets, after 1390, continued to be noted by Froissart, for he mentions it again in his account of the Duke of Lancaster’s coronation events when he is crowned king of England, 13 October 1399 (Chronicles, 2:698–9), cited in my Appendix A. 111 Froissart, Chronicles, 2:477–81. See also his account of the tournament of St. Inglevere in my Appendix B. 112 See Appendix A for the procession of 1236. See Smith (translator of Maidstone’s Concordia), pp. 44–45, citation in his n. 8: Matthew of Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard (Rolls Series, 1872–1883), III: 336–37; and Smith’s trans. of Concordia, and his n. 12.   The earliest example of street drapery I have found occurred in 942; see Albrecht Berger, “Imperial and Ecclesiastical Processions in Constantinople,” Byzantine Constantinople, ed. Nevra Necipoglu (Leiden, 2001), pp. 73–87, esp. 77–79. 109

Dressing the Streets of Athens  47  which includes drapery of cloth of gold113 across the city, he echoes this motif present in Boccaccio. And in Chaucer’s tale, this street decor speaks of Theseus’s magnificence. What emerges from the consideration of historical and literary contexts and Chaucer’s sources regarding street decor is a final need to further clarify our concept of Theseus’s magnificence. We return to the topic of street decor, the extent to which a city might be decorated, and to whom Chaucer’s contemporary readers would have imagined as being responsible when they read lines 2567–68, “thurghout the citee large, / Hanged with clooth of gold, and nat with sarge”? Medieval records, chronicles, and recent historical research concerning processions provide insights concerning Theseus’s literary civic display, and I summarize the possibilities: first, although literary works sometimes give this impression in their descriptive hyperbole, apparently it was not customary in the Middle Ages to decorate entire cities; instead, within cities, the event organizers decorated the customary parade route and areas associated with it. Even so, the amount of cloth of gold needed to ornament a parade route would constitute a huge expense; however, historically speaking, such a purchase could have already highlighted numerous processions and still serve those yet to come. Second, instead of processional expenses being borne by the head of state, it sometimes occurred that city officials, guildsmen, and/or citizens bore or shared the expense of street decor.114 At some historical point,115 it became the custom for these groups to store such decorations, pageant constructions, and props; further, the owner[s] of the storage facility rented stored items to others and thus raised supplemental income. And third, it is possible that Theseus’s ordaining that Athens be decorated in cloth of gold signified no more than that the city’s citizens should suspend, from their windows, balconies, and rooftops, their individually owned tapestries, or silks that were embroidered or interwoven with gold thread. Consequently, in reading the narrator’s depiction of the entry-tournament procession, we may understand that cloth of gold might have been deployed

Nicholson, “Theseus’s ‘Ordinaunce’,” p. 205, compares Boccaccio’s version of Theseus’s royal entry (Tes. Book 2.21) with royal entries in England. He takes for granted that the streets would be decorated with “splendid tapestries,” although we might question when this became customary English practice. And he makes no distinction between the display of family-owned tapestries hung from windows or balconies and having a city, or only a city’s processional route, draped in cloth of gold, as he mentions processions including the Black Prince in 1356 (for which I find no chronicle account listing luxurious drapery of streets; but see Appendix A entry for 1357), Richard II with his new bride in 1396, and others. R. Withington, English Pageantry (Cambridge, MA, 1918; rpt New York, 1963), describes royal entries, pp. 124–32, but mentions no “streats hanged” until he tells, p. 132, of the 1399 procession of the Duke of Lancaster’s crowning as Henry IV; his account of English tournaments (from 1330 to the end of the fourteenth century) includes no fabric hangings, pp. 90–95. 114 See, for example, Appendix A regarding the 1267 procession. 115 At a time before we possess records that attest to this. See n. 94 above. 113

48  Chaucer and Array “throughout” Athens – that is, along the procession route – at no cost to Theseus and at no new cost to Athenians. This practice would attest to the city’s wealth, which would complement the magnificence of Theseus himself and his reign.

Reading the Funeral Procession

Regarding the second procession of the Knight’s Tale, Bonnie Effros best describes what Theseus might have accomplished in staging Arcite’s sumptuous funeral procession and ceremony: “The act of interring the dead honored not only the deceased but also those who performed this public rite on their behalf.”116 Like royal entries, tournament processions, as well as coronation processions, medieval funerals were choreographed and arranged by protocols.117 For example, BL Harley 1354 (fols. 10v–13, 37v–39) specifies precise dress for each mourner and the order of their appearance in funeral processions.118 Similarly, Chaucer describes the order and details of the ritual mourning for Arcite, beginning with the citizens of Athens’ grief and the women’s “cracchynge of chekes, rentynge eek of heer” (lines 2833). He announces Theseus’s arrangements for sepulchre and funeral pyre (lines 2853–69), and describes the laying out and dressing of Arcite’s body on the properly draped bier before it is taken into Theseus’s hall for viewing by everyone. He especially mentions the chief mourners: Palamon, who is Arcite’s nearest blood relative, and Emelye, Bonnie Effros, Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and Afterlife in the Merovingian World (University Park, PA, 2002), p. 38. Further, Gloria Fiero claims that the increasingly complicated “funeral and burial iconography that was invented in the last decades of the fourteenth century answered the popular need to assert in visual terms the restoration of significant social and religious structures that had been suspended during the years of highest mortality [from the Black Death],” in “Death Ritual in Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Illumination,” JMH 10 (1984): 271–94, at 291. See also Elizabeth M. Hallam, “Royal Burial and the Cult of Kingship in France and England, 1060–1330,” JMH 8 (1982): 359–80, at 360; R. C. Finucane, “Sacred Corpse, Profane Carrion: Social Ideals and Death Rituals in the later Middle Ages,” Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. Joachim Whaley (New York, 1981), p. 45; Robert Dinn, “Death and Rebirth in Late Medieval Bury St Edmunds,” Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, 1992), p. 153; and Heraldry, pp. 6–7. Note the burial and funeral instructions described in Malcolm Vale’s War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (Athens, GA, 1981), pp. 88–92. 117 Oddly, funeral processions in English and French romances are mostly neglected by Phillips in her discussion of rites of passage. She gives only one paragraph to the description of death rites in “Rites of Passage,” p. 102. 118 I am most grateful to Katherine French for this reference. Also see Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London, 1983), pp. 25–26 regarding processional order for royals and aristocrats in funeral processions; and Ralf E. Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva, 1960), diagrams 1–2 of the funeral processions of Charles VI (1422) and Charles VII (1461). 116

Dressing the Streets of Athens  49  Palamon’s bride and queen that was to be – “The rewefulleste of all the compaignye” (lines 2870–86). Following the depiction of the viewing of the body, Chaucer depicts the order and the choreography of the funeral cortege. Leading the procession are three steeds whose riders bear Arcite’s arms (lines 2887–95), followed by the “nobleste of the Grekes” solemnly bearing the bier on their shoulders (lines 2896–904). Bringing up the rear are the official mourners in the order that protocols require: with “olde Egeus” to the right and Duke Theseus to the left bearing sacrificial offerings, then Palamon “with ful greet compaignye,” and finally “woful Emelye” carrying the torch to light the funeral pyre (lines 2905–12). Chaucer also provides a liberal description of the ritual array sacrificed on Arcite’s funeral pyre.119 Here cloth of gold, precious stones, flower garlands, shields, spears, “vestimentz” taken from the mourners’ own bodies, accompanied by expensive spices, wine, milk, and blood offerings are flung upon the burning pyre as the mounted mourners ritually circle it three times.120 Minus the pagan vessels of honey, milk, blood, and wine, and the cortege’s intended destination of the funeral pyre, the Canterbury pilgrims hearing this tale would have found this choreography similar to any state funeral they might have witnessed or heard about.121 Clearly, in this case, Theseus furnishes the goods from his own stores to make up the royal state of Arcite’s funeral procession, a procession that, like its entry-tournament predecessor, also features cloth of gold, but features it as a point of emphasis rather than as a widespread display. For this event we find a laurel-garlanded Arcite in cloth-of-gold robe and white gloves, borne on the cloth-of-gold-draped bier. This second procession122 wound For depictions of classical Greek and Roman funeral pyres see Simon Price, “From Noble Funerals to Divine Cult: The Consecration of Roman Emperors,” Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, eds David Cannadine and Simon Price (New York, 1992), pp. 56–105, at 93, fig. 15; David H. Wright, The Vatican Vergil: A Masterpiece of Late Antique Art (Berkeley, CA, 1993), pp. 40–43, esp. 41 for the reproduction of fol. 40r of Dido on her funeral pyre; and the seven images of Patroclus’s funeral on the Apulian Red Figure Volute Krater, attributed to the Darius Painter (c. 340 BCE–c. 330 BCE) in the Museo Archeologico, Nazionale (Naples 3254), to be seen at www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/imbrow; Patroclus’s pyre may also be seen at www.ualberta.ca/~kmacfarl/CLASS_221/4.HomerIliadIII.html. 120 A parallel, but less spectacular, set of gifts is featured during the Requiem Mass sung for royals and nobles in the Middle Ages. Known as the “achievements,” the deceased’s helm, sword, shield, and “war-horse” are given up at the Offertory. This was done at the funeral of the Count de Foix, as recorded by Froissart, Chronicles 2:503. See also Finucane, “Sacred Corpse,” p. 48; and Edwards, “Chaucer’s Knight,” pp. 361–84, regarding medieval vs. pagan practices. 121 See Stephen Slater, The Illustrated Book of Heraldry: An International History of Heraldry and its Contemporary Uses (London, 2003), p. 44 for a depiction of lying in state; pp. 40, 45 for state funeral processions. 122 Boccaccio mentions no street decor for Arcite’s funeral procession, Tes. Book 11, Stanzas 35–40; trans. pp. 295–96. 119

50  Chaucer and Array Thurghout the citee by the maister strete [main street], That sprad was al with blak, and wonder hye [amazingly high] Right of the same is the strete ywrye [covered].123 (lines 2902–04)

No fabric is named here; literally, the “maister strete” is “sprad” (echoing “overspradde” of line 2871) only with the color “blak.” “Sprad,” defined by the MED as “to cover,” “drape,” “adorn,” or as “array,” in its verbal form, then, is synonymous with “ywrye” of line 2904, a line that might be understood to state that the street is covered in black, with the additional detail that the black decor extends “wonder hye,” or is, in some manner, spread upwards to unusual heights.124 From this double deployment of somber color, we might assume that Chaucer felt the need to state twice that the street was mournfully decked in black. If we allow ourselves to be influenced by the earlier lines depicting Athens draped in cloth of gold, not serge, we might read the later lines describing the mourning procession route as describing a complementary city image or procession route similarly draped, this time in black, possibly black serge, an often-used fabric for mourning displays.125 The possibility of serge used as drapery is, in fact, suggested by the contrast Chaucer supplies in lines 2567–68 to emphasize the grandeur of the decor for the tournament participants’ entry and procession. If we consider the procession passages as a pair, each set of lines (2567–68 and 2902–04) influences the reading of the other and the details of each passage may illuminate the other. Thus, the specific designation in line 2897 of “maister strete” “Covered” is the gloss provided in Riverside for ywrye. Riverside provides no explanatory notes for lines 2896 through 2918 describing the funeral procession. 124 Nicholson, “Theseus’s ‘Ordinaunce’,” p. 203, mentions “the street in black,” and similarly the mourners in “clothes blake,” but says nothing about how he sorts out the meaning of lines 2002–04. 125 Serge is sometimes mentioned as a fabric used in funeral drapery. Initially it was used only in the home and in church, but as funerals grew progressively more elaborate, the practice of draping, too, expanded: See Clare Gittings, “Urban Funerals in Late Medieval and Reformation England,” Death in Towns, Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven Bassett (Leicester, 1954), pp. 170–83, esp. 176– 77, where she lists the items provided for a 1556 London lord mayor’s “heraldic” funeral, including “the house, church and the street hanged with black and arms … “ [citing H. Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. J. B. Nichols (Camden Soc., xlii, 1847), 111–12]. See also Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, Daily Life in Medieval Times (New York, 1974), p. 266, concerning burghers’ funerals that use black serge to cover the doors of the deceased’s home and drape walls in the death chamber, as well as having both black pall and black-clad mourners in the procession to the church; and David Cressy, “Death and the Social Order: the Funerary Preferences of Elizabethan Gentlemen,” Continuity and Change 5 (1990): 99–119, esp. 106. A 1677 Basel ordinance sought to limit excess expense of display, including covering walls with black cloth, which was called “extravagant,” “dangerous,” and was subject to a fine, according to John Martin Vincent, Costume and Conduct in Laws of Basel, Bern, and Zurich, 1370–1800 (Baltimore, MD, 1935), p. 27. 123

Dressing the Streets of Athens  51  that runs across, “thurghout,” Athens supports the conclusion noted earlier that, for the entry-tournament procession, only the procession route, rather than all of Athens, was draped in cloth of gold. Similarly, when we read the two procession descriptions as a complementary pair, the “serge” of line 2568 suggests that the “blak” spread over the master street of the funeral procession (lines 2902–04) may well be this common fabric dyed black. However, lines 2902–04 may provide an additional problem: the first portion of line 2903, “That sprad was al with blak,” may refer to streets filled with people dressed in black for mourning.126 Costumed people are frequently depicted in medieval chronicles and records as being part of the decoration (or as being the decoration) ornamentating a processional area or route.127 And while black was by no means the only acceptable color for mourning weeds at the time of Chaucer’s composition of the Knight’s Tale, it was in frequent use for this purpose all across England.128 In lines 2902–04 Chaucer is emphatic about the blackness of the mourning procession route. As we see, a variety of readings are possible for the lines129 below:

For royal funerals with officials and “þe Citezins … all in blak,” see Brut, Part 2, p. 449, recounting Henry V’s London funeral reception following his 1422 death; also, p. 591, the account of Rich II’s service, which included 100 torchbearers wearing black.   See Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial (1997), p. 63, regarding the Duchess Blanche’s death anniversaries; also regarding funeral processions see pp. 44–5; etiquette for mourning dress established in the fifteenth century, p. 46; palls of black or other colors (even cloth of gold [1539]), fifteenth century and later, pp. 47–49; colors for mourning weeds from fifteenth century forward, normally black but sometimes livery colors or white, pp. 54–56; funeral gifts, and month’s mind (memorial service a month later) purchases of black cloth, pp. 56, 62.   See also Gittings, “Urban funerals,” pp. 170–83; esp. regarding heraldic funerals instituted in the late fifteenth century in which the duties of heralds are described. Those pages also include the previously mentioned details of a sixteenth-century lord mayor’s funeral as well as the rules for black mourning dress, pp. 176–77. 127 See my Appendix A, descriptions for 1236, 1392, and 1421. Also see Heraldry, pp. 118–19 regarding clothing as decor during royal entries. 128 Chaucer himself, on 10 September 1385, was granted 3½ ells of black cloth for a mourning livery for the king’s mother, Joan, Dowager Princess of Wales. In receiving this allowance, Chaucer was equated with the Kings-of-arms and the King’s Esquires and Sergeants, according to Chaucer-Life Records, p. 103. Allowances of cloth were parceled out, with quantities and qualities determined by rank. Provisions were often specified for a certain number of the poor to be clothed in mourning and to walk together in the mourning procession[s]. See Staniland, “Extravagance or Regal Necessity?,” p. 91, regarding Richard II’s provision for black mourning liveries. 129 I am most grateful to Alan Baragona and Norman Hinton for debating with me the various possibilities of reading lines 2567–68, 2902–04. They assisted me in refining my own argument but are not responsible for my final choices. 126

52  Chaucer and Array And riden forth a paas with sorweful cheere Toward the grove, as ye shul after heere. The nobleste of the Grekes that ther were Upon hir shuldres careden the beere, With slakke paas and eyen rede and wete, Thurghout the citee by the maister strete, That sprad was al with blak, and wonder hye.

(lines 2897–904)

First, and omitting for now the phrase “and wonder hye,” we may read lines 2902– 03 as meaning that the main street was covered in black (drapery?); or second, as signifying that mourners wearing black, such as Palamon wears (lines 2882–84), fill the street. In choosing the second of these possibilities, logic requires that we accept the pause provided by the editorially supplied comma in the middle of line 2903 and attach the phrase “and wonder hye” to the following line (2904) that somehow incorporates the same “blak.” If, then, the first half of line 2903 depicts a crowd of mourners wearing black, it follows that line 2904 may easily signify a street variously decorated in black – with black fabric hangings, or with black banners or pennants, or both. And now picking up the second half of line 2903, such “blak” decor might well be displayed from the rooftops and along the buildings fronting the procession route – “and wonder hye.”130 Conclusion Medieval custom supports reading lines 2567–68 to mean that not the entire city of Athens, but only the procession route running through the city from city gate to palace and on to tournament site would have been decorated with cloth of gold. However, in the 1380s, such dressing of the streets was a feature of royal entries and triumphal victory celebrations, not of tournament processions. Thus in depicting such lavish decor, Chaucer, through his narrator, elevates the status of the tournament procession and emphasizes its importance beyond any tournament procession known to him or to his contemporaries. And the elevation is justified – Duke Theseus organizes this tournament in order to settle major political issues and to determine royal dynasties. Although this elevated street decor may have exceeded the expectations of Chaucer’s contemporary audience, his innovations surely must have also surprised and pleased them. Regarding the mourning procession, it was customary in late-fourteenth-century England for the chief mourners to travel with the deceased’s bier to the church, and the procession would include a number of mourners dressed in a livery of appropriate heraldic colors or in black, depending on the arrangements

This phrase might even signify canopies covering streets or bridges, as mentioned by Froissart, Chronicles 2:398–405, in his account of the 1389 Paris entry of Queen Isabeau of France. See the decor of the Paris bridges mentioned earlier.

130

Dressing the Streets of Athens  53  for such garments previously made by the deceased.131 Elaborate street decor for funeral processions was not customary in Chaucer’s time, so far as I can determine. As mentioned earlier concerning the memorial services for John of Gaunt’s duchess Blanche, black drapery was sometimes deployed inside the church, but not outside in the streets. Records indicate that any funerary street drapery or banners that were displayed show up in accounts pertaining to the elaborate heraldic funerals of the late fifteenth century, and even then the decor is primarily limited to the area surrounding the church. Thus we find that, if indeed Chaucer describes in lines 2902–04 crowds of black-clad mourners processing along the “maister” street where the buildings were also draped in black and/or decorated with black banners, then this depiction most likely anticipated English custom of street decor by, at minimum, more than half a century. In this depiction, he would have exceeded contemporary expectation and underscored the mournful mood of this spectacle. In Chaucer’s elaboration and extension of contemporary mourning practices, he illustrates the measure of grief expressed for the loss of Arcite’s life. He portrays this loss as a tragedy, a death that affects all of the Greek world because it rearranges a royal dynasty and Athens’ political alliances. This treatment of the tale’s events amply illustrates the description of this “genre” as presented in the Monk-narrator’s opening lines in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale: I wol biwaille in manere of tragedie The harm of hem that stoode in heigh degree, And fillen so that ther nas no remedie To brynge hem out of hir adversitee.

(VII, lines 1991–94)

See the will of Edward, Prince of Wales (d. 8 July 1376), and his personal funeral directions in J. Nichols, A Collection of all the Wills … of the Kings and Queens of England (London, 1780; New York, 1969), pp. 66–8; the portrayal of William Marshal’s funeral arrangements, pall, and procession, in Georges Duby, William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1985), esp. pp. 11, 17; and the literary treatment provided in Erec et Enide, Arthurian Romances (lines 6533ff.); Erec and Enide, ed. and trans. Carroll (lines 6482ff.).

131

2 Sartorial Signs in Troilus And Criseyde

S

imilar to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, his Troilus and Criseyde1 lacks lengthy romance costume passages for his major characters. However this omission may have disappointed his contemporary audience’s expectations, his costume signs, metaphors, and allusions in this work comprise a more substantive list than has previously been analyzed. This list includes widow’s weeds with appropriate headdress, armor, weapons, coat armor, two rings, one or two brooches, hoods, shirts, furred cloak, pilgrim’s weeds, a sleeve, and a glove. Further, Chaucer’s methodology in deploying a number of significant costume images and his skill in doing so have been generally overlooked by critics.2 Pregnant with literary as well as contemporary social and moral significance and regardless that they are dispersed throughout the tale rather than being gathered within a typical romance descriptio, these costume images function as sartorial metaphors which highlight the plot structure while they explicate and elucidate characterization. In addition, an assessment of Chaucer’s sartorial images in Troilus and Criseyde offers insight into his poetic technique of employing costume rhetoric.

I am grateful to Gretchen Mieszkowski, Cindy Vitto, and Rebecca Beal for their insightful comments and questions regarding earlier versions of this chapter, one of which by the present title, appeared in ChauR 35.3 (2001), pp. 223–59. An excerpt from this article, entitled “Criseyde’s ‘widewes habit large of samyt broun’.” appears in a collection of articles entitled New Perspectives on Criseyde, eds Cindy Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec (Asheville, NC, 2004), pp. 37–58. 2 In a recent article, however, Andreea Boboc comments that “Chaucer’s transformation of the rigid descriptio (or blazon) into a vehicle for the feminine experience is nothing short of ground-breaking,” in “Criseyde’s Descriptions and the Ethics of Feminine Experience,” ChauR 47.1 (2012): 63–83, at 66. However, I contend that Chaucer does not so much “transform” the blazon as he eliminates it while scattering and/or repositioning some of its pieces elsewhere in the text. 1

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  55  Signature Costumes A signature costume or garment marks each of the major characters at significant points in the plot. Chaucer plays these costume images against each other in a rhetorical technique best described as “interlacing”; consequently, we shall consider each signature costume in conjunction with those of other characters as they intersect. Further, the text invites, even requires, successive comparison and evaluation of each sign in the context of these intersections, as some of the sartorial items reappear in changed circumstances; go from hand to hand, accumulating significance, a significance that is modified in the process. In only a few lines and phrases scattered about, rather than the longer passage we might have expected in descriptio, Chaucer gives his most complete description of Criseyde’s signature costume – she appears dressed in gleaming, “aungelik,” widow’s weeds (I, 101–04, 109, 170, 177, 181). Chaucer provides this image for his audience prior to recounting Troilus’s first sight of her, a vision that, understandably, causes his subsequent surrender to love. Similarly, Chaucer provides the initial description of a costumed Troilus in battle-damaged armor, which Criseyde then sees for the first time from her window. From this first sight of Troilus Criseyde recognizes the man she loves and acknowledges this sudden emotion in her “who yaf me drink” exclamation (II, 624–51). For other characters, Chaucer supplies a synecdochic signature garment or accessory, such as weapons for Ector, coat armor for Diomede, and, most significantly, a hood for the lovers’ go-between, Pandarus. In this romance, weapons, coat armor, and hood each suggest the complete knightly costume of which they are a part at the same time that they function metonymically: the weapons standing for Ector’s prowess, the coat armor for Diomede’s lineage, and the hood for Pandarus’s trickery. Chaucer’s choice of garment images and his placement of them as markers for pivotal events and crucial elements of characterization in this poem comprise a distinctive pattern of costume rhetoric and a deliberate technique of judicious highlighting. In contrast to many elaborate rhetorical descriptions of costume in other romances, Chaucer’s sartorial images in Troilus and Criseyde are spare in diction – both in precision of choice and in number of terms used – as well as in details provided, even though he often expands the meagre images found in his sources. As Sanford Brown Meech states, “Chaucer takes over most of the scanty particulars in the Filostrato about clothing, ornament, or weapons and adds to them always realistically and often with symbolic implications.”3 Andreea Boboc acknowledges Chaucer’s rhetorical technique and describes its ground-breaking impact: it was Chaucer who, almost two centuries before Shakespeare, dissected the blazon, exposed its sundry shortcomings, and turned it from a static instrument Sanford Brown Meech, “Age, Person, and Dress,” Design in Chaucer’s Troilus (Syracuse, NY, 1959), pp. 145–57, at 150. Meech compares the treatment of costume in Chaucer’s poem with that of Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filostrato e il Ninfale Fiesolano, Scrittori d’Italia, no. CLXV (Bari, 1937).

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56  Chaucer and Array of stereotyping feminine beauty into a powerful, dynamic tool for exploring how beauty changes in relationship to experience.4

In giving up descriptio, Chaucer nevertheless deepens the audience’s experience as they comprehend the effect of his briefer descriptive passages. Criseyde’s Widow’s Weeds The audience interested in the semiotics of costume develops two expectations regarding costume rhetoric for a medieval romance heroine: either she will wear colorful and expensive, sometimes even exotic, costumes that will be depicted at length, or, alternatively, while living in penurious circumstances, she will wear garments that are old, drab, threadbare, and/or ragged. Neither of these expectations is satisfied by Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his depiction of Criseyde. Her clothing lacks these attention-getting extremes, and even Chaucer’s frequent allusions to her widow’s weeds have not brought them to the forefront of critical attention. Among other things, this chapter seeks to clarify the significance of Criseyde’s costume within the poem, that is to illuminate the manner in which it illustrates Criseyde’s own “intent.” Further, this chapter delineates the degree to which Criseyde’s dress differs from the usual costumes described within the genre of romance while sartorially illustrating the social customs of late-fourteenth-century England. Chaucer underscores the importance of Criseyde’s costume by centering his first visual image of her – in widow’s weeds – against the backdrop of information pertaining to the Trojan War. And he provides an explication of the war’s three-fold effect upon her as a native citizen of besieged Troy, as a widow, and as the daughter of a traitor to that city (I, 57–154). We never know if she is a widow because of the war, but we do know that she lacks a husband’s protection and that her position in Troy is threatened as a result of her father’s treason against the city and its ruler. Consequently, in fear of the groundswell of ill feeling against her family, Criseyde, a “widewe … and allone” (I, 97), humbly begs Ector’s protection (I, 110–12). The narrator renders her petition more pathetic through a delineation of Criseyde in “widewes habit large of samyt broun” (I, 109). This single-line description encompasses numerous costume signs with rich cultural associations. Although the setting for this poem is ancient Troy, the poet follows customary procedure in medieval literature by dressing his characters in the costumes of his own period.5 In soberness (darkness) of color, those dark Boboc, “Criseyde’s Descriptions,” p. 81. Nevertheless, Chaucer’s late-fourteenth-century costume rhetoric parallels and affirms literary descriptions of mourning practices described in classical literature, for example: in Ovid’s advice to women about choosing appropriate clothing and colors for any occasion, he refers to events that occurred during the Trojan War, writing, “Black agrees with a fair complexion. Black was charming on Briseis; she wore that shade when she was carried off by Agamemnon,” in The Art of Love and Remedies for Love, trans. Jack Shapiro (Hollywood, CA, 1967), bk. 3, p. 72, referring to Agamemnon’s

4 5

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  57  medieval garments of mourning mentioned by both Boccaccio and Chaucer emphasize the universal themes of life, death, and war. In the phrase “widewes habit,” Chaucer’s narrator evokes both the idea of Criseyde’s vulnerability and the visual sign of her personal loss, as expressed in the socially acceptable contemporary dress for widows in England. Criseyde’s “habit”6 was composed of a black veil covering a white veil, white wimple or barbe, and a dark brown

seizure of Briseis from Achilles as a substitute for Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo’s priest Chryses; an alternate translation is provided by J. H. Mozley, for Ovid, The Art of Love, and Other Poems (Cambridge, MA, 1969): “dark grey became Briseis; even when she was carried off was her robe dark grey” (p. 131, for Bk. III, 189–90: “briseida pulla decebant: / Cum rapta est, pulla tum quoque veste fuit.”). Ovid provides no source for Briseis’s black dress (not mentioned in the Iliad) and does not attribute this color to ritual mourning, although she might naturally have been in mourning for her family, slain when Achilles sacked Lyrnessus. Chryseis originally had been awarded to Agamemnon as a prize, but Calchas’s prophecy forced Agamemnon to accept a ransom instead and to return her to her father, as told in Homer, The Iliad, trans. A. T. Murray, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1937, 1934), I.92–456, XIX.282–300.   See also Demeter, in mourning for her daughter Persephone, wearing a blue-black peplos (f., ancient Grecian shawl) and veil, and Thetis, possibly mourning for her son Achilles, in a blue-black, or indigo, veil, in the entry entitled “Costume,” concerned with Aegean mourning practice, in the Encyclopedia of World Art (New York, 1959– 68), 4: 22, 25. Mourning dress is also discussed in Mary Galway Houston, Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine Costume (London, 1931), p. 61; Ancient Greek Dress: A New Illustrated Edition Combining Greek Dress by Ethel Abrahams and Chapters on Greek Dress by Lady Evans, ed. M. Johnson (Chicago, 1964), p. 37.   Significantly, Statius, one of Chaucer’s sources for Troilus and Criseyde, writes of “Inachian women, widowed and bereaved … [leaving Argos] with hair hanging down upon their bosoms and high-girt raiment … ,” whose faces are scored and arms beaten in ritual mourning practice. “First of her stricken sisters, [is] helpless Argia [Criseyde’s mother], queen of the sable-clad company,” in mourning for Polynices, her spouse, in Thebiad, trans. J. H. Mozley (Cambridge, MA, 1955), 2: XII.105–15. In Le Roman de Thèbes (The Story of Thebes), trans. John Smartt Coley, Garland Library of Medieval Literature 44 (New York, 1986), lines 9813, 9845–52, the mourning women of Argos are described as barefooted, with their hair worn loose, but dressed in white. 6 For a picture of such a habit, see Margaret Scott, A Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth & Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1986), illustration #16 of an unnamed widow (c. 1340–50). For other pictures, see Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, gen. eds, A History of Private Life II: Revelations of the Medieval World, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 2: 426; H. W. Macklin, The Brasses of England (London, 1907), p. 131, which lists widows’ brasses; Henry H. Travick, The Craft and Design of Monumental Brasses (London, 1969), pp. 43, 69, and pl. 100, for widows’ brasses; and C. G. R. Birch, “On Certain Brasses at Necton & Great Cressingham,” Norfolk Archaeology, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to the antiquities of the county of Norfolk 12 (1899?): pp. 298–303, at 298.

58  Chaucer and Array or black robe,7 as shown in Bodleian Library MS 331, fol. 528 (see Plate V) . “Large,” the second costume term in the image, “widewes habit large of samyt broun” (I, 109), glossed only as “ample” in Riverside, furnishes the additional information that this robe incorporates a considerable amount of fabric, perhaps even an excess. Large also connotes the expense incurred in the purchase of so much fabric as well as the generosity (genuine or feigned) of Criseyde’s sartorial expression of her loss and grief. In addition, Chaucer’s choice of “samyt” as the fabric of this mourning robe speaks eloquently in terms of setting, economics, and characterization.9 In late-fourteenth-century England, the silk fabric samyt or samite was associated with the production sites of Asia or the Mediterranean area.10 Samite, long known Brown and black are used interchangeably by medieval writers describing mourning weeds and by Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde. Meech, “Age, Person, and Dress,” pp. 146–47, demonstrates that in this regard Chaucer follows his source, Boccaccio. However, “brun” might also mean “shining” when referring to surfaces with a dark metallic sheen. In this regard, see Sarah-Grace Heller, “Light as Glamour: the Luminescent Ideal of Beauty in the Roman de la Rose,” Speculum 76.4 (2001), pp. 934–59.   The term robe may refer to either a single item of clothing or to a complete costume composed of several garments, such as the “unam robam” made up for the Queen that consisted of “2 supertunics, 1 cape, 1 mantle and 1 tunic” according to Kay Staniland, “Clothing and Textiles at the court of Edward III 1342–1352,” Collectanea Londiniensia: Studies in London Archaeology and History Presented to Ralph Merrifield, eds Joanna Bird, Hugh Chapman, and John Clark, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Special Papers 2 (London, 1978), pp. 223–34, at 226.   Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500, eds Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton (London, 1994), includes numerous references to widows’ weeds, citing wills and other records; see esp. pp. 41, 98, 127, 158, 166, 168. 8 A French translation by Pierre de Beauveau of Boccaccio’s Filostrato, dated XV 3/4, Bodleian Library MS Douce 331, fol. 52. See p. 82 and n. 68 below. 9 Giovanni Boccaccio’s description in the Filostrato omits any fabric name as well as other details; Meech, “Age, Person, and Dress,” pp. 146–47, lists Boccaccio’s descriptive phrases: ‘Criseida, quale era in bruna vesta” (I.19), and elsewhere he refers to her “il nero manto” (I.30), “‘l vestimento nero” (I.38).   R. K. Gordon’s translation includes the following depictions of Criseida: “in sad garments,” “arrayed in black,” “clad in black, under a white veil,” “in the black mantle,” “arrayed in black, under a white veil,” in Il Filostrato, The Story of Troilus (Toronto, 1978; rpt 1995), pp. 32–35. Meech, “Age, Person, and Dress,” p. 153, remarks that Boccaccio includes a white veil which is absent in Chaucer. However, such a white veil might be taken for granted by Chaucer’s contemporaries and by costume historians familiar with late-fourteenth-century widow’s weeds. 10 Elizabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland discuss samité production in Textiles and Clothing c.1150-c.1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 4 (London, 1996), pp. 85–86; on 88–89 they also mention Spain and Italy as sources for silks. Marjorie Rowling, in Everyday Life in Medieval Times (London, 1968), pp. 109–10, states that, at least by the eleventh century, “silk weavers from Constantinople 7

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  59  in England by Chaucer’s time through its presence among diplomatic gifts and through mercantile trading, is a “weft-faced compound twill … which exploited the lustrous quality of silk to advantage by creating a smooth, glossy surface of long weft floats.”11 We should note that the narrator carefully limits the luster implied by this fabric name in his characterizing phrase, “Simple of atir” (I, 181). In this manner, he indicates that Criseyde’s samite lacks the silver or gold threads often woven into it, as present in the Romaunt of the Rose depiction of Dame Gladnesse, who dances with her lover Sir Mirthe: And in an overgilt samit Clad she was, by gret delit, Of which hir leef a robe werde – The myrier she in his herte ferde.

(A, 873–76)12

The “overgilt” fabric worn by Gladnesse and Mirthe would not be consonant with the keeping of Criseyde’s estate (I, 130) as a mourning widow; thus Chaucer depicts Criseyde’s dark samite as appropriately lacking such metallic threads. Nevertheless, even underplayed, the fabric name alone denotes silk with a high sheen. For the audience member who notices and knows samyt, the luminous quality of this material furthers the idea of Criseyde expressed in the poet’s initial portrayal of Criseyde’s effect on viewers: in al Troies cite Nas non so fair, forpassynge every wight, So aungelik was hir natif beaute. That lik a thing immortal semed she, As doth an heavenyssh perfit creature, That down were sent in scornynge of nature.

(I, 101–05)

In “aungelik,” “thing immortal,” and “heavenyssh perfit creature,” Chaucer creates the impression of the luminous transcendence embodied by the “so fair” Criseyde, and although her black silk mourning garments testify to the reality of human mortality and mutability, they nevertheless exhibit a sheen associated with celestial beings. For the narrator, Criseyde may be comparable to a lustrous had been established in Cyprus and Greece and were producing exquisite textiles, mainly silk,” and that Sicily was known to have joined in this production by the twelfth century. 11 Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, p. 85. Twill refers to a cloth woven so as to have parallel diagonal lines or ribs which are made by the weft, or threads woven across the loom. 12 Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose (hereafter referred to as Rom.). See also the costumes of Diversion and Joy in Guillaume de Lorris, Le Roman de la Rose (Paris, 1974), lines 820–25, 861–64 (hereafter referred to as RR); Charles Dahlberg, trans., The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (Hanover, NH, 1983), pp. 41–42. La Vielle advises that a woman should dress to attract men by wearing a garment made of fabric decorated with silver threads and small pearls (RR, lines 13559–62; Dahlberg, Romance of the Rose, p. 233), a practice which Criseyde does not follow.

60  Chaucer and Array angel, yet her dark, gleaming widow’s garments plainly mark her as an angel of mourning.13 The narrator almost immediately reiterates this composite image, established in lines I, 101–05 and I, 109, of light and gleaming darkness. In the opening action of Troilus and Criseyde, Criseyde is one of the many Trojans, “Ful wel arayed … / … bothe for the seson and the feste” (I, 167–68), who attend the temple celebration of Pallas.14 Within this setting, Chaucer repeats the image of Criseyde “In widewes habit blak” (I, 170), combines this darkness and her overall luster with the remark that there “Nas nevere … / … under cloude blak so bright a sterre” (I, 174–75), then emphasizes the dark element – the danger of her father’s treason and the Trojan War which hang like a cloud overhead – by repeating the image of Criseyde, alone, “in hir blake wede” (I, 177). Criseyde, a woman of good repute (I, 127–31), “Simple of atir” who “kept hir estat,” is metaphorically the bright star under the black cloud. Troilus sees and falls in love with this lustrous and dark image. As the narrator describes it, “She, this in blak, likynge [was pleasing] to Troilus / Over alle thing” (I, 309–10). In this repetition, the third mention of this brown-black dress since the original brief but potent description of her widow’s weeds, the poet underscores the importance of this costume image and what it signifies: Criseyde’s status as bereaved wife, her prosperous economic status as indicated by the samite and the amplitude of her robe, her state of being alone and vulnerable as well as possibly available for courtship and/or marriage, and the lustrous allure of this feminine image for Troilus. Further, and beyond the social, economic, and sensual implications of this costume, widow’s weeds imply mutability – the instability of Fortune and life. Among the well-dressed participants in Troy’s Temple of Pallas, Criseyde’s somber dress iconographically represents the specter of loss and death that hovers over Troy. Criseyde’s transcendent quality is expressed throughout the poem: “Hire face, lik of Paradys the ymage” (IV, line 864); Troilus’s “lode-sterre” (V, line 332) and “lady bryght” (V, line 465). Yet, Chaucer paints a verbal portrait of Criseyde in terms of light and reflected light or whiteness that contrasts with darkness often expressed through the color terms brown and black. Gail Turley Houston, “‘White by Black: Chaucer’s ‘Effect Contraire’ in Troilus and Criseyde,” Comitatus 15 (1984): 1–9, at 1, comments on this contrast: “[W]hile Criseyde is repeatedly described in terms of whiteness – a characteristic she shares with the ‘bright lady’ Venus, … she is consistently linked with death and its symbolic manifestation in blackness. Observing that ‘of two contrairies is o lore,’ Chaucer uses this pervasive pattern of ‘white by black’ to present a vision of love that includes death, love’s seeming opposite (I, 642, 645).” See also Heller, “Light as Glamour,” on the topic of light and luminescence; Michel Pastoureau, Black: the History of a Color, English language ed. (Princeton, NJ, 2009), regarding the many denotations and connotations of black. 14 The circumstances are reminiscent of the depiction of Beauty and Chastity in RR, lines 8999–9002 and 9033–38; trans. Dahlberg, pp. 163–64: [women] “wear their finery to carols and churches,” where they will be seen and attract lovers whom they can deceive. 13

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  61  The opening event in Book II, in which Pandarus pleads Troilus’s case with Criseyde, again features and emphasizes her mourning garments but does so with a difference. Here, the narrator underscores the idea that they represent her proper decorum as a widow.15 When Pandarus visits Criseyde in her home, he launches quickly into his plea on Troilus’s behalf, a plea couched in costume rhetoric. He entreats Criseyde to remove what is the literal symbol of her widowhood, her “barbe,” and to allow herself to participate in gayer and more physical pleasures than reading: “Do wey youre barbe, and shew youre face bare; / Do wey youre book, rys up, and lat us daunce, / And lat us don to May som observaunce” (II, 110–12). Criseyde’s reply indicates that she is aghast at such advice: “‘I! God forbede!’ quod she. ‘Be ye mad? / Is that a widewes lif, so God you save?’” (II, 113–14). She calls such advice “wylde,” and provides the proper social context for such behavior, saying, “Lat maydens gon to daunce, and yonge wyves” (II, 115–19).16 Clearly Criseyde understands very well the kind of discretion she must practice as a widow, in both dress and conduct, in order to maintain her present and precarious place in society. Her “barbe” or wimple is a garment which signifies prudence; no longer fashionable in late-fourteenth-century England, this garment was worn specifically by nuns, older women, and widows.17 In addition, Regarding widows’ chaste clothing, which should exhibit “honeste,” see BL MS Harl. 2398, fols 36b–39b (I am grateful to Stephen Hayes for this reference); Book of Vices and Virtues, ed. W. Nelson Francis, EETS, OS 217 (London, 1942), pp. 249–51; and Gerald Robert Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (New York, 1961), p. 119. See also Maria K. Greenwood, “Women in Love, or Three Courtly Heroines in Chaucer and Malory: Elaine, Guinevere, and Criseyde,” A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honor of Paule Mertens-Fonck, ed. Juliette Dor (Liège, 1992), pp. 167–77, at 169, 176–77, for a summary of ideas regarding the effect of Criseyde’s widow’s weeds.   Wearing widow’s weeds lent visual support to the maintenance of a widow’s good reputation. See Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Remarriage as an Option for Urban and Rural Widows in Late Medieval England,” Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor, MI, 1993), pp. 141–64, at 158–60, regarding widows operating as femme sole and the importance of good repute; and Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, NJ, 1992), chapter 6, esp. p. 132, concerning femme sole and widows’ rights. 16 For discussion of May dancing and Emelye’s appropriate green clothing and hairstyle, see Lorraine Kochanske Stock, “The Two Mayings in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale: Convention and Invention,” JEGP 85 (1986): 206–21, esp. 208–12, 215. 17 This barbe image and the dialogue concerning it originate with Chaucer. Although the terms barbe and wimple are often treated as synonyms, a barbe is a particular style of wimple. C. Willett Cunnington, Phillis Cunnington, and Charles Beard, A Dictionary of English Costume (London, 1960; 1972), define barbe: “14th to late 16th c. (F.) A long piece of vertically pleated linen encircling the chin and falling to the bosom; worn with a black hood and pendant veil behind. The headdress of widows and mourners. The barbe covered the chin with ladies of high rank; by all other gentlewomen it was worn with the chin exposed.”  The OED states that the barbe is also worn by nuns. Mary Galway Houston, Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries (New 15

62  Chaucer and Array in Pandarus’s speech this barbe stands as synecdoche for her entire mourning costume. Phrased bluntly, his sartorial advice to his niece is: Throw away prudence – be self-indulgent or wanton. This message is so startling to Criseyde that her attention and her curiosity are aroused so that she begs for an explanation, the same explanation that Pandarus expressly came to give her. Given the imperative of the plot and Pandarus’s plan to aid Troilus, his ploy has worked, and in terms of Chaucer’s costume rhetoric, the costume synecdoche of “barbe” again summons the audience’s memory of the dark and fair image that so appealed to Troilus – a vision at once gleaming and darkly overshadowed. When Pandarus repeats his directives to Criseyde, he underscores both images and their essential meanings: I say, ariseth, lat us daunce, And cast youre widewes habit to mischaunce! What list yow thus youreself to disfigure, Sith you is tid thus fair an aventure?

(II, 221–24)

Pandarus indicates that a widow’s habit makes Criseyde unattractive and that it would hinder her in the “aventure” which he still hints might be hers. Here is dramatic irony: Pandarus cannot believe his own rhetoric, which is designed to persuade Criseyde; his later tale of Troilus’s dream of “she [who] me wounded / That stood in blak” (II, 533–34) proves that he knows Troilus finds her altogether enticing. Like Briseis in Ovid’s evocation of her, Criseyde looks “charming” in black.18 Much more interesting, however, is the idea that in lines 221–24 Pandarus speaks not of rejecting a charming costume but rather of Criseyde’s eschewing those habits of widowhood symbolized by this dress, including circumspection, modesty, chastity, faithfulness, and, especially, prudence. Thus, Books I and II delineate Criseyde’s signature costume and establish its significance. Her widow’s weeds designating her mourning are also the sign of her social status and her circumspection; they are the visible mark that she might rightfully claim Ector’s or any knight’s protection. Troilus’s Chivalric Costume In contrast to his emphasis on Criseyde’s clothing, Chaucer provides no costume rhetoric for Troilus in Book I, thus disappointing contemporary expectations of reading a familiar introductory descriptio of the romance hero. Instead, and

York, 1996), p. 117, fig. 216, provides a line drawing of a barbe worn by Alianore de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, in her funeral brass of 1399; see p. 152 for further description as part of the Benedictine habit.  Wimple is a more general term and assumed a variety of forms from as early as 1160–70, according to Eunice Rathbone Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, The Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Literatures and Languages, vol. 8 (Baltimore, MD, 1927), p. 137, in the entry for guimple. 18 As discussed in n. 5 above.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  63  reversing expectations, he initially depicts the knight-lover of this romance through a comparison to a prideful peacock (I, 210) whose feathers are limed (I, 353) and who is subsequently snared by the God of Love (I, 507).19 The vision of Troilus’s brilliant peacock feathers further underscores the dark and gleaming nature of Criseyde’s description; and this peacock image suggests colorful splendor – a possible costume for this Trojan prince that rivaled the feathers of a peacock.20 Chaucer’s omission of any such dress keeps the reader’s or audience’s visual focus upon Criseyde as seen through the eyes of both the narrator and Troilus. The description of Troilus’s signature costume, that of an armored and armed knight, is fully established in the first portion of Book II. Here, instead of presenting Troilus in a traditional arming scene, the narrator presents a portrait of Troilus as a battered but victorious warrior, comparable to the steel-helmed god of battle, Mars (II, 593, 630): His helm tohewen was in twenty places, That by a tyssew heng his bak behynde; His sheeld todasshed was with swerdes and maces, In which men myghte many an arwe fynde That thirled hadde horn and nerf and rynde.

(II, 638–42)21

Again, Chaucer’s costume rhetoric both signals a crucial event in the poem and sets up a costume image as a contributory factor in subsequent events. Criseyde, peering from her window, sees a vibrant Troilus “in his gere” (II, 635), and likens this vision to the consumption of a love potion, exclaiming: “‘Who yaf me drynke?’” (II, 651). Chaucer fleshes out the portrait of Troilus as warrior knight in Pandarus’s description of Troilus’s deeds against the Greeks, couched in selective costume Using lime to facilitate the capture of a bird was common practice in the Middle Ages. The imagery of Troilus as a peacock who is caught, bound, and plucked continues throughout the poem (I, lines 210, 353, 507: II, line 583; III, lines 1358, 1730–35), culminating with a comment upon the forthcoming deaths of Ector and Troilus: “Fortune … / … / Gan pulle awey the fetheres brighte of Troie / Fro day to day, til they ben bare of joie” (V, lines 1541, 1546–47). The net images may also be part of the correlation of Criseyde-Troilus and Venus-Mars imagery and thus allude to the net constructed by Vulcan in which he captured his wife and her lover in Ovid, Metamorphoses I, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA, 1960), IV.pp. 171–89; Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington, 1955), pp. 86–87; Ovid, The Art of Love II, trans. Mozley, pp. 104–07; Ovid, The Art of Love, trans. Shapiro, pp. 59–60. 20 Harriane Mills, “Greek Clothing Regulations: Sacred or Profane?” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 55 (1984): 255–65, at 265 n. 39, indicates that Greek male dress, prior to the fifth century BC, was highly ornamental for the upper classes. The same could be said of the last quarter of the fourteenth-century English fashions. 21 This description is one of two descriptions of Troilus in military dress which Meech, “Age, Person, and Dress,” pp. 150, 155, classifies as Chaucerian additions to the costume imagery in this poem. He cites II, lines 1261–63, 1267, as the second occurrence. 19

64  Chaucer and Array rhetoric: “He was hire [the Greeks’] deth, and sheld and life for us, / That, as that day, ther dorste non withstonde / Whil that he held his blody swerd in honde” (II, 201–03). Literally Troilus’s battlefield prowess causes the Greeks’ death, and, therefore, metaphorically he is a shield for Trojans; his bloody sword provides safety for Troy. Shield and sword, the images of Troilus’s arms, signal his worth as valiant protector. Troilus, Criseyde, and Chivalric Costume In a broader context, this signature costume for Troilus also encompasses Pandarus’s delicate allusion to the mantle of friendship, a garment such as any knight might literally and figuratively wear, but one which takes on weightier meaning when worn or given by a prince.22 When Pandarus finally tells Criseyde that she might have Troilus’s love (II, 316–19) and be his friend, he accentuates his argument with this garment image, which he suggests as an alternative to Criseyde’s customary costume of widow’s weeds: Swych love of frendes regneth al this town; And wre yow in that mantel evere moo, And God so wys be my savacioun, As I have seyd, youre beste is to do so.

(II, 379–82)

Pandarus here advises Criseyde to wrap herself in the “cloak (of amity),”23 place herself under the implied mantle of Troilus’s protection, metaphorically expressing the idea that Troilus’s protection will provide all the safety she will need. In a general sense, by living in the city of Troy, Criseyde is already under Troilus’s protection.24 In telling Criseyde to “cast youre widewes habit to mischaunce” and to “wre yow in that mantel [of amity] evere moo,” Pandarus, who himself wears such a metaphorical “mantel” of Troilus’s friendship, suggests that she change one form of protection for another that is more pleasurable, but also more trustworthy. Both kinds of protection are pictured in garment metaphors: widow’s weeds versus hero’s “mantel,” martial arms, and armor. Her honorable mourning dress It was customary in both the ancient Mediterranean world and in late-fourteenth-century England to make gifts of cloth and clothing. The gift, in the literal sense, of a mantle given from prince to friend would not be unusual; further, it would carry the metaphorical message that the wearer was under the donor’s protection. 23 This phrase is the gloss for “mantel” in Riverside for II, line 380. 24 We know that Pandarus wore the metaphorical mantle of Troilus’s friendship; however, we cannot tell if Pandarus wears such a literal mantle, although it would be appropriate, even ordinary, dress for one in his position of prince’s friend. In any case, when Criseyde prevents his leaving in umbrage in Book II, line 448, “she agayn hym by the lappe kaughte” (Riverside glosses lappe as “fold, hem of [his] clothing”). In this scene, the narrator clothes Pandarus only in this minimal costume rhetoric, but obviously a fold or hem belongs to a full garment. Pandarus’s speech in previous lines (379–80) suggests one possible garment name in “mantel.” 22

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  65  garners pity supplementing Ector’s avowed protection, which, as later events prove, may be deemed less than sufficient, an insufficiency which eventually results in her transfer to the Greek camp. In contrast, the openly avowed protection of Troilus’s arms, in both senses of this term, might have eventually carried her safely, although possibly dishonorably, away from Troy and into exile as his consort, perhaps his wife, but always under the “mantel” of his amity. The subsequent plot hinges upon her failure to choose between the protection represented by these two sets of costume images as well as her decision to wear mourning garments in public and that metaphorical mantle in private. The sight of Troilus in his iconographic costume of arms and armor elicits this decision. For Criseyde, the moment of seeing is the moment of knowing; she will love Troilus, even though she makes her love conditional upon keeping her honor (II, 760–63). This caveat also marks the moment in which she decides against publicly wearing the “mantel” of Troilus’s amity. Pandarus’s Hood Criseyde wishes to keep her honorable public image intact, but Chaucer makes clear through another costume image, a hood – which he associates with Pandarus in the remaining portion of Book II – that the uncle who should be the staunchest supporter of her good name plays games with her reputation and her fate. Chaucer portrays Pandarus’s constant game-playing throughout this book and makes it explicit in Pandarus’s comment to Criseyde: “Loke alwey that ye fynde / Game in myn hood” (II, 1109–10), which Riverside glosses “find me amusing.” Beyond this prosaic interpretation, however, we find a second meaning, quite familiar to a medieval audience, that interprets “game in myn hood” in the sense of perpetuating some hoax, playing some trick on the unwitting or unwary25 – the kind of game that modern readers now understand as “hoodwinking.” From its first mention, the importance of this garment image lies in its representation of the probability that such hoodwinking will eventually undermine Criseyde’s honorable reputation. In writing of “game in myn hood” as it occurred in general usage, Sarah Stanbury Smith states that there is a “connection between the hood and comic violations of a public identity,” and that this image was suitable for “jests of illicit love” and hypocrisy.26 Chaucer designates a hood as Pandarus’s signatory costume image, associating Pandarus and hood images on three occasions in Book II. Pandarus first mentions

Sarah Stanbury Smith, “‘Game in myn hood’: The Traditions of a Comic Proverb,” SIcon 9 (1983): 1–12, esp. n. 4, explicates the many senses of this phrase. See MED “hod” for a proverbial usage. Perhaps the most familiar reference to game-playing, trickery, and a hood is found in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. R. A. Waldron (Evanston, IL, 1970), lines 981–87; see Smith’s comments, “‘Game in myn hood’,” pp. 8–10, on this image. 26 Smith, “‘Game in myn hood’,” pp. 1–2. Thomas W. Ross, Chaucer’s Bawdy (New York, 1972), p. 109, associates the references to hood with sexual intercourse. 25

66  Chaucer and Array this garment in line 954 when he tells Troilus to “don thyn hood,” a hood that has been variously interpreted27 as a literal nightcap, implying that Troilus should go to sleep and leave everything to Pandarus, or as a metaphorical battle helmet suggesting that Troilus should get ready to participate in Pandarus’s next seductive assault against Criseyde’s virtue. However, according to Smith, the idea that two heads in one hood are synonymous with trickery is in keeping with the comic and satiric traditions of medieval literature, proverbs, and manuscript illumination. Her explication of the hood metaphor provides the background from which I suggest that Pandarus’s directive in line 954 alludes to his intention to collude with Troilus in seducing Criseyde, making Troilus a “second head” in this hood or game. Keeping this association of hood and trickery in mind, we may interpret Pandarus’s instruction to Troilus to “don thyn hood” as telling him to get ready because the game he desires is starting. Following this initial usage, Pandarus directs Criseyde to always expect “Game in myn hood” (II, 1110), a phrase she could benignly interpret to mean “amusement,” but which subsequent events reveal as trickery. This latter meaning is underscored in an ironic reversal when “Er he was war, she [Criseyde] took hym by the hood, / And seyde, ‘Ye were caught er that ye wiste’” (II, 1181–82). Literally, she playfully tweaks his hood when Pandarus does not perceive her approach. In a definitive but reversed parallel, this playful tweaking is precisely what has happened when she refused to accept Troilus’s first letter, and Pandarus takes her by surprise. “‘Refuse it naught,’ quod he, and hente hire faste, / And in hire bosom the lettre down he thraste” (II, 1154–55). In this quick maneuver, and making use of the low necklines of late-fourteenth-century dress styles, Pandarus finds a ready receptacle for a letter. The narrative does not explain that Pandarus would have to lift Criseyde’s wimple to gain access to her “bosom,” but a contemporary audience would have needed no such explanation. Rather, this audience would have understood the necessary lifting of the wimple as it offered an additional level of titillation,28 a detail of the action now accessible only through a recognition of fourteenth-century costume construction.29 This lifting of her wimple and thrusting of a letter into Criseyde’s bosom is but one miniature skirmish which might serve as the model move in the larger game played by Pandarus. Later, there is parallel action when Pandarus maneuvers Criseyde into accepting Troilus in her bed, and again she is the one who is caught. See Riverside, pp. 1034–35, Explanatory Note for Book II, line 954. In contrast, Creseida places the letter in her own bosom, in Giovanni Boccaccio, The Filostrato of Giovanni Boccaccio, trans. Nathaniel Edward Griffin, and Arthur Beckwith Mytrick, intro. Nathaniel Edward Griffin (Philadelphia, PA, 1929), Parte secunda, stanza 113 (hereafter referred to as Fil.), and Gordon, trans., p. 53. Similarly, in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, May, of her on volition, hides Damyan’s love letter “inwith hir bosom” (IV, line 1944). 29 A knowledgeable reading of this risqué business adds further support to Gretchen Mieszkowski’s characterization of Criseyde as “not an actor” but rather “the recipient of action,” in “Chaucer’s Much Loved Criseyde,” ChauR 26.2 (1991): 109–32, at 113. 27 28

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  67  Widow’s Weeds, Martial Costume, Hood, and Lappe Thus, Chaucer establishes the poem’s signatory costume images in Books I and II, in Criseyde’s widow’s weeds, Troilus’s martial arms and armor, and Pandarus’s hood. A brief but detailed costume description highlights Criseyde and emphasizes her visible allure in the scene when Troilus sees and instantly loves her. Subsequently, the spectacle of Troilus in Mars-like armor underscores the moment of Criseyde’s falling in love with him. In this manner, costume rhetoric both emphasizes the key events of Books I and II and enhances the portrayal of the title characters. Chaucer keeps the image of Criseyde’s luminous black robe fresh by numerous but brief references to this image and to accessories or details that belong to it. Similarly, through brief references to Troilus’s deeds in arms, Chaucer prepares the way for the full armorial description and supplies repeated reminders afterward. In contrast, Pandarus is never described in terms of a full costume but, characteristically, is most often associated with a hood and the game-playing and trickery metaphorically suggested by this garment. This established pattern continues through the initial scene in Book III in which a subsidiary image is added to the costume rhetoric associated with Pandarus: the “lappe” of garments by which characters are drawn into his game. For example, Pandarus leads Criseyde “by the lappe” (III, 59), presumably a fold of her black robe,30 into the sick room at Deiphebus’s home to have her first face-to-face meeting with Troilus and, later, in the same manner leads Troilus into Criseyde’s bedchamber (III, 742). Within this same design of signatory costumes, following the initial meeting of Troilus and Criseyde, the narrator depicts Troilus “in armes as a knyght” (III, 437–38), then expresses Criseyde’s thoughts concerning Troilus’s promise of protection, couched in the metaphor of a shield: “That wel she felte he was to hire a wal / Of stiel, and sheld from every displesaunce” (III, 479–80). Meanwhile, Troilus offers prayers for the success of Pandarus’s plans for a more intimate meeting with Criseyde, including a prayer to an ominous Mars, “thou with thi blody cope” (III, 724),31 a prayer which adds another detail to the Martian imagery associated with Troilus. This prayer also reminds readers that Pandarus earlier affirmed his best intentions to Criseyde, swearing an oath to Mars “that helmed is of steel!” (II, 593).

Ross, Chaucer’s Bawdy, pp. 128–29, posits a bawdy interpretation for “lappe.” Chaucer possibly acquired this image from the scholia to the Thebiad, according to Barry Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde, Oxford Guides to Chaucer (Oxford, 1992), p. 123. See Catherine Sanok, “Criseyde, Cassandre, and the Thebiad: Women and the Theban Subtext of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” SAC 20 (1998): 41–71, at 66 n. 58, regarding sources for this phrase.  A cope is defined first as a “cloak or mantle” and secondly as an “ecclesiastical outer garment” (MED). Chaucer’s subtle diction in using a term with both secular and religious connotations may acknowledge the place of Mars in the pagan hierarchy of divinities. 30 31

68  Chaucer and Array Reversal of Pattern: Nudity, Chemise, Cloak, Hood, Rings, and Brooch In the consummation scene in Book III, Chaucer reverses his pattern of evoking character through the established signatory garments. In Books I and II he depicts Criseyde, concerned with retaining her honor and clothed in the garments that will elicit and support this honor in the temple, in her own home and in Deiphebus’s house; however, no mention of widow’s weeds or headdress occurs once Criseyde occupies the bedchamber assigned to her by her uncle. Apparently, and at last, Criseyde has done away with garments entirely. Chaucer deviates from Giovanni Boccaccio’s text in this regard. In Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Criseida is dressed when she ushers Troilo into her bedchamber, where both then disrobe; she undresses down to her “last garment,” then removes her chemise (her smock) at Troilo’s request.32 Chaucer’s more reticent treatment of Criseyde’s undressing omits costume rhetoric; we derive evidence of her appearance solely through the gaze or touch of Troilus: Hire armes smale, hire streghte bak and softe, Hire sydes longe, flesshly, smothe, and white He gan to stroke, and good thrift bad ful ofte Hire snowissh throte, hire brestes rounde and lite.

(III, 1247–50)

Criseyde’s nakedness is all the more sensuous for her body’s previous copious swathing in widow’s weeds. The erotic effect of sudden revelation is potent even when Chaucer’s audience knows that characters in medieval romances customarily sleep in the nude. In these lines describing Criseyde’s naked body, there is no mention of “the chemise [that] sometimes serves as a nightshirt for men and women alike.”33 Further, if Franchise, in Le Roman de la Rose, clad only in a white smock, allegorically signifies quaintness, delightfulness, sweetness, and, of

Fil., Parte terza, stanzas 30–32; trans. Gordon, pp. 61–62. As discussed by E. Jane Burns, “Ladies Don’t Wear Braies: Underwear and Outerwear in the French Prose Lancelot,” The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin, TX, 1994), pp. 152–74, at 155.   Burns, “Ladies,” p. 156, states that “when aristocratic women take off the mantel and cotte, they are left most often with the chemise alone,” positing the absence of evidence for any form of braies or drawers for medieval Englishwomen; also, p. 158, “historically, no drawers existed for women in England until the turn of the eighteenth century”; however, evidence of trade in linens indicates that “Italian women wore drawers from the mid-twelfth century,” but, according to literary evidence, medieval Frenchwomen did not. See also Burns’s discussion of literary ladies, each described as “naked in her chemise,” p. 163.   For a picture of Griselda in a chemise, see Scott, Visual History, illustration 387, a reproduction of “La Fleur des histoires,” Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, MS 9232, fol. 444v. 32 33

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  69  course, generosity or openness,34 how much more then does Criseyde’s lack of a smock or chemise send the same sartorial message?35 In a second and corresponding reversal of costume rhetoric, Chaucer clothes Troilus in timid dress. Accustomed to thinking of Troilus in terms of arms, armor, sword, shield, and even as associated with the “blody cope” and the “helm” of Mars, the reader experiences the shock of this reversal in voyeuristically seeing Troilus in his “sherte” (III, 738). This image of modesty contrasts with the eager and apparently nude lover in Boccaccio’s version of this scene. At the same time, as an evocation of déshabillé, his shirt signals vulnerability. In ordinary social circumstances in fourteenth-century England, a nobleman wore undergarments, called chemise (“sherte”) and braies (underpants), under a set of four to six garments known generally as a robe, with a mantle being the topmost garment.36 Instead of depicting this customary ensemble for a noble lover, the narrator describes a Troilus who has prepared for intimacy by disrobing down to his underwear – a “sherte.”37 Souquanie is the term for smock or chemise, in Guillaume de Lorris, RR, lines 1210– 23; Dahlberg, Romance of the Rose, pp. 46–47. In Rom. line 1232, Fraunchise wears a sukkenye, glossed as a “loose frock.” In any case, this garment is worn next to the body. 35 “Exemplary literature for women … prescribed that they dressed modestly,” and the exposure of even “barely-clad bodies” wearing a shift in public circumstances represented rebellion; however, “Canonists and confessional writers wrote that wearing even a see-through garment to bed indicated an unwillingness to engage in sex,” according to John Carmi Parsons, “Violence: The Queen’s Body and the Medieval Body Politic,” unpublished paper, p. 11, presented in the Conference on Violence in Medieval Society, October 1998, sponsored by the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto; a later version is included in’A Great Effusion of Blood’?: Interpreting Medieval Violence, eds. Mark Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk (Toronto, 2004), pp. 241–67. In The Liber Celestis of Bridget of Sweden: The Middle English Version in British Library MS Claudius B i, together with a life of the saint from the same manuscript, ed. Roger Ellis, EETS, OS 291 (London, 1987), p. 14, Book 1, chapter 7, the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches that the serk (chemise) represents a spiritual reminder as a deterrent against giving in to bodily “lustes.” 36 See Burns, “Ladies,” p. 156, regarding braies and shirt. For a description of the garments that make up a robe – including “cotte, surcot, cloche, surcot ouvert, chape and mantel fermé” – Burns, n. 17, cites F. Piponnier, Costume et vie sociale, la cour d’Anjou, XIVe-XVe s (Paris, 1970). For further discussion of the medieval robe and the importance of the mantle, see Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT, 1997), pp. 58–59, 66–69. Shoes and hose would complete the costume of a late-fourteenth-century nobleman. 37 Possibly, with the unnamed braies being understood as the last garment customarily discarded when a man undressed, as discussed by the authors cited in this note.  Regarding braies as a garment protecting modesty, Parsons, “Violence,” notes that, “In the Prose Lancelot and The Knight of the Cart, … knights keep on their shirts and drawers to signify resistance when tricked into bed with women they do not wish to seduce – and the exemplum that praises Isabelle of Navarre’s modesty tells us that 34

70  Chaucer and Array Through this costume rhetoric the narrator underscores the ignominy of Troilus’s position. Troilus is a prince in his underwear, waiting in a “stuwe,”38 being led through a trapdoor; he is a man whom Pandarus castigates for his lack of courage and names “Thow wrecched mouses herte” (III, 736). Burns’s comments concerning Lancelot appropriately describe Troilus’s circumstances: “Stripping him down to underwear alone amounts to stripping him of social rank, making him vulnerable and defenseless” because, even when wearing braies and chemise, such a noble is “socially naked.”39 When, to correct this social nakedness, Pandarus instructs Troilus, “Don this furred cloke upon thy sherte” (III, 738), he evokes the garment image of the mantle that was the established outward sign of the wearer’s identity as a noble, consisting of external sumptuous fabric lined with fur.40 The possible interpretations of this mantle are numerous: that the cloak is simply a gratuitous costume detail; that this cloak is Pandarus’s own, and we have here a reversal of amity imagery with Pandarus covering Troilus; that it is the cloak worn by Troilus to Pandarus’s house and discarded when he disrobed; that the necessity for such a cover-up, in Pandarus’s estimation, serves to emphasize Troilus’s near nudity; that Troilus is trembling in his state of undress and, therefore, needs the cloak for warmth, or for social comfort; and that it is the visible sign of his estate that Pandarus wants Troilus to put back on in order to present a suitable appearance before Criseyde. This final possibility accords with the God of Love’s advice, in Le Roman de la Rose 2135–40,41 that a Lover should dress with elegance.

38

39

40

41

her husband kept on his shirt and hose [which would be attached to his braies] in bed with her” (citing Burns, “Ladies” pp. 152–74, esp. 166; Jill Mann, “Sir Gawain and the Romance Hero,” in Heroes and Heroines in Medieval English Literature: A Festschrift Presented to André Crépin on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. L. Carruthers (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 105–17, esp. 113; D. Elliott, “Dress as Mediator Between Inner and Outer Self: The Pious Matron of the High and Later Middle Ages,” Mediæval Studies 53 [1991]: 279–308, esp. 289). A stewe is “(a) A heated room for a hot-air or steam bath …’ (B) a hot-air or steam bath … ; (c) a small room, closet; also a heated room” (MED). Chaucer’s TC III, lines 601, and 698 are given as the first examples of definition 1 (c). The Riverside note for III, line 601 concurs; however A. C. Spearing, The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives (Cambridge, 1993), p. 122, describes this stewe as “a room with its own fireplace, connected with the closet by a trapdoor where Troilus awaits his opportunity to join” Criseyde. Burns, “Ladies,” p. 162. Burns, p. 160, also writes of Lancelot’s public “humiliation as punishment” in the Prose Lancelot; however, her subsequent discussion and examples make clear that men in underwear are presented in medieval romances as distinctly vulnerable. Further, she states, p. 162, “whether literally stripped bare or close to it, they become defenseless against the seductive tricks of an enchantress like Camille.” According to Goddard, Woman’s Costume, pp. 163–64. Houston, Medieval Costume, figs 192, 194, provides line drawings of such mantles or cloaks, as worn by Edward, the Black Prince, and Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Trans. Dahlberg, Romance of the Rose, p. 60; Rom., lines 2247–54.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  71  As a consequence of the audience’s attention having been drawn first to Troilus’s sherte, that Pandarus supplies Troilus with a cloak goes virtually unnoticed.42 We might, therefore, miss the irony present in a comparison of this cloak and that metaphorical “mantle of amity” mentioned in Book II when Pandarus urged Criseyde to place herself under the protection represented by Troilus’s friendship. The “furred cloke” of Book III may well be a “mantle of amity” in the sense that Troilus wears it to a lovers’ tryst, but it does not constitute the kind of protection Criseyde and Chaucer’s audience for this romance might have envisioned when Pandarus originally evoked that garment image. Further, as the direct opposite of the aggressive, bellicose image of Mars’s blood-stained cope, the furred cloak (III, 738) is a lavish garment covering a “mouses herte.” This diminished Troilus, whom Pandarus leads “by the lappe” (III, 742), waits offstage while his friend awakens Criseyde and continues to persuade her. Pandarus expresses the essence of his persuasions in the now familiar hood metaphor, which he turns against his niece: That for [a woman] to holde in love a man in honde, And hym hire lief and deere herte calle, And maken hym a howve above a calle – … She doth hireself a shame and hym a gyle.

(III, 773–75, 777)

Riverside glosses line 775: “And make him a hood over a cap [i.e. deceive him],” making clear that Pandarus employs the hood and cap image to mean trickery in his efforts to persuade Criseyde that a lady who offers encouragement when there is no hope for the lover engages in feminine manipulation which dishonors her. The peculiar logic of this persuasion is that Criseyde, having come so far, must now go further in her relationship with Troilus or be dishonorable. Thus, in making such an argument, Pandarus, in effect, is “maken [Criseyde] an howve above a calle.” Reminded that she has pledged her love to Troilus (III, 776–84), and distraught over Pandarus’s story of Troilus’s potentially fatal illness resulting from hearing the false story of her love for Horaste, Criseyde responds with a solution that is ready to hand. It is clear from Criseyde’s later exchange of jewelry with Troilus in Book III that she had arrived at Pandarus’s home dressed for her dinner

42

I have located only one critical comment on this furred cloak: Ann M. Taylor, “On Troilus and Criseyde, III, 736–742,” AN&Q 13 (1974): 24–25, at 25, reads this furred cloak as part of Chaucer’s “gathering of words with obvious rodentian associations,” and indicates that it is an obvious covering for one who has a mouse’s heart and is headed for a trap. However, I find Taylor’s analogy to be strained.

72  Chaucer and Array engagement wearing a “blew” ring and an elaborate ruby brooch.43 These colorful jewels would add further luster to her dark widow’s weeds. Now she asks Pandarus to deliver “this blewe ring” (III, 885) to Troilus so that it might “hys herte apese” (III, 887). 44 Pandarus’s reply makes clear his judgment that Criseyde’s blue ring is insufficient: A ryng? … that ryng moste han a stoon … That myghte dede men alyve maken; And swich a ryng trowe I that ye have non.

(III, 890–93)

Pandarus wants nothing less than Criseyde’s reception of Troilus in her bed; she is associated with the ring, Troilus with the “stoon.” However, in this same sartorial thread of jewelry images, he earlier argued that a woman without pity is the same as a gemstone without vertu (II, 344, 346). Ironically, in the later context of the bedchamber, if Criseyde is to demonstrate her “pity” for Troilus as fully as Pandarus intends, then she must give up her virtue of chastity in order to be comparable to a gem with vertu. What Pandarus only implied in his initial jewelry metaphor, he subsequently emphasized through avuncular persuasion: And be ye wis as ye be fair to see, Wel in the ryng than is the ruby set. Ther were nevere two so wel ymet, Whan ye be his al hool as he is youre.

(II, 584–87)

In these lines, the ring most likely metaphorically represents Criseyde, and the ruby Troilus45 because it is the jewel that signifies his identity, the stone set in his signet ring used to seal his first love letter to Criseyde, as Pandarus

43

44

45

I have uncovered no evidence that anyone in the Middle Ages frowned upon the wearing of jewelry by bereaved persons. This contrasts with mourning practices in the Victorian Period, in which only special mourning jewelry was socially acceptable. Helen Bradley provides an example of medieval custom in “Lucia Visconti, Countess of Kent (d. 1424),” Medieval London Widows, eds Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, pp. 77–84, at 82, describing the jewelry, including several gold brooches set with gems, owned by Lucia Visconti, who spent her widowhood at the Minories. This ring is one of Chaucer’s additions to the story, as Meech notes, “Age, Person, and Dress,” p. 150. The Riverside note and references for III, line 885 associate the color blue with constancy. Critics disagree about who is the ring and who the ruby; for example, see S. L. Clark and Julian Wasserman, “The Heart in Troilus and Criseyde: The Eye of the Beast, the Mirror of the Mind, the Jewel and its Setting,” ChauR 18 (1984): 316–27, at 321–22, where the authors posit both Criseyde and Troilus, at different times, as the ruby. Also see Margaret Jennings, “Chaucer’s Troilus and the Ruby,” N&Q 221 (1976): 533–37, at 534, where she states that Criseyde is the ruby.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  73  knows46 (II, 1087–88). Although he does not make his meaning explicit, as early as Book II, line 585, Pandarus identifies the only ring he will deem sufficient for Criseyde to bestow upon Troilus – one without a stone,47 a lack that Troilus will remedy in the consummation of their love. The jewelry images presented in the consummation scene of Book III make manifest what was implied in the earlier gem imagery of Pandarus’s speeches in Book II, as Troilus and Criseyde pleying entrechaungeden hire rynges, of which I kan nought tellen no scripture; But wel I woot, a broche, gold and asure,48 In which a ruby set was lik a herte, Criseyde hym yaf.

(III, 1368–72)

Jennings, “Chaucer’s Troilus,” pp. 534–37, lists numerous lapidary-specified benefits of possessing a ruby; it gives “grace, favor, and joy,” “vanquishes maladies and comforts the body,” “soothes the mind and acts as a talisman against further illness and trouble,” bestows “love between men and God and between man and woman,” protects “against snakebite,” cures both men and beasts of illnesses, can put out a fire, “will give peace to his eyes and comfort to his body,” gives its possessor “lordeshippe” and the “worschope & honour” of other men, generates joy in others at the owner’s coming, prevents being “vanquished in battle,” produces a “forgetfulness of all … wrongs,” provides “blisse” above all “boundes,” and gives protection “from poisons and enchantments.” Jennings’s explication metaphorically equates Criseyde with the ruby that should be set within the ring that is Troilus’s embrace; thus she credits Criseyde with bestowal and later withdrawal of a ruby’s benefits to Troilus. This argument fails to consider that, literally, both lovers possess rubies before III, and, therefore, both should have been the recipient of these benefits. The further events of this poem illustrate the deficient efficacy of the ruby’s vertu in either the metaphorical or the literal sense.   For an overview of lapidaries featuring the ruby and its powers, see Joan Evans and Mary E. Serjeantson, English Medieval Lapidaries, EETS, OS 190 (London, 1933). 47 Ross, Chaucer’s Bawdy, pp. 103–04, 164, 195–98, and 211–12, equates the ring with Criseyde’s vulva, and the ruby, a stone, with Troilus’s testicles. Regarding the connection between “stones, jewels, and the Latin definition of masculinity itself, virtus,” see Lorraine Kochanske Stock, “‘Arms and the (Wo)man’ in Medieval Romance: The Gendered Arming of Female Warriors in the Roman d’Eneas and Heldris’s Roman de Silence,” Arthuriana 5.4 (Winter 1995): 56–83, at 75 and n. 50. 48 A continuation of color imagery of blue and red, asur might mean either “the blue stone lapis lazuli” or “enamel made of powdered lapis lazuli” (MED).   See Penelope Doob, “Chaucer’s ‘Corones Tweyne’ and the Lapidaries,” ChauR 7 (1972): 85–96, esp. 89, 95–96, regarding the jewel references in II, lines 1732–38, that combine the colors red and blue with significations appropriate to Criseyde and Troilus; and James H. Morey, “Chaucer, the ‘Corones Tweyne,’ and the Eve of Saint Agnes,” Traditio 62 (2007): 119–33, who posits an entirely different significance for this phrase. 46

74  Chaucer and Array Appropriately, the narrator cannot tell of any inscription as there is no indication that either ring was specifically made or inscribed as a lover’s gift for this occasion. However, in line 1368, we might understand that Criseyde does, after all, give Troilus the ring with the blue stone signifying constancy, and he gives her a ring, possibly his signet ring49 set with the ruby, the stone with which Troilus is associated throughout the poem.50 Nevertheless, we cannot be certain that Troilus gives Criseyde his signet ring in line III, 1368; but if he does, then besides signifying Troilus’s passion,51 it symbolically represents a gift to Criseyde of his very identity. Supporting this interpretation are the complementary ideas that the peacock Troilus of the early portion of Book I has disappeared and that his autonomy is subsumed in his passion as a devoted lover, subject to Pandarus’s arrangements and to Criseyde’s will. Chaucer specifies the detail of a ruby ring as part of the image of Troilus’s seal (II, line 1087). Boccaccio’s less definitive version says that after writing a letter to Criseida, Troilus “folded it properly, and on his cheeks all wet with tears bathed the gem and afterwards sealed it and put it in Pandarus’s hand . . .” (Fil., Parte seconda, stanza 107; trans. Gordon, p. 52). Boccaccio’s “La gemma,” the “gem,” could refer to a number of different types of seals: a cylinder seal, an engraved gem, or a signet ring, while Chaucer specifies a ruby signet ring, possibly setting up the significance of the later ring exchange between the two lovers.   Louis Gernet, The Anthropology of Ancient Greece, trans. J. Hamilton, S. J. and B. Nagy (1968; Baltimore, MD, 1981), p. 86, writing of rings that are seals mentioned in classical literature, states that “the seal is directly linked to the most ancient kind of money, since it preceded the striking of coins. The seal is an attestation – more precisely, a mark of ownership – and on this basis it is endowed with a primitive magical power.” As a symbol of royal power, sometimes the means of gaining power, and as a primary means of identification, from the Mycenean period onward, a ruler took his signet ring with him into the grave.   Regarding the history of seals and signet rings, see Brigitte Bedos Rezak, “Medieval Seals and the Structure of Chivalric Society,” The Study of Chivalry: Resources and Approaches, eds Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler (Kalamazoo, MI, 1988), pp. 313–72, at 317–18. 50 We may note, also, that the fifteenth-century author Robert Henryson clearly identified the ring which the leprous Crisseid still possessed with the signet ring of Troilus: “This royall ring, set with this ruby reid / Quhilk Troilus in drowry” gave to Cresseid, in The Testament of Crisseid, The Story of Troilus, ed. R. K. Gordon (Toronto, 1978), p. 366. 51 Meech, “Age, Person, and Dress,” p. 154, states that this ruby signifies “passionate love.” Of the ruby, Albertus Magnus writes, “‘the burning light of Mars and of the Sun, like Ruby and carbuncle, … [is] superior to other stones in virtue as the Sun is superior to other planets in splendour’,” as quoted by Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance particularly in England (Oxford, 1922), p. 85.   See Ronald W. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery: with a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum ([London], 1992), pp. 29–30, regarding the ruby’s name, origin, geographical location, price, and popularity in the late fourteenth century; he reports, p. 97, that Marbodus “assigns no occult qualities to the ruby – which he calls carbuncle – though he salutes it as the finest of all stones that have burning fires.” 49

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  75  The brooch (III, 1370–71), introduced here as a new and more intricate jewelry image, is clearly a piece already in Criseyde’s possession which, in the customary fashion of romance characters, she bestows as a lover’s gift.52 Chaucer’s portrayal of the brooch’s design, “gold and asure, / In which a ruby set was lik an herte” (III, 1370–71), repeats and combines the symbolic colors present in the previous jewelry images of red and blue, signifying passion and constancy. The phrase “lik a herte” might be variously interpreted to mean the shape of the ruby, the manner in which the ruby is set into the brooch, or the shape of the brooch.53 The ruby itself may or may not be heart-shaped, but it is “set” into the brooch like a heart, as if within a ribcage. Here a ruby associated with Criseyde, literally enclosed in gold and azure, symbolically represents Criseyde’s giving of her heart to Troilus enacted in the physical consummation that both Troilus and Pandarus had sought. Further, this brooch shares both background with, and a number of artistic properties of, the brooch of Thebes as described in Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars (IV, 245–60): The broche of Thebes was of such a kynde, So ful of rubies and of stones of Ynde54 That every wight, that sette on hit an ye, He wende anon to worthe out of his mynde; So sore the beaute wolde his herte bynde. Til he hit had, him thoghte he moste dye; And whan that hit was his, then shulde he drye Such woo for drede, ay while that he hit hadde,

Neither brooch nor rings are given as gifts during the lovers’ first night together in Boccaccio’s Fil. 53 A fifteenth-century brooch, described as “Fishpool heart-shaped brooch,” with the heart measuring 4 cm., may be seen in the British Museum. John Leyerle, “The Heart and the Chain,” Chaucer’s Troilus: Essays in Criticism, ed. Stephen A. Barney (Hamden, CT, 1980), pp. 181–210, at 209, discusses the late-fourteenth-century penchant for heart-shaped pins. 54 Any analysis of color symbolism and significance of stones, such as that mentioned in n. 46 above, must consider that “Stones of Ynde” might mean a margarite or pearl from Ynde (much of southern Asia); the MED gives “Chaucer Mars 246” as an example for this definition. However, the MED provides definitions suggesting that the phrase might refer to any stone from this area, or to any stone of “the color indigo (varying in shade from sky blue to a deep purplish blue).” Lydgate’s Troy Book, Part II, Book III, ed. Henry Bergen, EETS, ES 106 (London, 1908), p. 545, glossing line 2504, defines “stonys ynde” as “of India,” but also interprets “Ynde” as “blue, said of sapphires” or the “field of a banner.”   See William R. Askins, “A Camp Wedding: The Cultural Context of Chaucer’s Brooch of Thebes,” Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative, ed. Laura L. Howes, Tennessee Studies in Literature 43 (Knoxville, TN, 2007), pp. 27–41, who posits that the stones of Ynde in this poem are rubies. See his pp. 38–39 regarding the possibility that the rubies in this brooch reflects John of Gaunt’s known gifts to his daughter Elizabeth and others. 52

76  Chaucer and Array That wel nygh for the fere he shulde madde. And whan hit was fro his possessioun, Then had he double wo and passioun For he so feir a tresor had forgo; But yet this broche as in conclusioun Was not the cause of his confusioun, But he that wroghte hit [Vulcan] enfortuned hit so That every wight that had hit shulde have wo; And therfore in the worcher was the vice, And in the coveour that was so nyce.

(IV, 245–62)

The particular vertu crafted into this brooch – that it will bring misfortune to all who covet it – makes it dangerous.55 Having anachronistically read a “romaunce” of Thebes, depicting her own family’s history (II, 100), Criseyde should know the power of such a piece of jewelry. Just as Troilus’s ruby signet ring proclaims his identity, the brooch that Criseyde gives to Troilus could epitomize her lineage,56 her name, her self, but the narrator does not say so. Perhaps he does not need to because, as Carolyn Dinshaw comments, for his medieval audience, Thebes and Criseyde’s Argive family “were associated … with an unending cycle of violence and familial transgression.” 57 It is noteworthy that jewelry figured prominently in this violent narrative. In any case, the only certainties are that Troilus accepts this brooch as representing Criseyde’s love, and that anyone cognizant of the danger intrinsic to accepting Argive jewelry, or aware of the affinities between the history of Harmonia’s necklace and the brooch analogy employed in Mars,58 would

Gernet, Anthropology, pp. 81–92 and 159–66, describes a series of sacred objects, mentioned in classical literature, which are “endowed with a mysterious power” and which exert “an ominous influence.” Often, these objects are arms and armor, clothing, or jewelry, and are given as wedding gifts, which demands that they be passed down according to certain rules of inheritance, p. 84. The gifts frequently represent a certain royal status and serve as valid testimony to the rights of inheritance, p. 86. He posits that an exchange of gifts between two parties represents a contractual arrangement, and incurs a different kind of danger, as each gift possesses a “pernicious potential,” especially if the gift is from an adversary; “it is because the gift transfers some part of the donor’s being that the gift is efficacious and can be dangerous,” p. 160. 56 See David Anderson, “Theban History in Chaucer’s Troilus,” SAC 4 (1982): 109–33, depicting Criseyde’s Argive lineage, pp. 126–29, based on Chaucer’s allusions to it. 57 Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison, WI, 1989), pp. 52, 216 n. 40. 58 A comparison reveals that Chaucer’s brooch in Mars differs in both terminology and physical details from its inspiration, the monile given by Vulcan to Harmonia as described by Statius. See Appendix C for that text.   It is likely that Chaucer, cognizant of the Middle English term neck lace or coler as accurate translations of Latin monile, made no such error in translation as critics theorize (see below). Instead of the monile described by Statius (that ornamental collar suitable for wear by women, boys, and assorted animals, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary), Chaucer probably chose to substitute the sartorial image of a brooch in 55

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  77  find in Criseyde’s gift of a similar brooch a foreshadowing of sorrow and discord to come. John V. Fleming describes the implications of such thematic linkage: Chaucer implies a comparison between Eriphyle and Criseyde, who will betray Troilus with a brooch. To my mind the question is not whether these are one and the same jewel but whether they are thematically linked … . Indeed there is textual evidence to suggest that in his poetic imagination Chaucer thought that, for Troilus, Criseyde was herself like the brooch of Thebes. Cf. Troilus’s “double sorwe” in having and losing Criseyde with the “double wo” of possessing and losing the brooch.59

Further, as Neil C. Hultin puts it, “the Brooch of Thebes has long stood for that which has a fatal attraction because of its great beauty.”60 Meanwhile, in their exchange of jewelry, Troilus and Criseyde exchange ring for ring, symbolically fulfilling her prophetic dream of the eagle and their exchange of hearts (II, 925–31). Jewel and heart images embellish and integrate, interlace, the dialogue and action: Troilus is Criseyde’s “deere Herte” and “herte The Complaint of Mars because it was a popular love gift in the late fourteenth century and worn by both men and women. Further, he employs a similar image in Troilus and Criseyde. Regardless of Chaucer’s substitution, such a brooch in both poems might evoke the Vulcan–Venus–Mars and Argos–Thebes associations and history for both Chaucer’s contemporaries and modern critics.   Disregarding the numerous differences in design, Anderson, “Theban History,” at 126–27 (citing Thebiad II, 265–305; IV, 187–213), argues that this brooch in Troilus and Criseyde is the “‘brooch of Thebes’” which Statius refers to as the “‘monile Harmoniæ’” because it was first made for the queen of Thebes. Anderson posits that in Troilus and Criseyde “Chaucer picks up the story of the brooch more or less where Statius left off, suggesting that it would have passed (from Harmonia) eventually to Argia, then to her daughter Criseyde (Troilus III, 1370–71; V, 1040, 1660 ff.).” Anderson apparently thinks, as Rodney Merrill does, in “Chaucer’s Broche of Thebes: The Unity of The Complaint of Mars and The Complaint of Venus,” Literary Monographs 5 (Madison, IN, 1973), p. 191 n. 20, that Chaucer translates the Latin monile as Middle English broche. Both Anderson and Merrill follow Boyd Ashby Wise’s lead in The Influence of Statius upon Chaucer (1911; rpt. New York, 1967), pp. 42–44, also 19, in equating the monile of Harmonia with the brooch of Thebes in Mars. John Norton-Smith, Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1974), pp. 28, 32–34, describes the several significant changes Chaucer makes from the monile (necklace, collar) of Harmonia in the Thebiad to the brooch in Mars, yet still speaks of Chaucer’s “adopting Statius’ description,” p. 32 (my emphasis). Riverside note for Tr. III, lines 1370–72 posits no connection between this brooch and the one in Mars.   See also Melvin Storm, “The Mythological Tradition in Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars,” PQ 57 (1978): 323–35, at n. 3, for interpretations of the basic Mars, Venus, and Vulcan myth as presented in this poem. 59 John V. Fleming, Classical Imitation and Interpretation in Chaucer’s Troilus (Lincoln, NE, 1990), p. 60, citing David Anderson, 112–28, and Mars, 255. 60 Neil C. Hultin, “Anti-Courtly Elements in Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars,” Annuale mediævale 9 (1968), pp. 58–75, at 63.

78  Chaucer and Array myn” (III, 996, 1039), and she is to him “dere herte myn” and “Myn herte swete” (III, 1181, 1278), endearments uttered repeatedly before and following61 their being physically heart against heart. Troilus furthers the metaphoric twinning of jewelry and heart imagery as he reaffirms his love for Criseyde: Were it so that I wiste outrely That I, youre humble servant and youre knyght, Were in youre herte iset so fermely As ye in myn …

(III, 1486–89)

This speech with its “herte iset” evokes the image of Criseyde’s brooch which, bestowed and accepted, represents the lovers’ accord, the consummation of their love. The narrator undercuts the high romance of this accord, however, when he states that Criseyde pins this brooch to Troilus’s shirt. This action reminds the reader that Troilus still wears the shirt mentioned when Pandarus summarily pitched him into Criseyde’s bed and undressed him “al to his bare sherte” (III, 1099). Given previous description, presumably only his furred cloak needed to be removed. When, in the subsequent consummation scene, Criseyde pins the brooch with its “ruby lik a herte,” to Troilus’s shirt, her loving action revives the earlier image of him overcome by his love – his swoon, his initial lack of aggressive lovemaking, in general his fulfillment of Pandarus’s image of “mouses herte.”62 The brooch-pinning emphasizes that while Criseyde, in this scene, sartorially abandons all protection signified by her widow’s weeds – apparently including her chemise – Troilus retains his “sherte.” Prosaically, and pertaining to Criseyde’s complete costume, the lovers’ exchange of jewelry represents a change of accessories for Criseyde. In order to maintain the secrecy expected of courtly lovers and also for the protection of her reputation, she could not openly wear a ring that might be identified as belonging to Troilus. Because she has given up her own blue ring and ruby brooch, it is possible that Criseyde leaves her uncle’s house appearing to wear unrelieved widow’s weeds. 61

62

The endearments escalate; Criseyde speaks most lavishly when she persuades Troilus that she will return to Troy, asks him to trust her, and calls him, “Myn owene hertes sothfast suffisaunce” (IV, line 1640). Clearly, in Book III, while Criseyde may think of Troilus in terms of her dream of the eagle, he behaves in his state of undress more like the peacock he is likened to in Book I – a peacock who has been shorn of his normal feathers; further, he refers to himself or his heart as having been caught, as a bird might be caught, in a net, in III, lines 1355, 1358, 1730–36. Gretchen Mieszkowski, “Revisiting Troilus’s Faint,” Men and Masculinities in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, eds Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, Chaucer Studies 38 (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 43–57, views Troilus’s swoon as evidence of the strength of his love for Criseyde and his thorough emotional captivity, which is in keeping with the suitably masculine display of his devotion as a courtly lover in the late fourteenth century.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  79  Also included among the costume imagery reversals of Book III is the sword mentioned by Pandarus, which appears in a context which gives it a bawdy, rather than a martial connotation. Mieszkowski explicates the likelihood of a bawdy interpretation of Pandarus’s offer of his sword to his niece so that she can cut off his head, made while she is still in bed the morning following the consummation scene (III, 1569–82), commenting that “It seems highly likely that Chaucer chose these words for their potential double meanings.”63 Supporting Mieszkowski’s interpretation is Pandarus’s signature garment sign, the hood (of “game in my hood” significance); thus, any sword image associated with Pandarus is most likely to fall within the parameters of his “game.” Degeneration of Signature Costumes In contrast to the private hesitant Troilus in underwear, Book III concludes with a reversion to Troilus’s public image as second only to Ector in being prepared to do battle with the Greeks, in an image coupling them “in armes dyght” (III, 1773). Such presentations of arms and armor ordinarily convey the idea of valiance, prowess, and courage. However, Book IV encompasses yet another reversal of costume rhetoric, which weakens the usual evocation of arms and armor as depicting martial virtues. Book IV’s brief citing of martial costume images depict arms and armor as ineffectual, vulnerable, and/or impotent within the context of events. However puissant Ector and Troilus might be in battle, fighting “wel armed, brighte, and shene, / With spere in honde and bigge bowes bente” (IV, 39–40), with “arwes, dartes, swerdes, maces … / … And with hire axes [that] out the braynes quelle” (IV, 44, 46), their forces are nevertheless defeated in a battle. Equally ineffective in parliament, Ector tries to keep his earlier promise of protection to Criseyde but he is unable to “shilde” (IV, 188) her from parliament’s decision to send her to the Greeks in exchange for Antenor. In a further weakening of martial imagery, Troilus’s sword becomes the potential weapon for his suicide (IV, 1184–90), signaling his surrender to despair when he thinks the fainting Criseyde is dead. The narrator underplays even this high drama, however, when Criseyde awakens in time to save Troilus from making this fatal move (IV, 1212–15). Concurrent with these martial costume images of ineffectuality, in Book IV the narrator underscores the vulnerability of the lovers through more “sherte” imagery and, in the process, highlights the meaning of this garment metaphor. Initiated in the description of Troilus in Book III, the references to Criseyde (IV, 96), and to both Troilus and Criseyde (IV, 1522) dressed only in their shirts, reaffirm that the shirt is the sign of deprivation of social status, status which is usually signaled by the wearing of seemly clothing which expresses rank. Although Calkas exclaims, “Allas, I ne hadde ibroughte hire in hire sherte!” (IV, 96), glossed in Riverside as “in her nightshirt, without even giving her time to dress,” the fact remains that 63

Mieszkowski, “Chaucer’s Much Loved Criseyde,” pp. 124–25. See also Ross, Chaucer’s Bawdy, “armes,” pp. 56–57.

80  Chaucer and Array Calkas, when he left Troy, did not take his daughter with him. Because clothes are portable wealth in the Middle Ages, Calkas’s words suggest that he does not care about leaving any treasure belonging to himself and Criseyde (clothes and other wealth) behind them in Troy; Criseyde’s later remarks about Calkas’s being covetous of her worldly goods (IV, 1380–89) cast doubts on either his sincerity or hers, and her judgment of her father.64 In the “sherte”-alone image,65 however, the most important issue is social standing, not possession of worldly goods. Troilus makes this distinction clear in his statement that he has enough resources to provide for himself and Criseyde in an elopement (IV, 1513–16), as well as kin and friends elsewhere who will accept them honorably even though Troilus will have lost his place as a Trojan prince and Criseyde will be deprived of her own honorable place in Trojan society: “That, though we comen in oure bare sherte, / Us sholde neyther lakken gold ne gere” (IV, 1522–23). In Book IV, both the diminished power represented by the arms imagery read in context and the severing of socio-political bonds symbolized in the repeated “sherte” images signal a general deterioration of Criseyde’s circumstances. She displays her sorrow over the news of her imminent banishment from Troy in a vow of rededication of her widow’s weeds. In an internal monologue she addresses this vow to Troilus although he is not present to hear it: And, Troilus, my clothes everychon Shul blake ben in tokenyng, herte swete, That I am as out of this world agon, That wont was you to setten in quiete; And of myn ordre, ay til deth me mete, The observance evere, in youre absence Shal sorwe ben, compleynt, and abstinence.66

(IV, 778–84)

Criseyde says that she plans to use her wealth to “plukke hym [Calkas] by the sleve” (IV, line 1403), and lead him through his avarice into being deceived so that she can return to Troy. This plucking is a lappe image by another name. 65 The shirt-alone metaphor (signifying loss of social status) does not appear in Boccaccio’s version. 66 This vow echoes those lines spoken by vowesses; see Mary C. Erler, “Three FifteenthCentury Vowesses,” Medieval London Widows, eds Barron and Sutton, pp. 165–83, at 165–68. However, as this collection makes clear, some widows wore mourning dress for the remainder of their lives apparently without making vows.   The corresponding passage in Fil., Parte quarta, stanza 90 (trans. Gordon, p. 81), reads, “‘Now in truth I shall be widowed, since I must needs part from thee, heart of my body; and garments black shall be a true sign of my sufferings.’” Boccaccio’s passage suggests that her mourning for her husband had been pro forma, but that now she will experience the deeper emotions that make her widow’s weeds a true sign of her state. In Chaucer’s version, no such characterization of pro forma mourning is made by Criseyde. 64

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  81  Ironically, in this private promise to live the life of a nun or vowess in terms of dress and abstinence, Criseyde freshens the image of her appearance as it is first described in Troilus and Criseyde, when she is the epitome of the angelic, chaste, and mournful widow. The narrator’s comment further evokes this early image: “Hire face, lik of Paradys the ymage” (IV, 864). Lacking textual evidence to the contrary, and because, under the circumstances, it would have been in her best personal and political interests to do so, we may conclude that by the time she dedicates them to Troilus, she has been wearing widow’s weeds as protective coloration67 throughout the three-plus years of their secret love affair, as depicted in Plate V. As a result, Criseyde’s giving of a second reason for their continued wear, now in honor of a second man, makes the gesture seem a bit shop-worn. Even so, in order to maintain her fiction of chaste widowhood, she would necessarily wear widow’s weeds as she exits the gates of Troy (as illustrated in Plate V). These rededicated garments of mourning in Book IV reaffirm Criseyde’s capacity to forsake one loyalty for another as well as foreshadow her eventual betrayal of Troilus and the death of their love affair. Costume Rhetoric: A Reprise In Book V, through brief allusions, Chaucer provides a reprise of the major costume metaphors described previously, and he adds details which augment these images: the gifts of glove, sleeve, and brooch from Criseyde to Diomede, as well as Criseyde’s revealing new hair style. This costume rhetoric reveals the further disintegration of Troilus’s and Criseyde’s relationship as lovers and as individuals – their personal circumstances that are mirrored in the general context of Troy’s fortunes in the war. In addition, he interlaces these signs with this costume rhetoric associated with Diomede, images which portray him as the antithesis of Troilus as a lover. The narrator provides no full description of Criseyde in Book V, although the generalized statement of Troilus’s memory of seeing Criseyde for the first time (V,

67

Such fidelity in dress would publicly signify chaste widowhood, such as the fatuous Januarie optimistically expects of May when she becomes a widow: For neither after his deeth nor in his lyf Ne wolde he that she were love ne wy, But evere lyve as wydwe in clothes blake, Soul as the turtle that lost hath hire make.

(IV, lines 2077–80)

There is no textual or fourteenth-century cultural evidence to support Sabina Beckman’s argument, in “Color Symbolism in Troilus and Criseyde,” College Language Association Journal 20 (1976): 68–74, at 73, that Criseyde had stopped wearing widow’s weeds at some point and resumes wearing them at this time, and Beckman offers no rationale for her supposition. Further, any widow making the kind of changes in dress habits that Beckman posits would have drawn to herself the kind of negative or curious attention that Criseyde fears throughout the poem.

82  Chaucer and Array 566–67) revives – as if from a distance – the audience’s mental vision of the beautiful widow. Further, Chaucer eschews a prime opportunity for another evocation of Criseyde in mourning dress as she moves beyond the gates of Troy. Such an image is provided by an illumination in Boccaccio’s Filostrato (Plate V),68 which emphasizes Creseida’s exit from Troy in a miniature of her, on horseback outside the city walls, accompanied by three mounted men. In this miniature, she wears a tall, round-topped headdress, a long, black, nun-like dress and cloak with white [linen?] at the neck, and carries a large white handkerchief. It is significant that, in omitting a parallel verbal image of Criseyde in mourning garb, Chaucer also chooses not to follow Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s lead and provide her with an entirely new and colorful costume. According to Benoît, Briseida, taking her packed clothing with her, leaves Troy dressed in the garments which she valued most highly, and he both lauds her attractive appearance and describes individual garments – her gold-embroidered silk and ermine-trimmed tunic and her cloak.69 Benoît’s costume depiction offers a decided contrast to Chaucer’s treatment of Criseyde’s presumably somber dress in this scene. Benoît dresses Briseida in a cloak – multi-hued and multi-patterned by means of enchantment,70 lined with exotic, multi-colored and sweet-smelling fur, which was purfiled (bordered) in even more precious Paradisical fur, and finally clasped with ruby fastenings.71 Thus Benoît describes the visually spellbinding daughter

68 69

70

71

Bodleian Library MS Douce 331, fol. 52, from Boccaccio’s Filostrato, dated XV 3/4. See nn. 6 and 8 above. This subject is treated more briefly in other sources and analogues. The anonymous author provides no details but states that Briseid leaves Troy, “In apparrell full prowde purpost to wend,” in The “Gest Hystoriale” of the Destruction of Troy: An Alliterative Romance Translated from Guido de Colonna’s “Hystoria Troiana,” eds George A. Panton and David Donaldson, EETS, OS 39 (London, 1869), line 8069. In Guido delle Colonna, Historia Destructionis Troiæ, trans. Mary E. Meek (Bloomington, IN, 1974), Bk. 19, lines 174–75, Briseida “prepared herself with great magnificence for the journey.” Traditionally, intricate weaving and embroidery were regarded with awe, and both classical and medieval writers frequently portrayed garments made of such materials as having been produced by supernatural means. Often these garments were decorated with the fur of magical animals. Eric’s robe of “drap de moire” or “watered silk” fits the romance tradition of describing fabulous fabrics trimmed in exotic furs, in Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide, ed. and trans. Carleton W. Carroll, Garland Library of Medieval Literature 25, series A (New York, 1987), lines 6688ff.; Erec et Enide, in Arthurian Romances, trans. W.W, Comfort (London, 1975), pp. 87–88 . Note Appendix D for Gretchen Mieszkowski’s translation of Benoît’s complete passage as previously published in “R. K. Gordon and the Troilus and Criseyde Story,” ChauR 15.2 (1980): 127–37, at 128–29, citing lines 1331–409 of the c. 1155 poem, Le Roman de Troi par Benoît de Sainte-Maure, ed. Léopold Constans, SATF (Paris, 1904–1912), I–VI, and supplementing R. K. Gordon’s translation, The Story of Troilus (London, 1934), pp. 1–22.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  83  of a “seer” and “augur,”72 Briseida, dressed in brilliantly colored73 garments produced by enchantment – the fantasy stuff of the romance genre.74 In contrast, in Book V, Chaucer presents Criseyde’s costume only through selective details, naming portions of her dress which, through their subsequent disposition, underline the fragmenting of her bond with Troilus. These costume fragments consist of her brooch (given to her by Troilus75); her glove,76

Benoît, I, lines 359–60, says: “Calcas li devinere / E li tres sages augurere”; Gordon, Story of Troilus, p. 4, translates: “Calchas, the seer and most wise augur.” Chaucer calls Calkas a “gret devyn” (I, line 66). 73 Umberto Eco, in Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven, CT, 1986), pp. 44–45, speaks of the medieval love of brilliant color, and the “vivacity of chromatic combinations” evident in art, in literary descriptions of costume, and the day-to-day living of the period. 74 E. Jane Burns characterizes such elaborate romance costumes as “fetishizing” in Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature (Philadelphia, PA, 1993), pp. 109–11. 75 Absent any comment from Chaucer, this could be the brooch Criseyde gave to Troilus in Book III; Riverside note for lines 1370–72 posits that the brooches of Books III and V may be the same brooch. However, it would not be characteristic of Troilus to give up any tangible proof of Criseyde’s love when he might hold on to it. It is far more likely that he would give her a brooch that represents his love or identity to take into the Greek camp, while keeping the brooch she gave to him. Anne M. McKim, “Tracing the Ring: Henryson, Fowler, and Chaucer’s Troilus,” N&Q 238 (1993): 449–51, at 450, comments that returned gifts are “well attested,” but her example, Griselda’s return of Walter’s wedding ring in ClT, line 868, is actually a signal that their relationship is ended. In contrast, Troilus does not know his relationship with Criseyde is over when he gives her a brooch as she leaves Troy; this fact supports the argument that he gives a new brooch as a parting gift, retaining the brooch of Book III for himself.   Any curse attached to the brooch that Criseyde gave Troilus in Book III, if it is meant to be yet another Argive family-cursed brooch, would work against Troilus because he has coveted it and what it represents – Criseyde. However, Anderson, “Theban History,” despite having said, p. 127 n. 34, “Apparently, Criseyde first gave the brooch to Troilus (III, 1372), and later to Diomede (V, 1040–41), though it is possible Chaucer is referring to two different brooches,” subsequently argues, on p. 128 n. 35, that Troilus gives Criseyde’s brooch back to her, loses her to Diomede, and knows the “double wo and passioun” of Mars when he loses Venus (line 254). See also Nancy Dean, “Chaucer’s Complaint: A Genre Descended From the Heroides,” Comparative Literature 19.1 (1967), pp. 1–27, at 19–25, for comments about the brooch of Thebes. 76 This glove taken by Diomede is mentioned in Benoît, II, lines 13709–12: 72

Un de ses quanz li a toleit Que nus nel set ne aparceit: Mout s’en fait liez, n’aparceit mie Que ele en seit de rien marrie.

Gordon, Story of Troilus, p. 12, translates: “He took one of her gloves from her, without anybody knowing or perceiving. Much he rejoiced at that, and did not note at all that she was in any degree angered thereby.” The glove does not appear in Boccaccio.

84  Chaucer and Array presumably part of a pair,77 taken from her by Diomede as a love token; and her sleeve to use as a pennant,78 bestowed upon Diomede “the bet from sorwe hym to releve” (V, 1040–41, 1043). The wearing of gloves would be consonant with her social image as a circumspect lady, and the easily detachable sleeve was a normal feature of the dress of a lady who had servants who would sew, or “lace,” these sleeves into her bodice each time she changed clothes. Significantly, no mention is made of the ring which Troilus gave to Criseyde in Book III. Ostensibly it

77

78

The “Gest Hystoriale,” lines 2938–45, mentions gloves as accessories in feminine seduction practices and, in lines 8092–96, depicts Diomedes’s drawing off of Briseis’s glove with her tacit complicity, a treatment that echoes that of Guido, Book 19, lines 194–98. According to the God of Love in RR, gloves are among the accoutrements of a lover’s proper clothing (line 2155; Dahlberg, Romance of the Rose, p. 60; Rom., line 2271). Gloves are a sartorial marker of the upper classes, says George Fenwick Jones, “Sartorial Symbols in Mediæval Literature,” MÆ 25.2 (1956): 63–70, at 67–70. Because idleness in the Middle Ages was only available to the wealthy, appropriately Idleness in RR wears white gloves to prevent her hands from turning brown (lines 562–62; Dahlberg, Romance of the Rose, p. 38; Rom, lines 571–72). Benoît, III, lines 15176–78, describes this gift in greater detail: La destre manche de son braz Nueve e fresche d’un ciglaton Li baille en lieu de confanon.

Gordon, Story of Troilus, p. 17 translates: “To take the place of his pennant she gave him the right sleeve off her arm of new fresh silk.” Boccaccio does not mention this sleeve.   The gift of a sleeve to be used as a pennant treats war as if it were a spectator event, rather than a matter of life and death. Le Roman de Thebes describes (lines 3847–50, 3904, 4455–58) Ismene’s gift of a silk brocade sleeve to Ates, who uses it as a pennant; similarly in lines 9373–76, Parthenopeus wears Antigone’s ermine sleeve. Lancelot wears such a sleeve favor, a “rede sleve … , of scarlet, well embrowdred with grete perelles,” belonging to Elayne le Blanke, the Fayre Maydyn of Astolot. The sleeve serves as part of his disguise because, previously, he had never worn a lady’s “tokyn” in a tournament; see Thomas Malory, Malory Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1977), XVIII, p. 63, lines 32–40; p. 64, lines 32–33.   Helmut Nickel states, in “Arthurian Armings for War and for Love,” Arthuriana 5.4 (Winter 1995): 3–21, at 9, that “a lady’s sleeve, torn off and leaving her arm deliciously bare, was one of the sexier ‘favors’ in the game of courtly love (see Parzival 193).” Further, “such a ‘favor’ would be worn attached to the knight’s shield, his helmet, or to other elements of his armor.” Nickel also describes Erec’s three shields with the heraldic charge of lady’s sleeve. See Christopher Gravett, Knights at Tournament (London, 1988), p. 9, for a picture of this charge, the maunch; also Helmut Nickel, “Ladies’ Service and Ladies’ Favors,” Avalon to Camelot, 1.4 (1984): 31–34, at 33, and Helmut Nickel, “The Tournament: An Historical Sketch,” The Study of Chivalry: Resources and Approaches, eds Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler (Kalamazoo, MI, 1988), pp. 213–62, at 234, for discussion of the variety of ladies’ favors given at a tournament.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  85  remains in Criseyde’s possession – she retains the gift that originally represented Troilus’s gift of his heart to her.79 Taken altogether, Chaucer’s costume details and references supply a complete costume that, in general, would have matched the ordinary experience of his late-fourteenth-century audience: Criseyde’s typical costume, as depicted by Chaucer throughout Books I–IV and into Book V, consists of a lustrous dark samite widow’s robe (with detachable sleeves) worn in seemly recognition of her husband’s death, complete with an appropriate wimple and veiling (as in Plate V), and, on occasion, she also wears jewelry and gloves. Criseyde’s concern for her reputation, her requirement of secrecy in her affair with Troilus, and her need for Ector’s ongoing sympathetic protection argue for the idea that she continued to wear her widow’s weeds so long as she remained in the jurisdiction of Troy. The sight of such widow’s weeds would have necessarily been commonplace and would fulfill social expectations in both Chaucer’s England and, theoretically, in war-besieged Troy. Once Chaucer has Criseyde ensconced in the pavilions of the Greek camp, however, his treatment of her costume signifies the disintegration of her relationship with Troilus. The progression from confiscated glove to succoring gifts from Criseyde to Diomede highlights her evolving betrayal of Troilus. One further description of her appearance also illuminates this progression, although Chaucer is, typically, ambiguous in his evocation of time sequence. Adding to brief allusions in earlier books to her hair as gleaming as the sun and like it in color, Chaucer now delineates significant new particulars: And ofte tymes this was hire manere: To gon ytressed with hire heres clere Doun by hire coler at hire bak behynde, Which with a thred of gold she wolde bynde.

(V, 809–12)

The mention of a “coler” or neckline that may be seen makes it perfectly clear that Criseyde at some unspecified time, “ofte tymes,” no longer wears the veiling and barbe or wimple of widow’s weeds. Such a widow’s headdress would have hidden her hair and the neckline or “coler” of her robe. Further, her hair is dressed with gold thread, a hairstyle that has nothing to do with mourning practice and everything to do with accentuating her visible and already shining hair and, later, perhaps, her new-found joy with Diomede. Significantly, Joy in Le Roman de la Rose (856) also wears a gold thread wound in her blonde and shining hair as she dances with her lover, Diversion.80 The most benign option of the two possible explanations for Criseyde’s adoption of a decorative hairstyle, suggested by the possible association with Joy, is

79 80

This is a detail that Henryson and his successor William Fowler pick up and feature, as McKim points out in “Tracing the Ring,” pp. 450–51. However, in Rom, line 867, Chaucer omits the detail of the gold thread in his translation, saying only that her hair is “yelowe and clere shynyng.”

86  Chaucer and Array that this hairstyle appears following her acceptance of Diomede as her new protector and lover, as indicated in Book V, lines 1033ff. Although this hairstyle is described before we learn of Criseyde’s choice, the description might be thought to have no time specificity because it is part of her portrait, one of the three set pieces – the portraits of the love triangle. Thus, in one interpretive scenario, Criseyde initially rejects Diomede’s suit, telling him that she must go to her death in mourning and implying that this act is in honor of her husband (V, 975–78, 983–88), a statement which the wearing of full widow’s weeds would support. An alternative and more pejorative interpretation is that the textual placement of the portrait description in V, 809–12, and its vagueness about time sequence casts further doubt upon Criseyde’s character. If she had already assumed the gold-threaded hairstyle, it would deny her irrevocable grief as expressed in V, 975–76. The mixed messages she verbalizes in rejecting Diomede’s suit while agreeing to see him again would be parallelled in her inconsistent dress. The logic of his persistent courtship might derive either from his own confidence, or from the evidence of her appearance which tells him that, even as she proclaims it, she has abandoned strict mourning. The confusion as to the sequence of events leaves us with only one certainty: Diomede takes her glove which he desires, and presses onward in his successful suit. In any case, from lines 1033ff. of Book V, the dressing of her hair with gold thread signals that Criseyde has publicly done away with her barbe and is participating in the dance of Love, as Pandarus had so vigorously urged her to do in Book II; and she has done so, ironically, at exactly the wrong time for her uncle’s purposes. Gretchen Mieszkowski’s comment concerning the effects of Benoît’s elaborate and exotic costuming of Briseida as she departs Troy, that “she is already adorned to attract her next lover,”81 also suits Chaucer’s more subtle description. In the fragments of Criseyde’s costume – gold thread, glove, and sleeve – which represent her social image, there is a literal dismembering and disbursing of pieces reflecting the disintegration of her public honorable repute as well as her pledge of faithful love made to Troilus. Throughout the process of degeneration, the most poignant moment of this failed love affair occurs when Troilus reads this double ending in the brooch he sees on Diomede’s coat armor (highlighted in gold, in Plate VI).82 Chaucer’s audience might have anticipated that Troilus would eventually see Criseyde’s sleeve displayed as Diomede’s pennant, as the

81

82

Gretchen Mieszkowski, “The Reputation of Criseyde, 1155–1500,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy 43 (New Haven, CT, 1971), p. 81. I have discussed this costume and its implications as well in Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue, Chaucer Studies 26 (Cambridge, 2000) (C&C), pp. 183–84. See V. A. Kolve’s Telling Images: Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative II (Stanford, CA, 2009), pp. 19–20 and 265 n. 42, for discussion of Diomede’s battle coat and Criseyde’s affixed brooch; and a black and white reproduction of this illumination, I.6, p. 21, reproduced from a French prose trans. of Il Filostrato, c. 1455–56, Paris, BN MS Fr 25,528, fol. 89v.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  87  narrator’s earlier depiction of this gift suggests. Chaucer thwarts this expection, however, and what Troilus sees is far more wounding. At the very moment when he might have felt joy over Deiphebus’s victorious public flaunting of Diomede’s captured “cote-armure” (V, 1650–51), Troilus notes its size, its embroidered device (the boar83) conveying identity, and he experiences a shock of painful recognition: Ful sodeynly his herte gan to colde, As he that on the coler fond withinne A broch that he Criseyde yaf that morwe That she from Troie moste nedes twynne, In remembraunce of hym and of his sorwe. And she hym leyde ayeyn hire feith to browe To kepe it ay!

(V, 1659–65)

Troilus reads this costume rhetoric and knows the truth; in his subsequent apostrophe to Criseyde (V, 1674ff.), he expresses anguished disbelief, knows her “trouthe” to be “fordon,” and asks, Was ther non other broch yow liste lete To feefe with youre newe love, … But thilke broch that I, with teris wete, Yow yaf as for a remembraunce of me?

(V, 1688–91)

After so much vicarious experience with Troilus’s failure to read Criseyde accurately, Chaucer’s present-day audience might well think that it is high time Troilus acknowledged reality; nevertheless, as Troilus knows the pain of the perfidy evinced in Criseyde’s bestowal of his love token upon a new lover, the pathos of his cry rings true and elicits audience empathy. In this brooch on Diomede’s “coler,” Chaucer epitomizes Criseyde’s multiple betrayals: of her honor which Troilus has protected, of her repeated vow to love faithfully, of her promise to return to Troy, and even of courtesy regarding the disposition of a gift from a previous lover. The brooch on Diomede’s cote-armure does, as Troilus says, utterly show Criseyde’s “entente” (V, 1694). Metaphorically, as represented in the gold-dressed hairstyle, as well as the transfer of glove, sleeve, and brooch, Criseyde, in Book V, is dressed in her public acceptance of Diomede as a lover. In addition, the dismantling of her recently

83

Cassandra’s interpretation of Troilus’s dream, V, lines 1513–15, suggests this identification; Fil., Parte settima, stanza 27 (trans. Gordon, p. 110), says that Diomede’s family has traditionally worn the boar as a signatory device. Fleming, Classical Imitation, p. 213, remarks that Boccaccio’s “Troilo himself immediately recognizes the emblematic association of the dream-beast with the Caledonian Boar and hence with Diomede”; however, Chaucer’s Troilus recognizes this connection only through Cassandra’s explanation.

88  Chaucer and Array rededicated widow’s weeds emphasizes her fickleness, parallels her divestment of honorable repute, and finally garbs her, from a courtly love point of view, in the shame of her betrayal of Troilus. As a corollary to the fragmentation of Criseyde’s costume in the final book of Troilus and Criseyde, the narrator also presents a reprise of the costume signs that evoke the Mars-like Troilus possessing knightly virtues (V, 831–37) at the same time that he diminishes this image. He alludes repeatedly to arms and armor, and he describes one vigorous battle blow for blow; these details, interlaced with other costume signs, elicit audience sympathy for Troilus while they also describe and illustrate his emotional and physical decline.84 Costume rhetoric emphasizes each stage of Troilus’s declining fortunes in love and war and his advance toward death. For example, his arms and armor bestowed in a will (V, 306–08) mark and measure Troilus’s lovesickness and his assessment of his condition. While in the Greek camp Diomede lays siege to Criseyde’s affections, in Troy Troilus sinks into sorrow and ill health to the extent that he summons Pandarus to hear his oral will: Offre Mars my steede, My swerd, myn helm; and … My sheld to Pallas yef, that shyneth cleere.

(V, 306–08)

The proposed sacrifice of his horse and armor signal the despair he feels because of Criseyde’s absence. This despair is depicted in his evocation of Criseyde’s house missing its mistress, which he describes as a ring without its ruby (V, 549). But I suggest, also, that the image is sexual,85 and that what Troilus mourns for is their physical union in which Criseyde is the ring, and Troilus is the ruby. In a further depiction of his despair, Troilus writes letters to Criseyde describing his worsening condition, begging her pity, and employing the image of his grave as clothing him: “In yow lith, whan yow liste that it so be, / The day in which clothen shal my grave” (V, 1417–18). His subsequent consideration and rejection of the idea of disguising himself in pilgrim weeds and going as a pilgrim to see Criseyde represents both his desperate thinking and a defeatist attitude86 toward any effort to revive a dying love. 84

85 86

Regarding this dismantling and reprise of costume signs, see Boboc’s comments concerning Chaucer’s “recasting the blazon” that “allows for all kinds of variations in the mutability of a person’s experience,” revealing the “feminine experience” in a manner that is “unique,” in “Criseyde’s Descriptions,” pp. 80–81. Jennings, “Chaucer’s Troilus,” pp. 535, 537, refers to this possibility. Troilus “knows that he could not disguise himself well enough to deceive discerning people, which speaks poorly for his cleverness,” states June Hall Martin, citing Tristan’s successful disguises as minstrel, leper, and beggar as evidence that a more aggressive Troilus might have succeeded as well, in Love’s Fools: Aucassin, Troilus, Calisto and the Parody of the Courtly Lover, Coleccion Tamesis, series A, no. 21 (London, 1972), pp. 63–64.

Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde  89  Finally, Deiphebus’s flaunting of Diomede’s coat armor like a victory pennon87 (as depicted in Plate VI) ironically marks Troilus’s acceptance of his defeat as a lover, his determination to die, and his choice of the manner of his death: “Myn owen deth in armes wol I seche” (V, 1716–18). His warrior spirit revives, yet he employs it in self-destruction and vengeance, seeking mortal combat with Diomede. Just as Ector’s valiant fighting and death are underscored through costume signs – Achilles spears him through his mail as Ector drags a king by his “aventaille” (V, 1558–61) – so, too, is Troilus’s battle rage marked. Often seeking and meeting Diomede in battle, he exchanges “blody strokes” and words, Assayinge how hire speres weren whette’ And … with many a cruel hete Gan Troilus upon his helm to bete! (V, 1758–62)

This final image of the dynamic and antagonistic Diomede and Troilus should evoke earlier images of the armed Troilus in all his Mars-like glory, but the narrator diminishes any impression of prowess in stating that Fortune witholds from Troilus the reward of wreaking vengeance on his enemy and rival, Diomede. Their repeated personal battles wound and batter but do not kill – a “defeat” for Troilus that parallels his failed love affair. With Troilus’s death (V, 1807–09) by another Greek hand, the worldly events of Troilus and Criseyde come to an end. The narrator dismisses any concern for the two lovers with the comment that “al nys but a faire, / This world that passeth soone as floures faire” (V, 1840–41), thus expressing the evanescence of life as depicted in Criseyde’s costume from her first appearance in this poem. “As floures faire,” the costume rhetoric in this romance ornaments the text.88At the same time, each major costume (widow’s weeds and full arms and armor) or garment and accessory cluster (jewelry, hoods, shirts, glove, and mantles) contributes to the depth of characterization; Chaucer deploys a variety of techniques to present and repeat the signature images which illustrate and highlight the crucial events within Books I–IV. In Troilus and Criseyde, the narrator spins a web of interlaced costume images that portray both Criseyde’s and Troilus’s social status in costumes which literally and figuratively illustrate the themes of mutability,

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88

It is remarkable in medieval literature for a knight’s coat armor to be taken as plunder while the owner lives to fight again, yet this is what happens to Diomede. Normally, it is difficult to take such booty even from the dead; see Ector’s unsuccessful attempts in The “Gest Hystorial,” lines 6411–517; and in John Lydgate, Troy Book: Selections, ed. Robert R. Edwards, Medieval Institute Publications (Kalamazoo, MI, 1998), Bk. 3, lines 5332–99. Caroline Jewers, “Fabric and Fabrication: Lyric and Narrative in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose,” Speculum 71 (October 1996): 907–24, at 919, posits this purpose for clothing imagery.

90  Chaucer and Array betrayal, and loss. A reprise of the major garment images appears in Book V, in which their metaphorical degradation, deterioration, and disintegration – permanently besmirching Criseyde’s reputation – are interlaced with the descending action of the plot, in which Troilus’s martial prowess ultimately meets the same end as does Troy. The anthropologist R. A. Schwarz summarizes the symbolic role clothing plays in the dialectic of social life. His summary aptly describes the function of costume rhetoric in Troilus and Criseyde: While clothing is often “taken for granted,” it is an essential part of communication: it helps define a situation by emphasizing certain principles while serving to conceal or maintain ambiguity about others. While clothing and adornment vary in what, when, and how they symbolically relate to behavior, they are always, even in their absence, part of the process and structure of action. Just as woof threads may be woven into cloth to conceal those of the warp, a society may weave a social fabric which publicly exhibits one set of norms while masking other structures.89

In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer weaves just such a social fabric decorated with costume rhetoric which references late fourteenth-century material culture, thus providing verisimilitude, especially for his contemporary audience. Further, this costume rhetoric characterizes the players in this romance, interacts with aspects of setting, furthers the plot by highlighting significant moments and actions in the story, and works symbolically and metaphorically to say more than the images initially convey. When the narrator cuts the threads, his tapestry figuratively illustrates the Fates’ design for Troilus and Criseyde.

89

R. A. Schwarz, “Uncovering the Secret Vice: Toward an Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment,” The Fabrics of Culture, eds J. M. Cordwell and R. A. Schwarz (New York, 1979), pp. 23–45, at 40.

3 Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale

R

anging from the ostentatious and richly ornamented to the utmost in s­ implicity, the basic undergarment – the smock – speaks to the audience for medieval literature through the details of its fabric and/or construction as specified by individual medieval authors. It is often employed metaphorically in phrases such as “clad in his [or her] sherte alone,” as discussed when dealing with Geoffrey Chaucer’s variations of this well-known metaphor in Troilus and Criseyde (IV, 96, 1522–23).1 These wearers of a “sherte alone” are presented in the state of virtual nakedness, bereft of all usual signs of social rank, and, on occasion, suffering humiliation.2 The smock, the feminine term for this garment, can also be incorporated in descriptions as an important costume sign representing social status or character: nobility or peasant status, dignified duty or servile subjection, humiliation or triumphant dignity, personal humility or pride – to mention only a few of the many possibilities. Chaucer employs smock imagery in his costume rhetoric in the Clerk’s Tale (ClT) in all of these significations, separately and sometimes multivalently. And, while numerous critics supply informative commentary on I am greatly indebted to Robin Netherton, Gretchen Mieszkowski, and Kenneth J. Thompson for their helpful comments and questions regarding earlier drafts of this chapter. Under the same title, an earlier version of this chapter appeared in ChauR 44.1 (2009), pp. 84–109; I also wish to thank editors Susanna Fein and David Raybin and my anonymous ChauR readers for their valuable assistance. A short version of this paper, included in the title “Griselda in The Clerk’s Tale and Alison in The Miller’s Tale: Reading Smocks in Chaucer,” was presented May 12, 2007, in a session sponsored by the Medieval Association of the Midwest, at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan. 2 See Chapter 2, pp. 69–70, 79–80 and n. 65. For a visual image of such humiliation, see the reproduction of the manuscript depiction of Griselda by the Master of Mansel, in La fleur des histoires (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 9232, fol. 444v), wearing only her smock and departing Walter’s palace (as well as depictions of her other costumes), in Margaret Scott, A Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth & Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1986), pl. 87. Griselda in her smock appears in the lower left corner. 1

92  Chaucer and Array the costumes mentioned in this tale, they rarely do so with concerted attention paid to the broad combined contexts of medieval material culture – the placement of each garment within the history of costume, the quality and value of its fabric and decoration, and its style and suitability to its wearer’s social circumstances. Nor do they always consider some literary aspects such as each garment’s depiction: in description that is reportage, or part of a character’s characterization, or named within a metaphor that portrays additional social implication beyond the literal. Consideration given to these contexts provides a deeper comprehension of Chaucer’s costume rhetoric, his frequent employment of smock images throughout the body of his works, and especially the manner in which his smock imagery in the Clerk’s Tale teases out additional layers of meaning. The Contextual Background of the Smock The smock (Middle English), synonymous with chemise (Old French), is also called variously shert[e] (Middle English), camisia or camicia or camise (Italian), and sark, serke (Scottish and northern).3 Each of these terms describes the traditional undergarment, defined by Jacqueline Herald as the “functional washable layer of clothing worn between the skin and the outer woollen or silk garments.”4 Chaucer’s terminology is straightforward; he uses only the word smok, smock when referring to the female undergarment. Normally white, it is the garment worn closest to the body if several layers of garments are worn, or possibly as the only garment if the wearer is poor.5 Shift, unlisted in the MED, but listed in the OED (s.v. shift n., sense 10.(a), with a first example dated 1598, is another, but later, synonym for smock. 4 This definition of camica comes from Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500 (London, 1981), Glossary, p. 212. See also Delphine Pinasa’s list of trimmings used on these garments, Costumes: Modes et manières d’être de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age (Paris, 1992), pp. 105 and 35; E. Jane Burns, “Ladies Don’t Wear Braies: Underwear and Outerwear in the French Prose Lancelot,” The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin, TX, 1994), pp. 152– 74, esp. 152, 152 nn. 2–4, and 153–54 nn. 7–13, regarding the chemise and references; and E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia, PA, 2002), pp. 59–62 concerning a lady’s white camiza embroidered in many colors; and Patricia Williams, “Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion,” MC&T 8 (2012): 83–113, at 95–98, regarding Welsh undergarments. 5 The history of the smock is complex. See Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy, and Appearance in Thirteenth-Century Sumptuary Laws and the Romance of the Rose,” French Historical Studies 27 (2004): 311–48, esp. 318 regarding chemise and chainse as synonyms; A. J. Greimas’s definition #2 of chainse as “Chemise,” with an example from the end of the twelfth century, in Dictionnaire de l’ancien français: jusqu’au milieu du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1980); John of Garlande’s dictionary, composed 1218–29, for an entry on female garments, including the cimise: “[mod. Fr. ‘chemise’], a kind of woman’s body garment of linen”, in Jean de Garlande, The Dictionarius of John de Garlande, and the author’s commentary, translated into English and annotated by Barbara Blatt Rubin, ed. Barbara Blatt Rubin (Lawrence, KS, 1981); Eunice Rathbone 3

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  93  Linen is the fabric widely used in the Middle Ages for making underclothing, so much so that linen became the term of reference for “body linen” made from other fabrics as well; numerous costume historians mention the widespread use of linen for this purpose.6 This linen fabric was acquired from sources such as Holland and Rheims and usually was identified by its place of origin. For example, Guillem’s chemise, described in Flamenca (thirteenth century), is made of a fabric called muslin or cloth of Reims.7 This fabric, known as the “finest, thinnest lawn,” is described by Stella Mary Newton as “the famous fine linen” of Rheims, in her depiction of a 1474 masque in Urbino, in which Modesty and her nymphs wear chemises made of it. In this masque, Modesty covered at least part of her chemise with an ermine mantle, while her nymphs in their lawn chemises, “edged with gold fringe, three fingers wide,” also wore flowered, silken, waist-length garments covering the bodice area.8 In addition holland shirts “of linen made in that country are mentioned in the wardrobe of Edward IV.”9 Across the centuries, such undergarments maintained a general stability of style and purpose, and “holland fine” remains a staple of body linen, being the fabric of choice for Lord Thomas’s embroidered smock, in the undated traditional Scottish ballad “Lord Thomas and Fair Annet”: My maides, gae to my dressing-roome And dress to me my smock; The one half is o the holland fine, The other o needle-work.



6



7



8



9



10

(lines 57–60)10

Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries ed. Barbara Blatt Rubin (Lawrence, KS, 1981); Eunice Rathbone Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Baltimore, MD, 1927), pp. 69, 103; and Pinasa, Costumes, p. 70. OED, s.v. linen n., sense 3.a. See C. Willett Cunnington and Phyllis Cunnington, The History of Underclothes (New York, 1992), pp. 25, 32, 261; Herald, Renaissance Dress, p. 212; James Robinson Planché, An Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Costume: From the First Century B.C. to C. 1760 (Mineola, NY, 2003), pp. 470–71, and his citation of London, British Library MS Harley 1419 for Irish linen; Carl Kohler, A History of Costume, ed. Emma Von Sichart, trans. Alexander K. Dallas (New York, 1963), p. 136; and Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT, 1997), p. 78. See Sarah-Grace Heller’s discussion of Guillem’s chemise made of linen from Rheims in Fashion in Medieval France, Gallica 3 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 80–83; citing JeanCharles Huchet, ed., Flamenca, roman occitan du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1988). Stella Mary Newton, Renaissance Theatre Costume and the Sense of the Historic Past (London, 1975), p. 16. Cunnington and Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 25, citing no source. OED, sv. Holland n., sense 2.a. “Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,” in Charles W. Eliot, ed., English Poetry I: from Chaucer to Gray, The Harvard Classics 40 (New York, 1909; repr. 1937), pp. 61–65, and Bartleby.com; a slightly different version, quoted by Planché, Illustrated

94  Chaucer and Array Instead of linen, upper-class persons sometimes wore silk smocks (cendal and samite, and a mixed silk fabric called chainsil), while the poorest among the lower class wore shifts made of hemp, and the ascetic might choose to wear a smock made of wool.11 Some medieval fabrics used for smocks were fine enough to be transparent. A tapestry from the third quarter of the fifteenth century in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval collection depicts Adam and Eve in chemises that illustrate this transparency.12 Such sheer fabric is noted in The Romaunt of the Rose (c. 1370), in the description of Largesse: thorough her smokke wrought with silk, The flesh was seen as whit as mylk.

(lines 1195–6)13

The thirteenth-century source of The Romaunt, Le Roman de la Rose, comments less blatantly on this sheer fabric, Et ce ne li seoit pas mau Que sa chevessaille ere ouverte, Et sa gorge si descouverte Que parmi outre la chemise.

(lines 1170–74)

[However, it did not suit her badly that her collar was open and her throat disclosed so that her soft flesh showed its whiteness through her smock. (my emphasis)]14



11



12



13



14

Dictionary, pp. 470–1. This undated ballad, possibly originating much earlier, was collected and published in the eighteenth century, according to the OED; however, see F. J. Child, coll., English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 8 vols. (New York, 1885; repr. 1965), 2:182–99, esp. 185, concerning the seventeenth-century broadside of the English version of this ballad, “Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor.” I wish to thank Jean Goodrich for pointing this out to me. For discussion of St. Etheldreda’s woolen smock, see Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004), pp. 133, 156–57, 297, and fig. 170 (dated c. 971–84); and Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St Æthelthryth in Medieval England (University Park, PA, 2007), pp. 38, 47. See Phyllis G. Tortora and Keith Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress, 4th ed. (New York, 2005), p. 135, for a photograph (fig. 6.12). Also note Cunnington and Cunnington, Underclothes, pp. 25, 32 (figs 1, 9, line drawings of fourteenth- to fifteenth-century shirts and chemises), pp. 261–62 (Appendix I, describing the Sture shirts of 1567). A sixteenth-century gold- or silver-embroidered shirt in the costume collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is another such delicate shirt (catalogued #10.124.2). The lines from Rom quoted here derive from section A, commonly cited as Chaucer’s work. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, ed. Félix Lecoy, 3 vols. (Paris, 1970); Charles Dahlberg, trans., The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (Hanover, NH, 1983). The italics in this trans. represent my emendation based on Chaucer’s version of these lines.

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  95  A fascinating literary smock is constructed from three separate qualities of fabric designated to cover different portions of the body. The finest cloth is designated for the collar area and sleeves (areas that would not be covered over by fashions in some time periods), the next best for the body, and the worst for the back and loins, as two texts specify: in the mid-thirteenth-century Latin De Vetula, reworked in French in the mid-fourteenth century by Jean Lefèvre as La vieille ou les dernières amours d’Ovide, a go-between receives three pieces of cloth for a chemise as part of a bribe for future services.15 Such literary descriptions are especially valuable because manuscript collections include no written directions for making a smock, this task being the kind of sewing project passed from seamstress to seamstress. However, working from extant examples, museum curators have deduced layouts for cutting out the pieces of the smocks in their collection, for example the layouts provided by Dorothy K. Burnham in Cut My Cote.16 In various historical periods smocks were often decorated – embroidered, or trimmed with self-fabric or silk binding.17 A famous example is the “so-called chemise or chasuble” that belonged to St Bathilde (Bathildis), who rose from being a slave to being the wife of the Merovingian king Clovis II and later established a monastery at Chelles. Her linen smock, dated late sixth to seventh century, was embroidered in colored silks, of which fragments remain.18 A literary example of

The Pseudo-Ovidian De Vetula, ed. Dorothy M. Robathan (Amsterdam, 1968), p. 94 (Book 2, lines 393–95); Jean Lefèvre, La vieille ou les dernières amours d’Ovide, ed. Hippolyte Cocheris (Paris, 1861), p. 141 (lines 2936–39). I am grateful to Gretchen Mieszkowski for bringing these interesting descriptions to my attention. 16 Dorothy K. Burnham, Cut My Cote (Toronto, 1973), pp. 12–13. 17 See Tortora, and Eubank, Survey, p. 135 (fig. 6.10); and 182 (fig. 8.9). Additionally see Cunnington and Cunnington, Underclothes, regarding Norman shirts embroidered in colored threads at neck and wrist edges, p. 25, and women’s smocks embroidered around the neck and hem edges, p. 31; also Pinasa, Costumes, pp. 35, 105. 18 Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Stitches in Time: Establishing a History of Anglo-Saxon Embroidery,” in Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds, MC&T 1 (2005): 1–27, esp. 5: “There are traces of bands or ribbons to fasten the front to the back, but the garment has been torn apart at the shoulders and only the front survives. Part of the embroidery has disappeared, but surviving threads and holes left in the fabric allow, according to H. E. F. Vierck, an almost complete restoration of the decoration.” Coatsworth cites H. E. F. Vierck, “La ‘Chemise de Ste Bathilde’ à Chelles et l’Influence Byzantine sur l’Art de Cour Mérovingien au VIIe Siècle,” in E. Chirol, ed., Actes du colloque international d’archéologie, Rouen 3–4–5 Juillet 1975 (Centenaire de l’Abbé Cochet) (Rouen, 1978), pp. 521–64, about which she comments: “[Vierck’s] statement does not make clear how much of what one sees in a photograph of the piece is original work. What survives appears to represent two jewelled collars, a pendant cross, and a necklace with pendants, of a suite of jewellery of Byzantine style. Leonie Von Wilckens, following Vierck, considers that this smock was made locally, and represents an expression of the influence of Byzantine style on Merovingian metalwork [embroidery].” Coatsworth further cites Leonie Von Wilckens, Die Textilen, Künste, p. 173. 15

96  Chaucer and Array smock embroidery occurs in The Romance of the Rose or Guillaume de Dole by Jean Renart. Liénor, the heroine of this early-thirteenth-century romance, packs a smock for her visit to court, and this white undergarment was “embroidered with flowers.”19 The decoration of smocks or shirts was an ancient tradition, as may be seen in a photograph of a fourth-century male shirt of linen “with tapestry-woven decoration in purple wool” (Fig. 3.1),20 Burnham’s example of how such early undergarments were decorated. Also, Jennifer Harris describes and provides a photograph of a very early embroidered shift called a poukamiso from Argos, in a style worn by women for at least 2,000 years and made of cotton (Fig. 3.2).21 These garments have all of the features of the medieval smock, and each was worn as the undermost layer – if layers were worn – or as the daily dress when only one garment was worn. Harris states that the poukamiso was usually embroidered in silk on cotton in “a monochrome dark red, dark blue or black in a clotted geometric pattern” for special occasions, but only those portions which could be seen feature this decoration.22 Over the centuries and across geographical and cultural terrain, smock, chemise, or shirt styles maintained basic similarities, while varying from excessively plain to elaborate, in cut, fabric, construction, and decoration. In general, the early difference between male and female shirts was length, with male shirts being shorter. Additionally, smock styles featured various sleeve styles – loose or tight, long, short, or no sleeves at all. Smocks were also sometimes pleated for fullness,23 as was Énide’s chemise in Chrétien de Troyes’ romance, Érec et Énide (c. 1164). It is described as a “chemise à larges pans, fine, blanche et plissée” [a chemise that is “white” and has “wide skirts hanging in loose folds”].24 Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or Guillaume de Dole, trans. Patricia Terry and Nancy Vine Durling (Philadelphia, PA, 1993), p. 77. Terry and Durling include in Appendix 1 a description of female dress for 1204–28, the general dating for this work (current arguments favoring 1204): “Bliau, chainse, and cote were worn over the chemise … a long-sleeved undergarment made of soft fine fabric, sometimes pleated and sometimes laced on the sides. They could be elaborately embroidered, as was Liénor’s when she went to court,” p. 107. 20 Burnham, Cut My Cote, p. 9, pl. 4. My Fig. 4–1 is sketched from Burnham’s pl. 4, a photograph of an Egyptian, Coptic shirt in the Walter Massey Collection (ROM 910.1.11), Royal Ontario Museum. See also Burnham, p. 10, fig. 2. 21 Jennifer Harris, ed., 5000 Years of Textiles (London, 1993), p. 243 (color plate 300); my Fig. 3.2 is drawn from this plate. See also Harris, p. 243, pl. 301. 22 Harris, 5000 Years of Textiles, p. 243. 23 Cunnington and Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 31; and Renart, Guillaume de Dole, trans. Terry and Durling, p. 107 (their Appendix 1). 24 Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide, ed. Mario Roques (Paris, 1970), p. 13 (lines 403–404); and W. W. Comfort, trans., Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances (New York, 1975), p. 6. Regarding the traditional misreading of the placement of holes in Enide’s white linen chainse, see Roger Middleton, “Enide’s See-through Dress,” Arthurian Studies in Honour of P.J.C. Field, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 143–63. 19

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  97 

3.1  Man’s embroidered shirt of linen, fourth-century; pen sketch of Dorothy Burnham’s pl. 4 in Cut My Cote, a photograph of an Egyptian, Coptic shirt in the Walter Massey Collection (ROM 910.1.11), Royal Ontario Museum.

98  Chaucer and Array

3.2 Ancient Greek woman’s embroidered shift (poukamiso) in cotton; pen sketch taken from Jennifer Harris, ed., 5000 Years of Textiles (London, 1993), 243 (color photograph, pl. 300).

Furthermore, chemise necklines varied from period to period, depending on the highness or lowness of the neckline in the contemporary outer dress styles. One twelfth-century style involved “slashing the sides of the outer garment, with corresponding openings in the chemise so that the bare skin was revealed,” a style that was denigrated from contemporary pulpits as signifying the “windows

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  99  of hell.”25 Lanval’s lady wears this style with lacings decorating both sides of her “chainse” and “chemise,” in Marie de France’s Lanval (c. 1180).26 Later, in a time that Susan Frye characterizes as one in which “cloth becomes central to writing romance,” we find a smock of “cut-worke” ennabling a “maid”’s skin to be glimpsed “enticingly” featured among the garments mentioned in The Countess of Montgomery ‘s Urania.27 Finally, no recounting of medieval material and literary smocks would be complete without mentioning Alison’s decorative smock in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale: Whit was hir smok, and broyden al bifoore And eek bihynde, on hir coler aboute, Of col-blak silk, withinne and eek withoute.

(I, lines 3238–40)

This detailed late-fourteenth-century depiction of Alison’s smock, part of a lengthy descriptio of this fabliau female and her costume,28 provides a sharp contrast to Chaucer’s treatment of Griselda’s rhetorically unembellished smocks in the ClT. Reading Griselda’s “olde geere” and Marital Gifts Against this varied and shifting cultural, sartorial, and literary context, the smocks worn by Griselda stand out, primarily because Chaucer presents them without rhetorical and sartorial elaboration in spite of their importance to the plot. Chaucer’s audience members may only imagine these garments as worn by one of his most controversial female characters. However, the material and literary context, and especially Figs 3.3, 3.5, and 3.6, should inform the imagination of his modern audience; Griselda’s smocks would surely have resembled one or more of these. And we need imaginative assistance because, oddly, although dress constitutes a major sign category in the ClT, Griselda receives no intricate Cunnington and Cunnington, Underclothes, p. 32. Énide’s chainse does not fall into this category, according to Middleton, “Enide’s See-through Dress.” Regarding sermons about female garments that are too revealing, see G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford, 1966), p. 397 (on sideless gowns), and 395, 397 (on bare necks). 26 Marie de France, Lanval, Les Lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner (Paris, 1978), p. 89 (line 560); Marie de France, Lanval, The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante (New York, 1978), p. 120. See also Renart, Guillaume de Dole, trans. Terry and Durling, p. 107, for the translators’ comments on period costume. For additional commentary on the importance of fabrics and fashion in this work see Kathryn Marie Talarico, “Dressing for Success: How the Heroine’s Clothing (Un)Makes the Man in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose,” MC&T 8 (2012): 115–31, at 117–20. 27 Urania was published in two parts, part 1 in 1621, part 2 in 1991, according to Susan Frye, Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), pp. 191, 221, and 260 n.1. 28 The subject of discussion in Chapter 4. 25

100  Chaucer and Array poetic portrait providing elaborate costume details. Throughout this tale, as Roger Ramsey discusses, changes of clothing signal the transformation of her social degree.29 These costume changes illustrate standard practice in the Middle Ages and mark all of the major plot events. Chaucer’s costume rhetoric demonstrates Grant McCracken’s idea that clothing is one of the chief opportunities for exercising the metaphoric and performative powers of ritual … [and is] used to mark and even to effect the transition from one cultural category to another that occurs in the rite of passage.30

Of Chaucer’s focus on costume in this tale, Carolyn Dinshaw comments, “not only the Clerk, as narrator, but everyone in the narrative is acutely clothes-conscious.”31 This very clothes-consciousness facilitates Chaucer’s “centering of Griselda as public spectacle” in what Sarah Stanbury deems “a story about visual investigation,” as narrated by a curious scholar-Clerk, a devotee of Petrarch and Aristotle.32 In addition, in his depiction of Griselda’s clothing, Chaucer apparently takes for granted that his audience for the ClT also possesses a certain degree of clothes-consciousness. This audience, whose contemporary medieval material culture we have been reassembling, would of course know the differences between the kind of smock worn by female peasants (normally utilitarian, undecorated, and made of the coarsest kind of cloth) and those worn by noble ladies (constructed of the finest linen or silk, with those parts of it designed to be seen [when styles permitted] sometimes embellished with embroidery or other fine trimming). These represent the two ends of the smock spectrum and, undoubtedly, stylistic variations would have occurred between these two extremes. Just as Chaucer’s contemporary audience would naturally form the proper mental image of Griselda’s costume, peasant or noble, at any stage of her story, they would have no trouble imagining the type and probable condition of Griselda’s smock when Walter’s ladies despoil her of her original garments,33 Roger Ramsey, “Clothing Makes a Queen in the Clerk’s Tale,” Journal of Narrative Technique 7 (1977): 104–15, esp. 106, 110–11. 30 Grant McCracken, “Clothing as Language: An Object Lesson in the Study of the Expressive Properties of Material Culture,” Material Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Material Culture, eds Barrie Reynolds and Margaret A. Stott (Lanham, MD, 1987), pp. 103–28, at 107. 31 Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison, WI, 1989), p. 144. 32 Sarah Stanbury, “Regimes of the Visual in Premodern England: Gaze, Body, and Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale,” NLH 28 (1997): 261–89, at 261. Stanbury acknowledges “the problematics of curiosity and of late medieval discourse on the limits and ends of knowledge,” 288 n. 55. See the possibility of the Clerk’s curiositas, discussed in Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Studies 34 (Cambridge, 2005) (C&Cl), pp. 184–98. 33 The stripping is depicted in fifteenth-century Tuscan wedding cassones (caskets) that portray Griselda completely nude; Cristelle L. Baskins discusses the significance of this nudity in “Griselda, or the Renaissance Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor in 29

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  101  later referred to as her “olde geere” (line 372). This is “geere” that the ladies do not want to handle before dressing her in the new and noble garments and jewels that Walter provides (lines 372–87). Chaucer’s depiction of these ladies’ attitudes illustrates the disdain felt for old garments and the emphasis placed on newness within the fashion system so aptly described by Sarah-Grace Heller.34 Ironically, as Edward I. Condren notes, in arraying Griselda “as the world reckons beauty,” these ladies perform in a tale that thoroughly demonstrates the “irrelevance of worldly array.”35 Chaucer does not immediately describe Griselda’s “olde geere” but, given the contextual information presented earlier, we understand that her basic garment is a smock, probably simply cut of poor fabric and unadorned, and its condition might be described as “worn.” Griselda’s old clothes also include a cote (line 913), as later lines inform us when her father tries to redress her in it. Although we should not confuse them with Chaucer’s ideas of Griselda’s costume, we may view a late-fourteenth-century illustrator’s version of Griselda’s “geere,” both her original dress and her courtly garb, in twenty ink drawings, “with touches of red,” from L’Estoire de Griseldis, dated 1395.36 Once Walter’s ladies have redressed Griselda in the jewels and clothing that Walter presents to her (lines 253–58), Griselda’s transformation is complete. Such gifts of new clothing and jewels bestowed upon Griselda are a standard feature of folk and fairytale lore in which the wearing of wonderful gift clothes (derived from an “otherworld” person) are peculiarly significant for the union taking place, and customarily such fairy gifts “are made without measure,” according to Dudley David Griffin. In addition, Griffin posits that Chaucer has provided readers with a “rationalization of the fairy clothes made without measure”37 in his explanation that Griselda’s new clothes were made according to another’s dimensions: “of hir clothyng took he [Walter] the mesure /By a mayde lyk to hire stature” (lines 256–57). If we acknowledge the fairy skills of the folk tradition behind this tale, and, more realistically and equally important, presume



34 35



36



37

Tuscan Cassone Painting,” Stanford Italian Review 10 (1991): 153–75, esp. 167–70. Regarding the groom’s wedding gifts, including wedding caskets and the bride’s dowry, see Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in FourteenthCentury Italy (Philadelphia, PA, 2006), p. 119. Heller, Fashion, pp. 68–73. Edward I. Condren, “The Clerk’s Tale of Man Tempting God,” Criticism 26 (1984): 99–114, at 104–05. Judith Bronfman, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: The Griselda Story Received, Rewritten, Illustrated (New York, 1994), pp. 99–105, reproduces and discusses these drawings as well as fifteenth-century and later illustrations of versions of this tale. For another selection of these illustrations, see Roger Loomis, A Mirror of Chaucer’s World (Princeton, NJ, 1965), pp. 154–59. Also see Robin Netherton, “The Tippet: Accessory after the Fact?,” in MC&T 1 (2005): 114–32, at 123 (see figs. 8.4–5). Dudley David Griffin, The Origin of the Griselda Story (Seattle, WA, 1931), pp. 42 n. 28, 92, and n. 28. Such a rationalization might be deemed necessary because an ordinary human seamstress would not possess the magic skills of fairy dressmakers.

102  Chaucer and Array that Walter was capable of equating Griselda’s size and shape, upon which he had gazed “Ful ofte” (line 233), with those of one of the maidens of his court, then we may understand that Griselda’s new garments in the Clerk’s Tale should be a satisfactory fit. Lacking any contrary indication from Chaucer or his Clerk-narrator, like that provided regarding Griselde’s old cote (lines 913–17), there is no valid reason to presume a misfit. 38 Walter’s reclothing of Griselda in fine dress and jewels follows the established practice, outlined by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, in which a husband provides a wardrobe for his bride through “marital gifts” that are part of a public display.39 That this display establishes his “masculine authority” over his bride, as Dyan Elliott phrases it,40 ironically only seems to obscure Walter’s early intuitive view of his wife as “ynogh” (line 365) even in her rude dress of “low degree” (lines 425–26). Thomas J. Farrell points out Walter’s earlier knowledge “that under low degree / Was ofte vertu hid” (IV 425–56) and his application of this perception to Griselda.41 At the same time and beyond the spectacle of Griselda’s change of costume, the Clerk’s audience would have been aware that Griselda had brought no dowry of a financial nature to this exchange, thus placing this union in the category of marriages that are “incomplete, hastily and carelessly fashioned.”42 And for audiences of all times, this change of clothing serves to emphasize the differences in original social status between Walter and Griselda.43 Reading Griselda’s New Smock

For these reasons I disagree with David Wallace’s claim that Griselda’s new garments and ornaments “cannot exactly or perfectly” fit her in his “‘When She Translated Was’: Humanism, Tyranny, and the Petrarchan Academy,” Chaucerian Polity (Stanford, CA, 1997), p. 287. 39 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The Griselda Complex: Dowry and Marriage Gifts in the Quattrecento,” Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago, 1985), pp. 213–46, esp. 219–30. 40 “For society at large, masculine authority is only truly secure when clothing symbolizes external, not internal realities,” states Dyan Elliott, in “Dress as Mediator between Inner and Outer Self: The Pious Matron of the High and Later Middle Ages,” MS 53 (1991): 279–308, at 308. 41 Thomas J. Farrell, “The Style of the Clerk’s Tale and the Functions of Its Glosses,” SP 86 (1989): 286–309, at 295. On Walter’s initial ability to see what others do not, see Kathryn L. Lynch, “Despoiling Griselda: Chaucer’s Walter and the Problem of Knowledge in the Clerk’s Tale,” SAC 10 (1998): 41–70, esp. 56; and Emma Campbell, “Sexual Poetics and the Politics of Translation in the Tale of Griselda,” CL 55 (2003): 191–216, esp. 200. 42 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 222, discusses any “alliance without both parties’ contributions [bridal dowry plus husband’s gifts] or lacking gifts to the bride.” 43 See Griffin, Origin, pp. 72–73. 38

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  103  In the late fourteenth century, and assuming the usual pattern of noble dress for that period, Griselda’s new and noble ensemble would consist of a lady’s usual three or four layers of garments44: a smock closest to her body, a cote worn over the smock, and a gown or surcote, with or without sleeves, as the outer layer. A mantle might have been worn over all. Add jewels and a crown,45 and Walter’s virtuous bride confirms the vital connection between clothing and identity in the Middle Ages, as discussed by Catherine Richardson,46 and visibly becomes, even to Walter’s people, the Marchioness Griselda. Sarah Stanbury refers to this ­reclothing as a “transformation and sacramental ritual,” and a “ritual investiture.”47 Griselda’s new smock would have been made in the style, fabric, and decoration of a quality suitable for the wife of a marquis. It would have been crafted in the finest linen or silk and perhaps suitably embroidered or decorated with silk binding or braid. There were a number of ways in which smocks might be cut, as medieval pilgrim badges depicting the Blessed Virgin’s chemise attest (Fig. 3.3).48 Yet another smock style was seen by those in attendance when the short version of this paper was presented at Kalamazoo: a reconstructed, plain, late-fourteenth-century-style smock, hand-sewn by Robin Netherton, and modeled by Cindy Myers. This smock, with a round low-cut neckline shaped by tiny pinch-pleating and bound with self-fabric, was made of good but not fine linen, and it would be classified among the broad range of smocks worn by middle- and upper-class women, according to Netherton.49 Its round neckline was designed to be low enough to be completely hidden from view when a cote and a gown were worn over it. We should also note the depictions of smocks made in more elaborate styles, either somewhat form-fitting, with gussets beneath the arm to give some freedom The names of the garments that make up a robe (suit of clothes) vary among costume historians for different periods and places of origin. See Heller, “Anxiety,” esp. p. 318; Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, 1980; repr. 1999), pp. 31–32, 38; Piponnier and Mane, Costumes, p. 78; Kohler, A History, p. 136 (fig. 148). 45 See Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, pp. 231–38, regarding the customary circulation of gifts, especially those that are circular in shape, such as rings, diadems, and belts, among the kinship group at the time of a wedding, all of which are more loans than permanent gifts. 46 Catherine Richardson, “‘Having nothing upon hym saving onely his sherte’: Event, Narrative and Material Culture in Early Modern England,” Clothing Culture, 1350– 1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Burlington, VT, 2004), pp. 209–22, esp. 214, 216. 47 See Sarah Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA, 2007), esp. pp. 131–34. 48 See E. Jane Burns, “Saracen Silk and the Virgin’s Chemise: Cultural Crossings in Cloth,” Speculum 81 (2006), pp. 365–97, esp. 367–8 9 (figs 1–3), from which my Fig. 3.3 is drawn. 49 Robin Netherton, in email correspondence Nov. 2, 2006, through May 5, 2007, especially May 4, 2007. 44

104  Chaucer and Array

3.3 Three styles of the Virgin Mary’s smock, from pilgrim badges; pen sketches from E. Jane Burns’ “Saracen Silk and the Virgin’s Chemise: Cultural Crossings in Cloth,” Speculum 81 (2006): 365–97, esp. 367–68 (figs. 1–3), from which this figure is drawn.

3.4  Egyptian man’s smock with silk binding at neck and wrist edge; pen sketch after Burnham’s Cut My Cote (fig. 30).

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  105 

3.5  Two styles of medieval smocks with gores and tapered sleeves; pen sketch drawn from Burns’ illustrations in “Saracen Silk,” 383 (fig. 6), 394 (fig. 11).

of movement, as in an Egyptian, Islamic, man’s tenth- to twelfth-century linen shirt bound at neck and wrist edges with silk (Fig. 3.4),50 or roomier, such as the medieval smocks with gores and tapered sleeves (Fig. 3.5).51 In whatever style Griselda’s new smock was fabricated, it could have been decorated with either

My Fig. 3.4 is sketched from Burnham, Cut My Cote, p. 11 (fig. 3). My images in Fig. 3.5 are drawn from Burns’s illustrations in “Saracen Silk,” p. 383 (fig. 6) and 394 (fig. 11); see also Burns’s discussion of the variety of chemise styles represented in these pilgrim badges, pp. 391–92; and the dating, p. 374.

50 51

106  Chaucer and Array

3.6  Sheer smock worn by Eve, from a fifteenth-century tapestry pictured in Tortora and Eubank’s Survey, 135 (fig. 6.12).

silk binding at neck edges and wrist edges (Fig. 3.4), or embroidered as was customary from the earliest times (Figs 3.1, 3.2), or decorated only around the neck edge and shoulder edge at the armhole, as in the sheer smock worn by Eve shown in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fifteenth-century tapestry (Fig. 3.6).52 Customarily, when current fashion permitted, smocks were decorated in those areas that would have been seen even when the lady’s other garment layers were in place,53 although smocks embroidered overall in areas unavailable to a

My Fig. 3.6 is drawn from Tortora and Eubank, Survey, p. 135 (fig. 6.12). According to Harris, 5000 Years, p. 243.

52 53

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  107 

3.7  Seventeenth-century embroidered smock; sketched from Burnham’s Cut My Cote, 13 (fig. 5).

public gaze are extant. For example, one may compare a seventeenth-century smock, embroidered in polychrome silk embroidery (Fig. 3.7),54 and a late sixteenth-century smock, embroidered in “lavender floss silk” and gold (Fig. 3.8).55 The manner in which these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century smocks were cut and sewn involves no details that were impossible for late-fourteenth-century seamstresses to achieve, although we have no surviving garments to offer as proof that such garment styles were worn at earlier dates. And we note that late-fourteenth-century fashion did not feature the display of smock areas as did both earlier and succeeding period styles. For example, see Fig. 3.9, where strips of embroidery known as black work decorate those parts of a c.1535 chemise revealed by the woman’s gown.56 My Fig. 3.7 is drawn from Burnham, Cut My Cote, p. 13 (fig. 5). My Fig. 3.8 is drawn from Tortora and Eubank, Survey, p. 173 (fig. 8.1). 56 My Fig. 3.9 is sketched from Tortora and Eubank, Survey, p. 182 (fig. 8.9). Other styles may be seen at these websites: http://expositions.bnf.fr/gastro/grands/114.htm, a 1432 Boccaccio manuscript depicting Griselda in a smock from Paris, Bibl. Nat., ms. Arsenal 5070, fol. 387; http://expositions.bnf.fr/gastro/grands/118.htm, a farmer’s wife in a smock, from ms. Arsenal 5070, fol. 347v; and http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/ mediator.exe?F-C&L=08100099&I=000121, a woman wearing a white smock with 54 55

108  Chaucer and Array

3.8  Late sixteenth-century embroidered smock; sketched from Tortora and Eubank, Survey, 173 (fig. 8.1).

In any case, Chaucer’s Clerk provides no fashion commentary concerning the details of Griselda’s smock. Perhaps this is because, as Farrell points out in his discussion of style, “the Clerk fairly consistently removes the rhetorical embellishment found in Petrarch.”57 In keeping with this practice, the Clerk would not be likely to add the rhetorical flourish of an intricate description of a “noble” style tiny pleats shaping the neckline, from Paris, Bibl. Nat., Richelieu ms. fr. 111, fol. 139. I am grateful to Robin Netherton for pointing out these websites. 57 On plain style, see Farrell, “Style of the Clerk’s Tale,” p. 297; see also Andrea DennyBrown, “Povre Griselda and the All-Consuming Archewyves,” SAC 28 (2006), pp. 77–115, at 83, 85.

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  109 

3.9  Early-sixteenth-century embroidered black-work chemise showing from under woman’s gown; sketched from Tortora and Eubank, Survey, 182 (fig. 8.9)

chemise. As saints’ lives generally include no rhetorical portraits in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, according to L. A. Haselmayer,58 might we assume that the same is true for stories of secular “saints” as well?59 While Chaucer provides no precise fashion details, his audience does know the effect of Griselda’s new ensemble. When Walter comments on Griselda’s sartorial transformation, he quite briefly states, “That I yow took out of youre povere array,/and putte yow in estaat of heigh noblesse … ” (lines 467–68). The change

L. A. Haselmayer, “Chaucer and Medieval Verse Portraiture,” Dissertation, Yale University (1937), p. 170. 59 ClT has been characterized as secular hagiography, as an ideal narrative, and as an exemplum. See James Sledd, “The Clerk’s Tale: The Monsters and the Critics,” MP 51 (1953), pp. 73–82; repr. in Edward Wagenknecht, ed., Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism (New York, 1959), pp. 226–39, at 233; Helen Cooper, “An Encyclopedia of Kinds,” Chaucer, ed. Corinne Saunders (Oxford, 2001), pp. 218–39, at 230; Dyan Elliott, “Marriage,” Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, eds Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 40–58, at 46; Carolyn Van Dyke, “The Clerk’s and Franklin’s Subjected Subjects,” SAC 17 (1995): 45–68, at 46; and Charlotte C. Morse, “The Exemplary Griselda,” SAC 7 (1985): 51–86. 58

110  Chaucer and Array of Griselda’s fortune is symbolized in her change of dress from rude to courtly.60 In these lines, Walter summarizes an exchange of “old for new” that Dolores W. Frese describes as “elevated from the simple episode of the folk sources to the ritual status of a religious clothing ceremony in the Clerk’s narrative.”61 Going one step further, we might understand these new garments as signaling the putting on of Christ within Griselda’s life, as an analogy of “the life of Christian conversion,” as Charlotte C. Morse suggests.62 However, in his summary, Walter specifically addresses his wife’s social estate, and equates it to his own; thus we may assume that the effect of Griselda’s elevation would normally be reflected in even the least of her garments – her smock. Yet these new garments produce no change in Griselda’s representation of stability – her fidelity.63 Fashionable garments are irrelevant to her, in sharp contrast to the literary evidence concerning attitudes toward clothing presented by Heller. From such evidence, Heller argues that the wearer of fashionable dress, obviously admired by others, feels an enhanced sense of social approval, self-worth, and individuality.64 Conversely, the only interest Griselda ever expresses in her dress occurs later because, as she states, she wishes to protect Walter’s honor.65 Reading Griselda’s Second Clothing Transformation In the process of being divorced, Chaucer’s Griselda comments on both her initial costume transformation and her abandoned old clothes, abandoned because she accepted the life Walter offered her and its requirements: For as I lefte at hoom al my clothyng … … And took youre clothyng; wherfore I yow preye,

Alfred L. Kellogg writes of the Petrarch version of this story in “The Evolution of the Clerk’s Tale: A Study in Connotation,” in his Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, NJ, 1972), pp. 276–329, at 290. Kellogg does not specifically compare Griselda’s two costumes to Fortune’s, but one may note the obvious similarities to Griselda’s old/new changes in clothing in Le Roman de la Rose, lines 6122–56 (trans. Dahlberg, pp. 121–22). Here is a description of Fortune’s two houses and corresponding costumes – her queenly dress and subsequent stripping away of this lavish dress to the level of “nothing worth anything.” 61 Dolores W. Frese, “Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: The Monsters and the Critics Reconsidered,” ChauR 8 (1973), pp. 133–46; esp. 137. 62 Charlotte C. Morse, “Hovering Typology in The Clerk’s Tale,” Typology and English Medieval Literature, ed. Hugh T. Keenan (New York, 1992), pp. 141–48, at 145. 63 Lynch, “Despoiling Griselda,” pp. 63–64; and Baskins reminds us that Boccaccio “stresses Griselda’s static and unchanging essence, the way in which she refuses to be identified by outward costume” in “Griselda,” p. 166. 64 Heller, Fashion, pp. 25–29, 98. 65 For a different but parallel motivation, see Susan Crane regarding Griselda’s smock worn for the sake of modesty and her “visibility” in The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia, PA, 2002), p. 36. 60

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  111  Dooth youre plesaunce; I wol youre lust obeye.

(lines 654, 657–58)

Those old clothes, her only worldly goods, epitomize her social status before Griselda espoused Walter. In her second clothing transformation, emphasizing her reversal of status from being Walter’s wife to being a discarded wife returned to the status of Janicula’s daughter, we again note Chaucer’s spare costume rhetoric, a leanness emphasized in comparison with a later version of this tale. The “Ballad of patient Grissell” (c. 1600), offers more informative details of dress, details which, although the ballad is dated much later, would not have changed significantly since the late fourteenth century. In this ballad, we first learn that Grissell’s “countrey russet” (a rough fabric) was changed by her husband to “silk and velue” (luxury fabrics). Then when the ballad’s Marquis prepares to send Grissell from court, he informs her, Thou must be stript out of thy costly garments all. and as thou comest to me. In homely gray in steed of bisse & pucest pall now all thy cloathing must be. … Her veluet gown most patienely [sic] she slipped off, her kirtles of silks with the same: Her russet gown was broght again with many a scoffe.66

However, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale offers no such clothing details, as Griselda says, But ther as ye me profre swich dowaire As I first broghte, it is wel in my mynde It were my wrecched clothes, nothyng faire, The whiche to me were hard now for to fynde.

(lines 848–51)

Further, she acknowledges that: Ye dide me streepe out of my povre weede, And richely me cladden, of youre grace.

(lines 863–64)

Clearly Griselda’s earlier “wrecched,” “povre,” and “nothyng faire” smock constitutes a lowly body covering, indeed, when compared to the kind of fine undergarment she would have worn daily as Walter’s wife. As later lines make clear, retaining the fine smock she wears at the time, Griselda divests herself of her courtly array and returns it to Walter’s keeping:

Included in Bronfman, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, pp. 131–36. Her bibliography lists, “‘A most pleasant ballad of patient Grissell. To the tune of the Brides good morrow.’ Ca. 1600; Huth Collection, BL, STC 12384; rpt., The Roxburghe Ballads 2 (Hertford, 1874); also other editions,” p. 138.

66

112  Chaucer and Array And heere agayn your clothyng I restoore, And eek your weddyng ryng, for everemore. The remenant of youre jueles redy be Inwith youre chambre, dar I saufly sayn.

(lines 867–70)

Griselda’s Second Despoiling, Enacted Dramatizing the truism that experiential background heightens understanding, Griselda’s time-consuming divestment of courtly dress was enacted during the reading of Alan Gaylord’s paper, “Griselda’s Smok: The Naked Truth,” in a session sponsored by the Medieval Association of the Midwest, May 12, 2007, at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Kalamazoo, Michigan. The following is an account of this second despoiling: In response to her cue given by Gaylord, Robin Netherton, in the guise of “Griselda,” wearing a reconstructed late fourteenth-century ensemble, entered from the back of the room and walked up the aisle.67 She faced the audience to provide a complete view of her dress, then faced Gaylord who, for the purposes of her modeling, took the place of Walter.   Having first removed her ruffled veil, unpinned her braids, and loosened her hair, “Griselda” unfastened the dozen large jeweled buttons down the front of her blue and red wool brocade overgown. Still facing “Walter,” and carefully tugging on her fur-trimmed sleeves, she eased the gown off her shoulders with some difficulty and removed this overgarment. Given the circumstances of the literary text, quite correctly, she had no help from a tiring woman. She laid the overgown on a nearby chair and then removed her leather shoes, buckled garters, and woolen hose. With these actions, “Griselda” complied with Chaucer’s text that describes her as bareheaded and barefooted when she leaves Walter’s court. Her linked metal belt, a fringed silk purse, and a necklace joined the footwear on the growing pile.   Still gazing at her “husband,” “Griselda” next unlaced the front opening of her red silk cote and unbuttoned the numerous tiny buttons of her sleeves from wrist to elbow. This process also took considerable time. She then bent over and drew the skirt of the cote forward over her head, pulling it inside out. She struggled to free her arms from the tight cote sleeves. Finally the cote was removed, leaving “Griselda” standing in her single remaining garment, her white linen smock. At this point, she picked up the stack of clothes on the chair and, thrusting them forward, presented them to “Walter,” who was startled into accepting them.

Throughout this enactment, with the time spinning out into eight, possibly more, minutes, “Griselda” maintained eye contact with “Walter,” while the audience remained spellbound. All of us had read that scene, but none had imagined it taking so long and being as dramatic as we now knew it to be.

Netherton created the reconstructed costume based on her research of clothing from this period. The hose were made by Elizabeth Johnson, and the garters by Deborah Peters. Gina Frasson-Hudson assisted with dressing.

67

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  113  Some in the audience had surmised, beforehand, that Griselda would surely have gone to her room to undress. But, when the reenactment was finished, everyone had personally experienced how long such disrobing would take, how it would look, and how it would feel to witness Griselda disrobing, upon Walter’s demand. This time, her own despoiling made a major statement concerning Walter’s character and her obedience; in the emerging picture of Walter as husband of both kingdom and wife, he was neither wise nor benevolent, but all the while Griselda was obedient to her husband in every detail of her actions. Thus Griselda returns all of her marriage gifts when the marriage is terminated, as was customary for such provisional gifts.68 Griselda’s Commentary Regarding Her Transformations Griselda speaks of her two sartorial, marital, and social transformations: “Naked out of my fadres house,” quod she, “I cam, and naked moot I turne agayn”

(lines 871–72).

At this point she challenges Walter not to send her completely unclad into the streets to be seen by all. This challenge dramatizes the ideas advanced by McCracken that clothing “is sometimes an instrument of attempted domination,” and “sometimes an armoury of resistance and protest.”69 Walter initially illustrates the former idea of domination when he has Griselda’s old clothing removed and replaced by courtly dress suitable for a marchioness. And Griselda evokes the latter idea of resistance and protest when she simultaneously rejects Walter’s domination and requests, for his honor,70 that she might be allowed to keep her body covered by a smock: But yet I hope it be nat youre entente That I smoklees out of youre paleys wente. Ye koude nat doon so dishonest a thyng, That thilke wombe in which youre children leye

Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 241. McCracken, “Clothing as Language,” p. 109. Regarding clothing as a “potent tool” of control, see Margaret Rose Jaster, “Controlling Clothes, Manipulating Mates: Petruchio’s Griselda,” Shakespeare Studies 29 (2001): 93–108, esp. 93–97. Also note Talarico’s comment in “Dressing for Success,” p. 119, that Lïenor’s court dress was deployed as a “weapon and a trap.” 70 In two unpublished conference papers from 1998, John Carmi Parsons discussed royal women who appear in public places wearing only their smocks, and in both cases these acts of sartorial defiance are performed for the purpose of maintaining their husbands’ honor (“The Queen in Medieval Sermon Exempla,” and “Violence: The Queen’s Body and the Medieval Body Politic”). Concerning a literary smock signifying humiliation, see Guinevere’s despoiling, in Thomas Malory, Malory Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1977), p. 684 (lines 5, 12). 68 69

114  Chaucer and Array Sholde biforn the peple, in my walkyng, Be seyn al bare …

(lines 874–79)

Griselda humbly and specifically asks only that “swich a smok as I was wont to wear” (line 896) in her maiden days be given to her.71 This is a proactive and not a passive request. She seeks only a smock suitable to her former peasant state, plain and simple: wherfore I yow preye, Lat me nat lyk a worm go by the weye. … Wherfore, in gerdon of my maydenhede, Which that I broghte, and noght agayn I bere, As voucheth sauf to yeve me, to my meede, But swich a smok as I was wont to were, That I therwith may wrye the wombe of here That was youre wyf.

(lines 879–80, 883–88)

Either such a humble smock is nowhere to be found in Walter’s present stores, or he wishes to be – or is shamed or challenged into being – somewhat more generous than that. Neither Chaucer nor his Clerk-narrator specifies Walter’s motivation. As Robin Waugh points out, there is a “tension between stillness and action that exists in Walter’s orders concerning Griselda’s smock when she is cast out” with his directive: “‘Lat it be stille, and bere it forth with thee’” (line 891).72 However, having witnessed the drama of “Griselda’s” disrobing, we comprehend that Walter might have welcomed the end of this spectacle and been only too happy to allow Griselda to leave his court wearing the smock she had on. Reading Griselda’s Smock of Divorce For whatever reason, Walter grants Griselda the smock that she wears on her body at that time (line 890), which is necessarily one of fine quality. Concerning the effective value of this smock, Emma Campbell comments, “Griselda’s maidenhood is traded in for a smock.”73 From a literal standpoint, her body is not completely nude; from a symbolic point of view, she retains this last remnant of high social status, and perhaps this fine smock signals that Walter’s rejection is neither total nor final. Alternatively, her retention of this smock may well constitute Walter’s acknowledgment that by law he is obligated to cover Griselda in

See Cindy Carlson’s discussion of this request in “Chaucer’s Grisilde, Her Smock, and the Fashioning of a Character,” Styling Texts: Dress and Fashion in Literature, eds Cynthia Kuhn and Cindy Carlson (Youngstown, NY, 2007), pp. 33–48, at 37–45. 72 Robin Waugh, “A Woman in the Mind’s Eye (and Not): Narrators and Gazes in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale and in Two Analogues,” PQ 79 (2000): 1–18, at 12. 73 Campbell, “Sexual Poetics,” p. 210. 71

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  115  this one “necessary” garment.74 Thus she departs Walter’s court wearing a fine smock. She does not go in “rags,” as Patricia Cramer posits,75 although she goes to her father’s house bareheaded and barefoot in her smock (lines 890, 895), all undoubted signs of social humiliation.76 Griselda’s father tries to cover her smock-clad body with her “olde coote”77 but finds that it no longer fits her body (lines 911–17). This is a realistic touch and also a symbolic one. Realistically, in the intervening time period of her marriage, she would have undergone the changes wrought by time and the bearing of two children, as well as those brought about by social experience and courtly responsibilities. Literally and symbolically her “olde coote” would no longer fit. Although she dutifully returns to her father, her recent lifestyle has rendered her too large for ease in taking up her former circumstances, and her inability to resume wearing her old “coote” sartorially proclaims this truth. Nevertheless, she might wear this poorly fitting cote, even straining or bursting at the seams, when she returns to Walter at his request. Whatever her clothes at this time, they are described as “rude and somdeel eek torent” (line 1012) and “so povre array” (line 1020). Andrea Denny-Brown compares these torn garments to the Clerk’s own threadbare clothing [as depicted in his GP portrait] as “a symbol of pared-down simplicity.”78 If Griselda retains or wears the fine smock in which she returned to her father’s house, we do not hear of it. Reading Griselda’s Third Costume Transformation and Final Fine Smock Griselda’s marriage, as the Clerk-narrator relates it, is marked by three ritual strippings79 and two investitures of grandeur. In her second grand dressing, Griselda receives a cloth-of-gold gown. Already by the late 1380s and early 1390s, clothof-gold gowns may have been the traditional gift from an Italian bridegroom to his bride, according to Diane Owen Hughes.80 Muriel Whitaker comments about See Denny-Brown, “Povre Griselda,” p. 91. Patricia Cramer, “Lordship, Bondage, and the Erotic: The Psychological Bases of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale,” JEGP 89 (1990): 491–511, at 505. 76 Cramer, “Lordship,” pp. 500, 505 n. 33, posits a mythic background for Griselda’s humiliating stripping, citing George Bataille (Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo [New York, 1962], 18), who equates such public stripping with both killing and eroticism. Griffin, Origin, pp. 7–120, concurs, and provides the account of “Tulisa, the Wood-Cutter’s Daughter” and her changes of clothes (31–32). See also New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M457, fol. 85v, portraying prisoners further humiliated in wearing only a chemise for their public execution (reproduced in Tortora and Eubank, Survey, p. 133 [fig. 6.10]). 77 See Bronfman’s illustrations in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale for various artistic treatments of this cote. 78 Denny-Brown, “Povre Griselda,” p. 91. 79 On stripping and redressing, see Denny-Brown, “Povre Griselda,” pp. 79 n. 6, 103. 80 Such gowns, increasing in costliness, were ultimately forbidden in a 1443 Venetian law that banned both cloth of gold or silver and embroideries using gold or silver 74 75

116  Chaucer and Array Griselda’s “clooth of gold that brighte shoon” (line 1117) that Chaucer has added to this story, and her “croune of many a riche stoon” (line 1118), stating: [They] evoke the magnificent courtly dress of the International Gothic style … . Tropologically, the costume reasserts power, glory, magnanimity, and by bringing into play the aesthetics of light,81conveys beauty, harmony, purity. Anagogically the images of golden robe and jewelled crown reintroduce as a context for Griselda’s virtue the iconography of the Virgin Mary,82 whose liturgy had assimilated the words of Psalm xlv, 9, ‘Astitit regina a dextris tuis in vestitu deaurato’ (‘Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold’) and Psalm xxi, 3, ‘Posuiti in capite ejus coronam de lapide pretiosa’ (Thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head’), images that artists incorporated to depict the Virgin’s coronation.83

Once she is restored to her place as Walter’s wife, we may be certain that when Griselda is redressed in a gown made of cloth of gold84 (lines 1114–20), she first would be garbed in a smock made of fine fabric worthy to be embellished with equally fine decoration. The ultimate in fine smocks might be represented in the “Italian” body linen embroidered in gold and silver threads, especially the shirt with reversible embroidery, all part of the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum of New York. These garments were possibly part of a sixteenth-century dowry,85 but they represent nothing new in smock-making; gold and silver embroidery was



81



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83



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85

threads (Diane Owen Hughes, “Sumptuary Laws and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 69–99, esp. 78–79). Regarding the significance of light as it is reflected from fabric and clothing, see SarahGrace Heller, “Light as Glamour: The Luminescent Ideal of Beauty in the Roman de la Rose,” Speculum 76 (2001): 934–59. Concerning the analogical correspondences between the Virgin Mary and Griselda, see James I. Wimsatt, “The Blessed Virgin and the Two Coronations of Griselda,” Mediaevalia 6 (1980), pp. 187–207. Muriel Whitaker, “The Artists’ ‘Ideal Griselda,’” in Muriel Whitaker, ed., Sovereign Lady: Essays in Women in Middle English Literature (New York, 1995), pp. 85–114 at 90, citing Emile Mâle, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Dora Nussey (New York, 1958), p. 255. Cloth of gold is a general term that was used for numerous types of fabrics utilizing gold threads alone or mixed with threads of other colors. See the variety of such cloths described in Anne E. Wardwell, “Flight of the Phoenix: Crosscurrents in Late Thirteenth-to-Fourteenth-Century Silk Patterns and Motifs,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74 (1987): 2–31; Denny-Brown, “Povre Griselda,” pp. 102– 03; and this book, Chapter 1, pt. 1, n. 9. Kathy Page, in a paper presented May 11, 2007, at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, entitled “The Bare Essentials: The SixteenthCentury ‘Italian’ Underwear Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of New York.” See also the description of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s chemise, in Lesley K. Twomey, “Poverty and Richly Decorated Garments: A Re-Evaluation of Their Significance in the Vita Christi of Isabel de Villena,” in Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds, MC&T 3 (Woodbridge, 2007): 119–34, at 120, 130–31.

Reading Griselda’s Smocks in the Clerk’s Tale  117  well-known in fourteenth-century England. And there are also medieval literary precedents for gold-embellished body linen: for example, Dido’s shirt embellished with gold filament and Grammatica’s “delicate” silk shirt side-laced with gold “strings,” as discussed by Joachim Bumke, and the gold- or silver-embroidered silk shirt made by Soredamors in Chrétien de Troyes’ Cligés.86 Consideration of Griselda’s wearing such sumptuous dress, in each layer from the skin outward, provides a greater depth of meaning to John P. McCall’s idea that her “clooth of gold” gown and “coroune of many a riche stoon” were the visible display of her virtue “and the fruit of the complete abnegation of her will” – which was “sovereignty.”87 Griselda in this grand costume is figuratively dressed in her virtues. In addition, if Griselda represents the “soul of man – tested but constant,” as Robin Kirkpatrick states,88 then this golden raiment symbolizes not only that she wears her virtues, but also that, so dressed, she is the shining spectacle of a sovereign soul who has “put on the new man.” Thus, in his sartorial imagery in the Clerk’s Tale, Chaucer follows literary convention, but with unexpected and inventive twists. He might have written a set-piece portrait of a faithful, and some say saintly, marchioness of naturally noble, but originally peasant stock, and he could have included a detailed evocation of her costume in descriptio such as he bestows upon Alison in the Miller’s Tale. However, he does neither, leaving the details of Griselda’s smocks, rustic and fine, to be fabricated in the informed imaginations of his contemporary audience. Chaucer’s costume rhetoric reinforces each major development in the plot. However, as a result of Chaucer’s descriptive restraint from adding any late-fourteenth-century fashion commentary, the Clerk’s Tale remains, for the most part, rhetorically undressed. Members of the present-day audience necessarily must draw on contextual materials from medieval visual arts and literature, historical and sociological studies, and works on the history of costume and then, to the best of one’s ability, imagine and form mental pictures of the details of Griselda’s smocks in the Clerk’s Tale. In doing so, although we cannot totally recover authentic experiential knowledge, we may approach that comprehension possessed by Chaucer’s contemporary audience when they learn of Griselda’s “povre” smock, and knew without being told just how fine her marital smocks must have been.

Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley, CA, 1991), pp. 140–42; and Chrétien de Troyes, Cligés, ed. Alexandre Micha (Paris, 1957), p. 36 (lines 1145–54); trans. Comfort, Cligés, Arthurian Romances (New York, 1975), p. 106. 87 John P. McCall, “The Clerk’s Tale and the Theme of Obedience,” MLQ 27 (1966): 260–69, esp. 263. 88 Robin Kirkpatrick, “The Griselda Story in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer,” in Chaucer and the Italian Trecento, ed. Piero Boitani (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 231–48, at 235. 86

4



Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale1

I

n the Miller’s Tale, Chaucer provides an extensive introductory portrait of Alison, a winsome and nubile wife of an elderly carpenter. Her description is replete with arresting costume details. Such effictio is normally part of the “formal artistry” employed as rhetorical decoration in medieval romances at a “first appearance” of a character in a story and “when an account of their beauty could explain the attraction of one character for another.”2 However, Chaucer employs this artistic, rhetorical convention within the early lines of his Miller’s Tale (MilT), a fabliau, a genre in which it is not quite so much at home.3 Noteworthy because of its generic displacement, Chaucer’s elaborate depiction of an artisan’s wife is further enhanced by his fusion of artifice with “realistic similes and imagery.”4 According to D. S. Brewer, this lengthy passage is “partly a rhetorical joke the point of which is the absurdity of describing a carpenter’s wife, a wanton village wench, as if she were a heroine, a noble and ideal beauty.”5 Brewer states that Alison’s “clothes are also part of the joke” but does not

A shorter version of this paper, included in the title “Griselda in the Clerk’s Tale and Alison in the Miller’s Tale: Reading Smocks in Chaucer,” was presented May 12, 2007, at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI. 2 L. A. Haselmayer, “The Portraits in Troilus and Criseyde,” PQ 17 (1938): 220ff. Regarding “Chaucer and Medieval Verse Portraiture,” see Haselmayer’s unpublished diss., “Chaucer and Medieval Verse Portraiture,” Yale University (1937), esp. p. 201 concerning ME portraits before Chaucer; pp. 206–07 on “learned portraits” versus realistic types and Chaucer’s distinctive portraits; and p. 213 regarding Chaucer’s fabliaux portraits. 3 Haselmayer, “Chaucer” p. 160, states that the number of extended portraits in fabliaux is “relatively meagre.” 4 Haselmayer, “Chaucer” p. 368. 5 D. S. Brewer, “The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, Especially Harley Lyrics, Chaucer, and Some Elizabethans,” MLR 50 (1955), pp. 257–69, esp. 267–68. 1

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  119  elaborate this point.6 More recently, Hope Phyllis Weissman characterizes this description as “a parody of the rhetorical descriptio of the romance lady” – a “Courtly Damsel.” In this portrait, as Weissman comments, “considerable attention is … lavished on ornament.”7 Within the context of Chaucer’s corpus, this descriptio is even more notable because we are mindful that his romances and their noble characters lack such costume rhetoric, and the same may be said of their noble counterparts in his exempla. Most notable among the ornamentation8 in the Miller’s Tale are the illuminating and intimate details of Alison’s undergarment, her decorative smok, described in three lines of verse: Whit was hir smok, and broyden al bifoore And eek bihynde, on hir coler aboute, Of col-blak silk, withinne and eek withoute.

(I, lines 3238–40)

Alison’s smok and its sartorial details comprise the focal point of her lengthy portrait, and they illustrate and highlight the collective pretensions displayed in her costume. As an image, this smok frames her body while it informs the social satire of both portrait and tale. Alison’s smok and the Romance chemise The satire of this ample fabliau description may best be understood when contrasted with the treatment smocks normally receive in medieval romances, where they are most frequently mentioned as erotic dress.9 In medieval romances, this Brewer, “Ideal of Feminine Beauty,” p. 268. J. L. Lowes names this portrait a “masterpiece,” in Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston, MA, 1934), p. 218. 7 See Hope Phyllis Weissman, “Antifeminism and Chaucer’s Characterizations of Women,” Geoffrey Chaucer: Collection of Criticism, ed. George D. Economou (New York, 1995), pp. 93–110, at 102–03. 8 See Grant McCracken regarding “how material culture achieves the outward expression of inward ideas,” in “Clothing as Language: An Object Lesson in the Study of the Expressive Properties of Material Culture,” Material Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Material Culture, eds Barrie Reynolds and Margaret A. Stott (Lanham, MD, 1987), pp. 103–28, at 104; and especially 107 concerning “the communicative aspect of clothing.” 9 For romance treatment of smocks, see the discussions in Sue Niebrzydowski’s “‘So wel koude he me glose’: The Wife of Bath and the Eroticism of Touch,” pp. 18–26, and Amanda Hopkins’s “‘wordy vnthur wede’: Clothing, Nakedness and the Erotic in Some Romances of Medieval Britain,” pp. 53–70, both in The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain, eds Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton (Cambridge, 2007). For other literary examples of female shirts, see Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley, CA, 1991), pp. 140–43; Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York, 1998), p. 55; Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, Gallica 3 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 80–81, 83–85; John Block Friedman, “Costume and Transgressivity in the Pastourelle,” PMAM 10 (2003), pp. 49–80, esp. 57; and his 6

120  Chaucer and Array garment is most often referred to as a chemise, and descriptions of this garment serve to enhance the beauty of romance heroines. Smok, an Old English term as used in line 3238 and elsewhere, appears in Chaucer’s works nine times,10 in a variety of genres, and it is his only term for this feminine garment; he does not use its synonym chemise.11 Thus, linguistically, Chaucer chooses to dress Alison in realistic English terminology and basic garment, then rhetorically enhances this foundation with romance-style details such as embroidery. It is this contrasting combination – fabliau wench introduced through romance-type descriptio and wearing a romance-style smok – that yields Chaucer’s social and sartorial satire. The White Smock Taking the details of Alison’s smok (lines 3238–40) in order, we find that it is white, and indeed it would have been unusual had it been any other color. Had Chaucer stated that it was made of hemp, as the poorest peasants’ smocks often were, or even of linen, apparently less commonly worn by peasants,12 but more likely worn by females of the more affluent “People of Handicraft,” either fabric would have required bleaching, as was customarily done to linen, to achieve whiteness in any modern sense of that term. However, white may have been a term signifying relative lightness in the Middle Ages. Concerning Alison’s smock, Thomas W. Ross argues “That the smok is white (the color of purity) is clearly ironic.”13 However, he is stretching a point; literary smocks are usually “white” and so is Alison’s. Smock Fabric Apparently Chaucer thought it unnecessary to say what fabric was used in this smock worn by the young wife of a well-to-do, elderly carpenter and boarding



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Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, and Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY, 2010), esp. pp. 191–92. Christopher Cannon, The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words (Cambridge, MA, 1998), pp. 157, 162, 167, 171, and presentation of Chaucer’s lexicon. According to Cannon, Chaucer’s colloquial English diction would appear to be fresh literary usage when it appeared in his written texts. But Chaucer does use the term sherte (from OE scyrte), both literally and metaphorically for the male version of this basic garment. I use the term peasant in a general sense, acknowledging that in the Middle Ages this class was a broad one including all Commoners, or the Third Estate (broad terms). I think of Alison as the wife of a carpenter, a “rich gnof,” who belongs to a subdivision of the Commoners whom I call the “People of Handicraft,” borrowing this term from the 1363 Sumptuary Law, mentioned and cited below in p. 125 and nn. 30–32. Thomas W. Ross, ed., in his note to line 3238, on p. 145, in The Miller’s Tale: A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol. II The Canterbury Tales, Part 3 (Norman, OK, 1983).

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  121  house keeper, this “riche gnof”14 (line 3188), the very type of older husband whose young wife might wear clothes that emulated those worn by her betters. According to G. Vigarello, The quality of the material purchased often reflected social distinction. ‘The ell of cloth of Rheims’, fine and costly, for a shirt for Mme de Rochefort, a noble lady of Forez, in the early-fifteenth century, was not the same as the linen cloth bought for the shirts of the servants. The former cost five times as much as the latter.15

Chaucer’s contemporary audience would probably take for granted that Alison’s smock would be made of some undeterminable quality of linen.16 The alternatives, silk and hemp, may be ruled out: Silk would be an unlikely choice for this smock because it would have signaled notable ostentation too far in excess of her social station; and hemp would be an improbable choice because silken decoration would not have been lavished on a hempen-cloth smock. Thus linen of an acceptable quality is the most probable fabric for Alison’s smock, as it is embellished, broyden,17 in “col-blak silk” (line 3240). Chaucer, in leaving the smock fabric up to the presumption of his contemporary audience, evokes a finely balanced level of sartorial display in this description. Coler Alison’s smock is remarkably decorated, and most notable is the area surrounding the neck, the coler (line 3239). A certain amount of confusion exists among the definitions of coler. The Riverside gloss for this word is “collar,” as if it were the modern garment appendage of that name. In addition, the MED definitions 1–6 for coler are collectively nebulous, but Alison’s coler is most clearly defined by the first entry under definition 1(a), which reads: “An ornamental border at the neck of a garment.” The second description apparently assumes that “a collar” With the speculative etymology of “?cp.EFris,” gnof is one of Chaucer’s words that Cannon, Making of Chaucer’s English, p. 162, posits was already in the English vernacular but which, in Chaucer’s written text, seemed to be new usage. 15 G. Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1988), p. 51. Also see Sarah-Grace Heller’s discussion of the fabrics, representing different socio-economic classes, as chosen by Pygmalion to dress his statue, in “Fashioning a Woman: The Vernacular Pygmalion in the Romance of the Rose,” Medievalia et humanistica, n.s. 27 (2000): 1–18, esp. 4; and James E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1892; rpt. Vaduz, 1963), 2:540, 542, regarding purchases of cloth for various ranks in the years 1357, 1390, 1392, and 3: 994ff., beginning in 1401, provides even more divisions by rank, especially in 1413. 16 As discussed in Chapter 3, pp. 93–94. 17 Christopher Cannon, “The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words,” Diss. Harvard University, 1993, includes in his Chapter 4 (155–202), p. 182, embrouden (embroider) and designates the term as one of Chaucer’s words with OE roots, probably used in spoken English but not used regularly in English writings prior to Chaucer’s usage. 14

122  Chaucer and Array (as in a modern collar) would be a synonym, but visual depictions of styles of the 1380s do not support this definition. MED definition 1(b) (dated 1382), reads “a cape or wrap worn over the shoulders,” and there is no reason why this should not be what Chaucer meant by “coler.” To date, however, no one has favored this definition. Literary critics have supplied no additional clarification. For example, Robert E. Lewis claims that coler, a piece of “ornamental” clothing, was an established feature in Chaucer’s era. He prefers the idea that this term is part of the animal imagery used in Alison’s portrait, and cites dog, cat, and horse collars as examples.18 The work of costume historians, however, reveals that late-fourteenth-century collars were not constructed in a manner that would suit smocks. These collars stood high against the neck, reaching to mid-ear level on occasion, and visual representations show them on outer garments, such as houppelandes (over-garment, new style c. 1360).19 Not until c. 1415 do we find an illustration described by Margaret Scott showing something that is possibly relevant to Alison’s collar – a gown having a collar “spread over the shoulders, and the smock collar appears over it.”20 The somewhat smaller collar, folded outward and over the gown collar, Robert E. Lewis in “Alisoun’s ‘coler’: Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, lines 3239, 3242, 3265,” MS 32 (1970): 337–39, at 339. He offers no supporting references for his claim in his n. 6 that Alison might have borrowed an earlier fashion from the time of Edward III. Elsewhere, in Cleanness (line 1569), coler clearly refers to a gold necklace, in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds A. C. Cawley and J. J. Anderson (New York, 1976). 19 Robin Netherton discusses houppelandes and their collars in “Alison’s Coler Continued: Bringing the Visual Evidence to the Literary Problem,” p. 7, an unpublished paper presented May 9, 2008 at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. Also, see Margaret Scott, A Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth & Fifteenth Centuries (London, 1986), black and white pls 6, 37, 41 for collars closed up to chin level. For versions of collars with the front edges unbuttoned and standing open, see Scott’s black and white pls 48–49, 51, and Chaucer’s collar in color pl. 45; with collar opening flaring outward, black and white pls 53, 54 (with slight roll-over of collar). Another high-standing collar with partial fold-over is worn by a lady in a tapestry produced in France or Southern Netherlands, c. 1400, now in the Louvre, pictured in Camille, The Medieval Art of Love, p. 94, color pl. 80. 20 Scott, A Visual History of Costume, p. 63, black and white pl. 58 shows this collar spread out on the shoulders. Her pl. 58 depicts Joan Risain, wife of John Peryent, in a funerary brass of c. 1415. Other “folded-down” collars appear in black and white pls 62 and 67. We also note that Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy, and Appearance in Thirteenth-Century Sumptuary Laws and the Romance of the Rose,” French Historical Studies 27.2 (2004): 311–48, at 317, states that “collars do not figure in French women’s costume before the fifteenth century.” However, Fred S. Kleiner and Christin J. Mamiya, in Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 12th ed. (Belmont, CA, 2005), p. 513 pl. 18–49, provide a picture of a mid-thirteenth-century statue of the German Queen Uta and description: “she draws the collar of her gown partly across her face”; 18

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  123  definitely shows on top of the larger gown collar and both lie flat upon the shoulders, but there is no way to be certain that this smaller, entirely plain collar is that of a smock. It is more likely to be a cote collar. However, the type of convertible collar for which we search may be seen in an illumination in BnF, MS fr. 607, fol. 31v (detail), Paris, 1408, Christine de Pisan’s Cité des dames. This collar is worn by the lady wearing a pink houpeland, described as having “a standing collar of white lawn (presumably attached to her smock).”21 As for an ornamental border at the neckline (MED 1[a]), in Scott’s collection of photographs, not until c. 1495–1500 do we find a fashion including a low neckline beneath which there is an embroidered panel filling in the space, about which Scott comments that the lavish amount of embroidery here indicates that this area of the costume is purposely used for textile display.22 But it is impossible to tell if this display is an inserted decoration or an area of the smock that shows. Robin Netherton hypothesizes the possible existence in the late fourteenth and especially in the fifteenth century of a separate garment that was a linen “standing collar” attached to fabric covering the shoulders that could be affixed to the wearer with “tapes,” and which would serve the purpose of protecting an over garment from immediate contact with her body. In a paper concerned with Alison’s coler, Netherton drew supporting data from medieval visual arts, especially the depiction of the Miller’s wife in the Falcon tapestry, dated in the early 1430s, part of the Victoria and Albert Museum collection.23 Alison’s Costume’s Context Normally, as mentioned in Chapter 3, only literary smocks worn by noble ladies depicted in romances receive such detailed attention as Chaucer bestows on Alison’s smok’s description. However, such a smock is a fit complement to Alison’s girdle (ceynt) “barred al of silk”24 (line 3235), from which is suspended Uta holds this rolled-over collar up against her neck. The dates supplied are 1249–55. This same photo is reproduced on the website http://www.accd.edu/sac/vat/arthistory/ arts1303/goth2.htm. 21 Anne H. van Buren assisted by Roger S. Wieck, Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands 1325–1515 (New York, 2011), p. 114, picture F.67 on 115. 22 Scott, A Visual History of Costume, pp. 136–37, pl. 148 of an unknown woman of Cologne, from the Cologne school, oil on panel, now in the National Gallery, London. 23 Netherton draws on dated visual images from the late fourteenth century to show such collars protecting outer garments in her unpublished paper “Alison’s Coler Continued,” pp. 1–12, esp. 8–12. She has kindly granted permission for me to include information from her presentation in this chapter. 24 Alison’s girdle “barred al of silk,” I posit, does not include metallic mounts. Compare to the Sergeant of the Lawe’s “ceint of silk, with barres smale” (GP line 329), where the “barres” refer to vertical stripes. I have previously described the Sergeant’s girdle as “a belt probably made by tablet weaving with imported silk threads,” a “luxury item,” in Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue (C&C), Chaucer

124  Chaucer and Array a leather purse25 “perled with latoun” and hung with silk tassels (lines 3250– 51); and her barmclooth (apron), “whit as morne milk”26 that is “ful of many a goore” (lines 3236–37), a phrase meaning that the apron’s fullness is constructed through the joining and insertion of wedge-shaped pieces of fabric. A gore is not a “flounce” as Riverside glosses this term; however, a number of inserted gores, with their widest parts adjacent and sewn to each other, could create a flounce.27 In addition, Alison’s ensemble is accessorized in the same detailed manner by a white voluper (glossed “cap”)28 with “col-blak” silk “tapes” (ribbons), and a wide silk filet (glossed “headband”) (lines 3241–430).29 With the imagery ranging respectively up, down, and over Alison, “gent and smal,” and fetching: “a pope-



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29

Studies 26 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 111. Françoise Piponnier disagrees and posits that “‘barres’ … probably refers to a type of metallic mounts,” in her review of C&C, Speculum 77.4 (2002): 1316–18, at 1318. In refutation of this argument, see tabletwoven, striped fourteenth-century girdles with mounts (fig. 30a) and without (30b), in Geoff Egan and Frances Pritchard, Dress Accessories c. 1150–c. 1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 3 (London, 1991), pp. 48–49, which calls into question their citation of A. Hume’s 1863 comment that Chaucer uses barre to mean mounts three times, one of them concerning the Sergeant’s ceynt. Also see Lisa Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London, 1334–1446 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2003), pp. 196–97, regarding goldsmiths and notables in a 1382 procession wearing London’s colors of red and white in belts of red “barred with silver wire,” where “barred” indicates embroidery; and the MED definition for “barred” relative to MilT, line 3235 is 4 Ppl. (c.): … “marked with horizontal strips,” as cited by Thomas Ross, in his Explanatory notes for A Variorum Edition of The Miller’s Tale, p. 144. Alison’s purse is discussed in “A Hierarchy of Blades and Bags,” Chapter 6 in C&C. It is a descriptive bonus that we know the degree of whiteness of Alison’s apron, in that the poet likens its whiteness to that of morning milk (line 3236), a comparison with clear current meaning. Discussion on Chaucernet, May 20–25, 2008, yielded the information that morning milk, before it separates, has a whiteness not possessed after the cream rises to the top. Most helpful in this discussion were Alex Steer, and Peter and Calloway Beidler. See the line drawing of a garment with many gores in Elizabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150–1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 4 (London, 1992; 1996), p. 180, fig. 156. The precise nature of this headdress is unknown. James Robinson Planché speculates about its form in An Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Costume: From the First Century B.C. to C. 1760 (Mineola, NY, 2003), under VOLUPERE, pp. 516–17. Both Planché and Stella Mary Newton note that this garment is also worn by men and she describes the five “volupior’ per capite” made for the king “worked in pearls and tied with black ribbons.” See Newton’s Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1980; rpt. 1999), p. 27, concerning records of the early 1340s. Regarding her “filet” (line 3243), see Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, p. 132 and fig. 99; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, in “Pomp, Piety, and Keeping the Woman in Her Place: The Dress of Cnut and Ælfgifu-Emma,” MC&T 1 (2005): 41–52,

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  125  lote,” “a prymerole,” “a piggesnye” (lines 3233–68), the narrator then describes Alison’s prominent brooch on the low neckline of her smock, and shoes laced high upon her legs (lines 3265–67), a final feature that the ordinary viewer should not be expected to have seen. All of these costume details comprise evidence of her older husband’s doting and, indeed, make a contribution to the composite of Alison as the “popelot” and “wench” that the narrator names her (line 3254). Alison’s costume is highly ornamental overall, but her smock’s embroidery is the most significant and unusual feature in this already odd fabliau descriptio passage. Attitudes Toward Ornamentation In the Middle Ages, ornamentation in dress was, theoretically, restricted to the wealthy and/or noble classes. That Kings and legislative bodies issued waves of new sumptuary laws across the length of this period intending to mandate dress limitations demonstrates the failure of sumptuary legislation to effect austerity in dress for the lower classes and restraint for certain of the upper classes. However ineffective in practice, these laws do make plain the attitudes of the lawmakers concerned with maintaining social stability through dress regulation as they legislated the degree of decorative dress deemed acceptable for each social level and income group. No doubt Chaucer recalled this attitude toward embroidery as it was expressed in England’s defunct 1363 sumptuary law30 that instructed “People of Handicraft” and their dependents to wear “no Manner of Apparel embroidered … nor of Silk by no Way.”31 That law was in effect for less than one year, but those who had wished to bring order to English society through dress regulation, although they had failed, had not disappeared from the scene. Alison’s embroidery would have been recognized by many as a costume sign signaling social disorder and excess in dress for one in her social class.32 This same assumption of the unacceptability of ornamentation, including embroidery, was the basis of the 1375 Council of Zurich order “that no woman, whether married, widow, or ecclesiastic, should put embroidery on any cloth, veil, silk, or linen, but should leave it as first woven”; and, later, John Martin

at 49; and see Friedman, Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers, pp. 184–87, 189, for discussion of Alison’s “filet brood of silk” (line 3243). 30 This 1363 sumptuary law is the only one actually enacted in England during Chaucer’s lifetime, and it was rescinded in less than a year. It cannot have had the importance in his life and literature that some earlier critics have supposed. However, as it would have been controversial, had legal parallels throughout Europe, and because essentially the same laws were proposed and rejected again in 1378–79, it is probable that he noted the attitudes expressed in these 1363 laws. 31 The Statutes of the Realm 1 (1910; rpt. London, 1963), p. 380, Item 9. 32 As affirmed by Claire Sponsler, “Narrating the Social Order: Medieval Clothing Laws,” Clio 21.3 (1992), pp. 265–82, esp. 266, 269, 272–75, 280–81.

126  Chaucer and Array Vincent cites a 1503 Bern chronicle listing “embroideries” as among those things illustrating sins associated with “luxurious pride.”33 Although dealing with dress of a century after Chaucer, traditional negative attitudes about such generous ornamentation were written into law in 1488 Switzerland. For example, according to Zurich’s ordinances: No woman was to have a belt with metal mountings unless her husband had an income of a thousand gulden or over, and then it must not cost more than twelve gulden.Women of this class might have silk borders on their bodices, but without hooks or buckles.

Confiscation was the penalty for noncompliance. And it is worth noting that “forbidden ornaments are allowed to public prostitutes and no others.”34 In other words, only prostitutes, in 1488 Zurich, were allowed to wear the amount of ornamentation displayed in Alison’s costume, making quite plain the intrinsic temptation and sinfulness of such decoration.35 George F. Jones cites Hugo of Trimberg’s verse that illustrates negative attitudes about decorative dress and describes the sinful effect of young maidens wearing such finery: Blozer nac und gelwer kitel Lockent manigen valschen bitel. Snüere an röcken, an kiteln bilde Machent meide und knappen wilde. (1) [Bare neck and yellow dress lure many a false suitor. Ribbons on skirts and pictures (embroidery) on dresses make maids and youths wild.]36

John Martin Vincent, Costume and Conduct in Laws of Basel, Bern, and Zurich, 1370–1800 (Baltimore, MD, 1935), pp. 44, 49. Sumptuary laws frequently assumed the natural unchasteness of women as expressed through their dress, according to Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 118– 19. See also David Gary Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England, The New Middle Ages (New York, 2005), Chapter 7. 34 According to Vincent, Costume and Conduct, p. 45. Also, regarding wearers of such girdles, see n. 24 above. 35 Friedman classifies Alison’s costume and accessories as transgressive in Heavy Dancers, pp. 184–95. 36 George F. Jones, “Realism and Social Satire in Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring,” Diss., Columbia University, 1950, p. 110, citing Der Renner von Hugo von Trimberg, ed. G. Ehrismann (Tübingen 1908ff.), v. 12,577.

33

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  127  In this verse a bare neck, a bright yellow garment,37 decorative ribbons, and embroidery or “pictures”38 tempt both seducer and seduced to sin. In Chaucer’s portrait of Alison, he dresses her in two out of four of these distinguishing costume signs – low neckline and embroidery – although he does not tell us the pattern used for Alison’s embroidery and rejects an opportunity to paint her embroidery in gay colors, for example the red used in stitching Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite embroidery design.39 Possibly, we gain further interpretation of Alison’s easily seen smock collar from the Goodman of Paris (written in 1393). This Goodman instructs his young wife about proper behavior, restraint and order in dress, and claims that a visible “coler” indicates the wearer’s foolishness, ignorance, lack of care for her husband’s honor and estate; further, her dishevelment indicates a roving eye and lack of shame:40 See that you be honestly clad, without new devices and too much frippery, or too little. And before you leave your chamber or house, see you first that the collar of your shift, and your blanchet, your robe or your surcoat, straggle not forth one upon the other,41 as befalleth with certain drunken, foolish, or ignorant women, who have no regard for their honour, nor for the honesty of their estate or of their husbands, and go with roving eyes and head horribly reared up like unto a lion, their hair straying out See Bumke’s discussion of the derogatory connotations of garments dyed yellow, Courtly Culture, pp. 154–55. However, noble ladies in romances might wear “peacock dresses” (multi-colored) as he describes, p. 135. Vincent, Costume and Conduct, p. 49, provides a later but nevertheless provocative comment about yellow made by Valerius Anselm in the chronicle of Bern (1503): Valerius lists numerous clothing “extravagances” which should not be allowed, then “remarks that the yellow color formerly called ‘Judas’ has become the commonest of tints, one shade of which is already known as ‘Swiss Yellow’ (Schweyergelb)” –- clearly a fashion development he deems shameful. Also see the comments about yellow as required wearing for Leipzig prostitutes and as mentioned in Italian sumptuary laws in James Brundage, “Sumptuary Laws and Prostitution in Late Medieval Italy,” JMH 13 (1987): 343– 55, esp. 346, 351; Christopher Breward, The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress (Manchester, 1995), p. 67, regarding color symbolism; and Diane Owen Hughes in “Sumptuary Laws and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 69–99, esp. 92. 38 Brundage, “Sumptuary Laws,” p. 349 mentions the 1322 sumptuary law of Florence that “forbade the wearing of dresses decorated with pictures of trees, flowers, or birds.” 39 Planché, Illustrated Dictionary, p. 471. 40 As Netherton also points out in “Alison’s Coler Continued,” pp. 2–3. 41 The Goodman objects to this straggling into public view on the basis of its lack of restraint and its dishevelment, not because of its being fashionable as Friedman states in Heavy Dancers, p. 192.

37

128  Chaucer and Array of their wimples and the collars of their shifts and robes one upon the other, and walk mannishly and bear themselves uncouthly before folk without shame.42

If this medieval husband’s attitude about visible smock collars was widespread, and Chaucer knew of it, then his Alison’s smok is a loaded costume sign marking her at first sight as the wanton woman she proves herself to be in the remainder of the tale. One later bit of evidence suggests that the Goodman’s ideas about smocks showing from under outer garments may have become part of an artistic tradition in paintings of Mary Magdalene. About her depiction in Rogier van der Weyden’s ‘Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments,’ c. 1445, Margaret Scott points out, “We are offered a back view of the cote [Mary’s] and its seams … . The chemise shows above the neckline … ”.43 Is this artist making use of a long established sartorial truism regarding smocks on view?44 Research on Embroidery Not only is Alison’s smock, or part of it, visible but also its particular type of embroidery is distinctive, notable. Unfortunately, research on the history of embroidery offers little help in deciphering Chaucer’s depiction of the black silk enhancement of Alison’s smok. The idea that Chaucer provides us with written evidence of the presence of early black-work in his description of Alison’s coler is enticing and has been embraced by a number of writers on the subject of embroidery. They interpret Chaucer’s comment that this black silk thread embroidery was “withinne and eek withoute” the coler as an adequate description of early black-work, a reversible pattern, now most easily accessible to us because it became high fashion and an integral part of Queen Elizabeth I’s wardrobe (reigning 1558–1603), decorating her smocks, sleeves, and collar areas in her numerous portraits.45 Unfortunately, these authors have paid no attention to the precise stitches and techniques of a time-specific embroidery technique.46 Broyden Chaucerians have long accepted Riverside’s gloss for “broyden” as “embroidered,” and if this interpretation is correct, then Alison’s smock could have been embroidered in any number of ways. It might have been decorated in black silk The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier de Paris): A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris, c. 1393, trans. Eileen Power (new ed. Woodbridge, 2006), p. 37. Also see http://www.fibergeek.com/timeline.php, the Medieval Fashion Timeline, for Goodman, First Section, First Article. 43 See Scott, Visual History, p. 81, suggesting this artistic tradition, and her pl. 81. 44 I have found no one who pursues this idea. 45 See n. 52 below regarding black-work. 46 I am grateful to Netherton’s emails (2008) for assisting my understanding of the timeand technique-specificity of black-work. 42

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  129  patterns surrounding the neck, at cuff edges, along the lower hemline, and other areas.47 One particular medieval tapestry depiction of an embroidered smock48 is especially interesting in its portrayal of fabric and decoration, revealing Adam in a short sheer shirt with long sleeves embroidered at the armsceye (shoulder edge), and Eve wearing a longer diaphanous smock in the same style made with embroidery around the neck edge and armsceye.49 Alternatively, Alison’s smock embroidery could have been an all-over pattern, of which only the neck area shows because the rest is covered up,50 although in his portrait of Alison the narrator mentions no covering garment, or cote. Alison’s collar area might also have been embellished with strips of embroidery much like but not identical to those which later became known as black-work that decorate the neck area and sleeves of a Young Lady’s chemise revealed by her gown.51 Sixteenth-century blackwork may also be seen on both sides of the cuffs and collar, with corners turned back, in the portrait of Mary Neville, Lady Dacre by Hans Eworth, c. 1540, in the National Gallery of Canada.52 As we see in very early smocks depicted in Chapter 3, figs 3.1, 3.2, drawn respectively from Dorothy K. Burnham, Cut My Cote (Toronto, 1973), p. 9, pl. 4; and Jennifer Harris, ed., 5000 Years of Textiles (London, 1993), p. 243. 48 Fig. 3.6, in Chapter 3, is drawn from Phyllis G. Tortora and Keith Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume; A History of Western Dress, 4th ed. (New York, 2005), p. 135, fig. 6.12, portraying a fifteenth-century tapestry detail of Eve wearing a smock, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art tapestry fragment entitled “Seven Scenes from the Story of the Seven Sacraments and Their Prefigurations in the Old Testament” (acc. nos. 07.57.1–5), with this scene known as “God the Father Uniting Adam and Eve.” 49 According to Adolfo Salvatore Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1993), pp. 156–73, there is a debate about the dating of this tapestry – with dates ranging from 1425 to 1450. I am grateful to Christine Brennan, Collections Manager, The Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for providing this information in a letter to this author on March 16, 2007. 50 As in Chapter 3, figs 3.7, 3.8, from, respectively, Burnham, Cut My Cote, p. 13, fig. 5, a seventeenth-century (Italian ?) linen shirt with multi-color embroidery of silk, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Tortora and Eubank, Survey, p. 173, fig. 8.1, of a women’s chemise (“probably” Venetian) in white linen, embroidered in lavender “floss silk” and gold threads, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 51 As in Chapter 3, Fig. 3.9, drawn from Tortora and Eubank, Survey, p. 182, fig. 8.9, entitled Portrait of a Young Lady (Flemish, c. 1535), depicting the Lady wearing a gown that reveals a white chemise embroidered in black-work across the entire front yoke and close-fitting high neck edge with stand-up ruffle, and sleeve, from elbow to wrist, also finished with a ruffle, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 52 See www.tudor-portraits.com/LadyDacre.jpg. For other color representations of blackwork, see Karen Hearn, ed., Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630 (Rizzoli, NY, 1996), pp. 53, pl. 15; 103, pl. 54; 110, pl. 60; also the many black and white figures in Janet Arnold’s Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (London, 1988), esp. pp. 25–31, 94, 112, 150, 190, 224; and Breward, The Culture of 47

130  Chaucer and Array Some types of embroidery patterns are devised to create a design both “withinne” and “withoute,” and black-work, popular in the Tudor period, is one such pattern. But it is not the only such two-sided embroidery technique.53 Robin Netherton maintains, in “Alison’s Coler Continued,” that although books describing the history of needlework often offer Chaucer’s depiction of Alison’s smock as the “earliest allusion to black-work,” we lack any supporting artifacts or proof that black-work, with its specific stitches and patterns, was produced in England until more than a hundred years after Chaucer.54 Mary Gostelow posits that the embroidery on Alison’s smock is “Spanish work.”55 Reversible or twosided embroidery patterns have a long history, predating Chaucer’s time.56 This type of embroidery looks equally attractive on both sides, although it was also used to cover areas for which only one side might be viewed; however, optimally, it would be employed on some aspect of costume such as a flounce or stand-up



53



54



55



56

Fashion, p. 46, pl. 19, and his description of Elizabethan smocks p. 48. In addition, see examples of black-work in Mario Schuette and Sigrid Muller-Christensen, A Pictorial History of Embroidery, trans. Donald King (New York, 1964), p. 324, fig. 395; and George Wingfield Digby, Elizabethan Embroidery (New York, 1964), with numerous black and white plates. Also see the sixteenth-century smocks, their embroidery, and patterns in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 4: The Cut and Construction of Linen Shirts, Smocks, Neckwear, Headwear and Accessories for Men and Women, c. 1540– 1660 (London, 2008). Susan Frye describes “true stitch” as “a kind of embroidery exactly alike on both sides of the backing, exercised with a moral sense that it is ‘true’ because there is no rough, hidden underside of the embroidery,” in Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), p. 119; regarding a sampler of “true stitch,” see also p. 246 n.10. Note the patterns, stitches, and photographs of costumes displaying black-work throughout Elizabeth Geddes and Moyra McNeill, Blackwork Embroidery (New York, 1976), esp. p. 18. Geddes and McNeill comment that “the black embroidery he [Chaucer] mentions was a precursor of Tudor work, though most likely dissimilar in appearance.” In Mary Gostelow, Blackwork (London, 1976), pp. 12–13. I am appreciative of Netherton’s email comments, across the years of 2007–2008, concerning blackwork which is similar to, but not the same as, Chaucer’s depiction of Alison’s smock decoration. According to Kathleen Epstein Staples’s An Anonymous Woman: Her Work Wrought in the 17th Century (Austin, TX, 1992), p. 18. Staples states, “Double running patterns are found on textiles from Islamic Egypt and date to A.D. 1200–1300. Similar geometric patterns are found in the border designs of Persian carpets.” For examples of blackwork stitches, see pp. 16, 18–21 esp.; also Jane Stockton’s Historical Needlework Resources, “Embroidery for Clothing – Non-Counted Blackwork” (under “Class Handouts”) at http://needleprayse.webcon.net.au/research/index.html, where she provides both pattern and stitch information; and Digby’s definition of black-work and examples, in Elizabethan Embroidery, pp. 23, 94–95. See Gostelow, Blackwork, pp. 86–91, for the specific stitches used in black-work; pp. 200–36 for a description of English black-work.

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  131  collar that actually showed both sides. In any case, and most important, Alison’s smock, if fashioned to be worn beneath a cote and a gown of late-fourteenth-century style, would normally have no such feature because her smock collar area would ordinarily not be seen, being covered by her gown. Although my brief survey of the historic background of the smock and figures of this basic body garment includes garments of much earlier periods and also periods later than the Middle Ages,57 there is nothing about the embroidery patterns included in this survey nor in their placement that would have precluded any skilled medieval embroiderer from employing them. The pattern or stitchery technique could have been handed down, or else the embroiderer could have generated a new pattern to decorate a smock.58 A case in point is the favorite embroidery pattern (embroidered in red silk on her smock) of Queen Elizabeth I,59 that is, after all, a relatively simple pattern. In any case, we lack the physical evidence – extant garments and/or more precise records of these undergarments – to prove that black-work, per se, was ever done in the late fourteenth century. Nevertheless, we do have descriptions of clothing featuring embroidery listed in English accounts of the 1340s, with both time expended on construction and details of the patterns given. Stella Mary Newton mentions “three embroidered chemises,” “’faites a point de l’equile de Navarre’” that were also decorated with orphreys (patches of gold embroidery). Especially interesting items in this list mention local types of embroidery, indicating that regional patterns, or single village patterns, existed.60 In addition, we have an artifact exhibiting a reversible pattern: a sixteenth-century shirt, embroidered in gold and silver threads, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and described by Kathy Page in a paper entitled “The Bare Essentials: The

In Chapter 3, pp. 92–99 esp. Regarding the use of patterns for embroidery, “pricking and pounching,” and latefifteenth-century German printed patterns, see Kay Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen: Embroiderers (Toronto, 1991), pp. 32 (four pictures), and 64. Also, see Donald King and Santina Levey, The Victoria & Albert Museum’s Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750 (London, 1993; rpt. 2001), regarding monotone embroidery, pp. 16, 66–67, pls 61–64 esp. 64 showing a detail of a woman’s shift, and comments about publication of early embroidery patterns in Richard Shorleyker’s A Scholehouse for the Needle of 1632; and Breward’s comment, The Culture of Fashion, p. 45, regarding books of emblems as sources for embroidery patterns, and pl. 18. Adrian Poyntz, 1591, generated the first English book of printed embroidery patterns, New and singular patternes and workes of linnen (in London, J. Wolfe and Edward White, printers), and based on Federigo Vinciolo’s “Les Singvliers Et Nouvveaux Povrtraicts Et Ovvrages de Lingerie,” according to Margaret Abegg, Apropos Patterns for Embroidery, Lace and Woven Textiles (Bern, 1978), esp. pp. 110, 118 (in 110–24). 59 Mentioned earlier and pictured in Planché, Illustrated Dictionary, p. 471; also see his mention of smocks embroidered as gifts for her. 60 Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, pp. 21–2, 25. 57 58

132  Chaucer and Array Sixteenth-Century ‘Italian’ Underwear Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of New York.”61 G. Vigarello, having researched inventories of medieval clothing, comments that body linen was seldom included in records and, when it was mentioned, even in sumptuous inventories, such garments were present in only single-digit numbers.62 Vigarello offers no information on the decoration of body linen. Smock on View? The black silk decoration of Alison’s smok, as mentioned by Chaucer, does not include armscye, sleeves, wrist areas, or hemlines. Such omissions might mean any of several things: that all of these areas were in view but no such decoration existed (decorative restraint on the smock-maker’s part, interesting in itself); or second, that the narrator chose to comment on one notable area of Alison’s smock and leave the rest to audience presumption, perhaps according to what was then customary in smock embroidery. A third alternative is that this omission of embroidery detail could mean that these areas were covered by an additional garment, a cote or gown that Chaucer does not mention but which his contemporary audience might have taken for granted because wearing this second garment was the current practice.63 If Chaucer intended for a second garment to be assumed, it would not be the only such instance in Chaucer’s works in which he omits what needed no mention: the General Prologue (GP) Knight’s sword would have undoubtedly accompanied him on his travels, but Chaucer does not say so in his (GP). Although he was required by law to wear it, even in the king’s presence, the Sergeant of the Lawe’s coif, that functioned as his official badge of office, also is omitted from his GP portrait. Apparently neither sword nor coif was notable enough to mandate their inclusion in Chaucer’s costume descriptions, and both were so necessary to the Knight’s and Sergeant’s array and public identity that a medieval English audience would have been likely to assume their presence.64 Presented May 11, 2007 at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. The shirt is catalogued as #10.124.2. 62 Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness, pp. 50–52. Note: Vigarello equates shirt with cotte and doublet. In the end, we are uncertain just what he is counting, to the effect that we might wonder if shirts, named as shirts, should be listed in even smaller numbers than he states. Also, regarding body linen, see Françoise Piponnier, “Linge de maison et linge de corps au Moyen Age,” Ethnologie française 3 (1986): 239–48; and Monique de Fontanès’s overview of the chemise in “Un Élément du costume propre à l’Europe: la chemise,” Vêtements et sociétés, actes des journées de rencontre des 2 et 3 mars 1979, eds Monique de Fontanès and Yves Delaporte (Paris, 1981), pp. 123–41, esp. 123–25. 63 See Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, p. 81, fig. 55, for line drawings of females with their undergarments showing beneath a second garment, taken from The Romance of Alexander, Bodl. 264, fol. 98 (c. 1340). 64 I discuss the Knight’s and the Sergeant of the Lawe’s costumes in C&C, Chapters 2 and 5. 61

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  133  However, it is not so readily presumable that Alison wore another garment over her smock, one that, accidentally or purposely, allowed the coler area of her smock to show. Chaucer’s words dress Alison, literally, in a decorative smock with a many-gored “barmclooth” over it, but still we may question: what additional item of costume might his contemporary audience have mentally supplied? The very poorest peasants wore a smock as their only garment, but Alison hardly fits into that socio-economic category. What is known about costume in the late fourteenth century suggests that she would, in fact, wear a second garment65 which, in turn, would be protected by her “barmclooth.” However, in this period, such a second and covering garment ordinarily would have – should have – entirely covered the smock and all of its embroidery.66 The acknowledgment of Friedman, Heavy Dancers, pp. 191–93, agrees that such a garment would likely be part of this costume. 66 In other times and places, styles, as usually worn by the wealthy and the nobility, were designed to reveal portions of smocks and shirts, especially those parts that were decorative. See Herbert Norris, regarding shirts and smocks from 1066 through the fifteenth century, in Medieval Costume and Fashion (Mineola, NY, 1999), pp. 20, 25, featuring embroidered Norman shirts and smocks; 86–87 and fig. 100 for Queen Eleanor’s (1154–89) camise of chainsil showing above the neckband, clasped with jewels; 114, fig. 152 depicting decorated smock sleeve edging of a middle-class female (1154–1216); 158 concerning Queen Isabella’s effigy at Fontevraud with camise visible at her gown’s neckline; and see Bumke’s description of twelfth- through thirteenth-century shirts and covering garments, both with revealing side lacings, in Courtly Culture, pp. 140–43. Edith Ennen describes twelfth- and thirteenth-century linen shifts with ornamental borders that showed beneath an overgarment, and fifteenth-century undergarments, in The Medieval Woman, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford, 1989), pp. 216–18. Sarah-Grace Heller, “Limiting Yardage and Changes of Clothes: Sumptuary Legislation in Thirteenth-Century France, Languedoc, and Italy,” Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York, 2004), pp. 121–36, describes, 126, side-laced garments that permitted glimpses of pleated and embroidered chemises and the 1298 sumptuary law of Narbonne forbidding them. Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500 (London, 1981), p. 212, describes fifteenth-century smocks “as the Quattrocento progresses,” that are “revealed through slits and slashes down the sleeves and bodices, and around the neckline,” and that are “more decorated with embroidered bands around the collar and cuffs.” Elsewhere, see the portions of shirt and smock revealed in the clothing of Philip the Younger of Hanau-Münzenberg and wife Margret Weisskirchner (of middle-class origins), in a painting by the Master of the House Book, entitled “Pair of Lovers,” c. 1480, in the Museen der Stadt Gotha; also the neckline with rounded corners where the lace edge of her chemise shows as well as the open laces of the cote front revealing the white chemise below of a young Italian woman, c. 1500, in a painting by Sebastiano Mainardi, presently in the Staatliches Lindenau Museum, Altenburg. Both pictures are reproduced in Erika Uitz, Women in the Medieval Town, trans. from German by Sheila Marnie (London, 1990), pp. 127, 131, color plates 43 and 46. Especially notable are the revealed shirt and smock of the Uncourtly Lovers, a c. 1484 painting by the Master of the Housebook, 65

134  Chaucer and Array this customary style or fashion subsequently generates questions about the narrator’s knowledge of the black-silk-embroidered neckline or coler area. How would Chaucer’s contemporary audience imagine that such knowledge of this undergarment came to be known? Would they think that it ordinarily came from common neighborhood knowledge, village wash-day knowledge? Might they assume that it was derived from the Miller-narrator’s self-revealing, and/ or Alison-revealing, intimacy? Such questions are consonnant with Thomas W. Ross’s comment: Underwear embroidered in both front and back indicates vanity, extravagance, and sensuality. One wonders whether the embroidered ornaments were intended to attract only her old husband’s eye.67

This comment reveals that the ideas concerning the sinfulness of ornamentation inherent in earlier sumptuary laws continue to find a voice among today’s literary critics. Broyden Explored Broyden may not mean that Alison’s smock is embroidered, as the Riverside gloss assumes. According to the MED, breiden v. includes among its variants (#9) a form that is defined as “To plait or braid … to knit or weave … ppl. embroidered … ornamented, adorned, embellished.” Chaucer’s “broyden al bifore / And eek bihynde” is included among the quotations that illustrate this definition. And given this definition, it is entirely possible that Alison’s shift is finished off with braid68 or woven binding of black silk covering the neck opening and wrist openings.69 I in the Gotha Museum, reproduced in Camille, The Medieval Art of Love, p. 156, color pl. 143; and Salome’s sheer chemise with its insertions and bands of lace that show above the deliberately low neckline of her gown, as painted by Andrea Solario (Italian, c. 1460–1524), in the reproduction included in Sophie McConnell’s Metropolitan Jewelry (Boston, MA, 1991), pp. 14–15. Also see the embroidered smock revealed above the neckline and at sleeve edges of the “Lady in Green,” painted by Agnolo Tori de Cosimo Bronzino (1503–72), at Hampton Court, England, and reproduced in Gostelo, Blackwork, p. 54. Finally, portions of Bess Hardwick’s exquisite linen smock embroidered in red silk are displayed in her portrait (1557), entitled “Bess as Lady Cavendish,” in Santina M. Levey’s The Hardwick Hall Textiles (London, 1998; rpt. 1999), p. 8, fig. 4 (color), described on 9. The smock’s sleeves may be seen from above the elbow to the wrist ruffle, and its equally decorative high neck finished with a ruffle shows above the fur collar of her overgown. 67 Ross, A Variorum Edition of The Miller’s Tale, respectively, p. 146, notes to line 3241; and 145, line 3238. 68 Regarding tablet-woven silk braids, see Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland, Textiles and Clothing, pp. 130–42, esp. 130–1. 69 See Burnham’s Cut My Cote, fig. 3, described as made of linen “bound at neck and wrists with silk,” 11; and E. Jane Burns, “Saracen Silk and the Virgin’s Chemise: Cultural Crossings in Cloth,” Speculum 81 (2006): 365–97, at 383, fig. 6, a line drawing of the Virgin Mary’s chemise depicted in a pilgrim badge. For another

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  135  raise the possibility of braid or silken binding trim because Chaucer mentions the black “tapes of hir white voluper” (line 3241, glossed “ribbons”).70 Both smock neck edges and voluper edges could have utilized identical decorative black silk binding.71 Nevertheless, embroidery is the more enticing choice and perhaps even the most likely choice for Alison’s smock’s coler; certainly it would be the most showy and suitable to the romance portrait that the narrator parodies in this fabliau portrait. Fabliaux incorporate social satire, a type of literature in which lower-class adoption of aspects of noble dress regularly figures.72 Showy embroidery, as a staple of noble dress, is a likely feature of Alison’s dress as glossed for Chaucer’s broyden in lines 3238–40. Source for Alison’s Embroidered Coler? That Alison’s embroidered “coler,” as Chaucer describes it, does not fit into anything we know about actual smocks in the late fourteenth century is a circumstance that leads us to a question: might it be a literary relic borrowed from some earlier source or analogue, as yet undiscovered? Peter G. Beidler mentions the so far unrealized possibility of locating the origins of Chaucer’s allusions and side borrowings.73 Such a source could have originated in a different costume period in which portions of the smock were customarily seen. In Heile of Beersele, the one “hard analogue with near-source status” that Beidler posits for the Miller’s Tale, however, Heile’s smock, worn or unworn, is unmentioned. Absent a direct fabliau source or analogue, Chaucer necessarily receives the credit for Alison’s

late-fourteenth-century picture of the Virgin’s smock (although this garment is indexed in the manuscript as a coote), see an English manuscript of English poetry, The Miracles of the Virgin, The Vernon Manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng Poet. a1, fol. 124. For a black and white reproduction, see Maidie Hilmo, Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (Burlington, VT, 2004), fig. 43 and commentary on p. 134. 70 See the “face edge of the cap … bound with a strip of linen,” embroidered, and the cap’s ties [tapes?], as described by Camilla Luise Dahl and Isis Sturtewagen, in “The Cap of St. Birgitta,” MC&T 4, eds Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2008), pp. 99–142, at 101–3 and figs 6.1, 6.2; preliminarily dated fourteenth century, p. 104.   This type of cap was common outerwear (also used as a nightcap) in the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth centuries and was fossilized in the coif required by law for wear by Chaucer’s Man of Law, as I describe in C&C, pp. 107–09. 71 Netherton, too, remarks on these possibilities in “Alison’s Coler Continued,” p. 4. 72 Regarding dressing out of one’s class as a feature of satire, see Jones, “Realism and Social Satire,” pp. 105–10. 73 See Peter G. Beidler, “The Miller’s Tale,” S&A 2, eds Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 249–75, at 254–55. See p. 263 for the posited dating of the MilT, from 1380 through the 1390s, and for one of its possible sources, Heile van Beersele, 1350–75.

136  Chaucer and Array smock.74 I suggest, however, that Chaucer could have borrowed or modeled this garment, so decorative in its fabliau setting, from literary renderings of smocks in romances. Romances as Source One final evocative ornamental detail of Alison’s smock is her “brooch” neck-fastening: “A brooch she baar upon hir lowe coler, / As brood as is the boos of a bokeler” (lines 3265–66). Most likely, this brooch is simply an ornament and not a brooch actually needed to fasten an opening. A smock with a low neckline would not have needed a placket opening in order to go over the wearer’s head and would, therefore, have needed no fastening. Chaucer states plainly that her neckline was a “lowe coler,” a phrase that, as suggested earlier, refers to the neckline of the smock covering her collarbone area; such a smock should have lain neatly and unseen beneath any outer garment of the current mode featuring low necklines in the late fourteenth century.75 We find a literary precedent and motivation for the wearing of a brooch at the neckline of a decorative smock in a romance heroine’s costume, in Jean Renart’s thirteenth-century Romance of the Rose. When the noblewoman and potential queen Liénor dresses for her appearance at court, Jean tells us that in addition to wearing a white smock that was embroidered all over with flowers,76 Liénor, To show off her neck, … closed the top of her shift with an exquisitely worked and finely made gold brooch; she placed it rather low so that an opening, one finger wide, gave a glimpse of her breasts, white as snow on the branches. This made her look even lovelier.77

The thirteenth-century narrator judges Liénor’s deliberate visual seduction to be both effective and tasteful.78 In comparison, Alison’s large brooch, as big as the I am grateful for Beidler’s email discussion with me of this matter, November 19, 2007. 75 See the smocks in the following websites: http://expositions.bnf.fr/gastro/grands/114. htm a 1432 Boccaccio manuscript depicting Griselda in a smock on fol. 387 of Paris, BnF, Arsenal, MS 5070; a farmer’s wife in a smock at http://expositions.bnf.fr/gastro/ grands/118.htm, fol. 347v of MS 5070; and http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/mediator. exe?F-C&L=08100099&I=000121 a woman wearing a white smock that has tiny pleats shaping the neckline on fol. 139 of BNF Richelieu Manuscrits, Français 111. My thanks to Robin Netherton for pointing out these websites. 76 This heavily embroidered smock would be acceptable dress for a noblewoman. 77 Jean Renart, Romance of the Rose or Guillaume de Dole, trans. Patricia Terry and Nancy Vine Darling (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 77. See Patricia Williams, “Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion,” MC&T 8 (2012): 83–113, at 110–11, regarding the brooch at the neckline of the effigy of Princess Joan, daughter of King John of England, depicted in fig. 5.2, p. 106. 78 The same grouping of costume signs appears in the brooch worn along Judith’s gown’s slightly-opened neckline that folds back to reveal her smock beneath it, in the painting 74

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  137  “boos of a bokeler” which Riverside glosses as the “raised center of a shield,”79 would be, according to W. P. Albrecht, an example of “dramatic irony” because it demonstrates her “affectation” of “modesty.” In citing Albrecht’s description of Alison’s boss-size brooch, Ross adds his opinion that its size is an element of satire, “since it is too large for good taste.”80 Alternatively, perhaps any perception pertaining to taste and/or its lack resides simply in the differences between a fine gold brooch, aesthetically a work of art, worn by a noblewoman in a thirteenth-century romance, and a very large brooch of an unknown substance,81 worn by an elderly artisan’s unfaithful wife in a late fourteenth-century fabliau. Other non-fabliau literary examples of the shift-brooch combination may be found in Konrad von Würzburg’s description of Grammatica, also from the close of the thirteenth century. He tells of her silk shirt, perfectly tailored for her out of sheer fabric through which her body shone. This shirt also had gold threads that laced it on the sides. A valuable brooch fastened the edges of the neckline.82 Further, the descriptions of Largesse (lines 1166–69) and Venus (line 3417) in Le Roman de la Rose and their counterparts in The Romaunt (lines 1190–93, line 3718)83 include neck brooches.84 In each of these cases, the necklines and brooches are seductively suitable to the characters wearing them, allegorical ladies presumably depicted as noblewomen, and beyond the sartorial rules of a class system.



79



80



81



82

by Jacopo Palma the Elder (c. 1480–1528), depicting Judith, in the Uffizi, Florence; reproduced in Luciano Berti, The Uffizi (Firenze, 1985), lower p. 92; such visual seduction is also present in the previously mentioned picture of Salome in n. 66 above. Offering a suggested measurement, Netherton estimates such a boss to measure about four inches across, in “Alison’s Coler Continued,” p. 4. W. P. Albrecht, “Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale,” Expl 9 (1951), item 25; and Ross, A Variorum Edition of The Miller’s Tale, 151, note to line 3266. A comparison of Albrecht’s article with Ross’s editorial comment reveals that the statement about taste is a Ross addition. See the various base metals used to make brooches in Jean de Garlande, The Dictionarius of John de Garlande, and the author’s commentary, translated into English and annotated by Barbara Blatt Rubin, ed. Barbara Blatt Rubin (Lawrence, KS, 1981), pp. 26–27, versus goldsmiths’s brooches, 38–39. As described by Bumke, Courtly Culture, pp. 141–42 and n. 80 quoting Konrad von Würzburg, Engelhard, ed. P. Gereke and I. Reiffenstein, 2nd ed. (1963), lines 3034–47: dô truoc diu schoene ein hemde von sîden an ir lîbe, daz nie deheime wibe ein kleit sô rehte wol gezam, ez was sô kleine, als ich vernam, daz man dar durch ir wîze hût (diu was alsam ein blüendez krût) sach liuhten bî den zîten. mit golde zuo den sîten gebrîset was ir lîp dar în. man sach ir senften brüstelîn an dem kleide reine strozen harte kleine, als ez zwên epfel waeren.

Venus is described in section B of The Romaunt, generally not considered to be Chaucer’s work. 84 See Heller’s trans. of Le Roman de la Rose line 3417, in Fashion, pp. 107–08; Dahlberg’s trans. mentions a buckle instead. 83

138  Chaucer and Array In fine, as a fabliau protagonist, peasant wife Alison’s embroidered smock and brooch, imitations of the noble dress of allegory and romance ladies, are notably not as elegant as Liénor’s and Grammatica’s, and possibly Largesse’s or Venus’s. In addition, Alison’s brooch would constitute ornamentation on top of the ornamentation already provided in the embellished coler area. And Ross is correct as he points out, “the brooch certainly calls attention to her ‘loue coler’.”85 This additional imitation of noble ornamentation heightens the sartorial satire of Alison’s costume. I suggest that Chaucer’s costume rhetoric may have derived from smocks and brooches worn by some such noble literary ladies as mentioned above. Alison’s large brooch rides proudly on her decorative smock, a garment that, in a decorous, late-fourteenth-century noble lady’s ensemble, would be a proper but unseen undergarment. Classification and Conclusion We may classify Alison’s embroidered smock within the middle range of literary smocks. Although it certainly outshines any smock Griselda in her “olde geere” (IV, line 372) might have worn, it is not nearly so fine as that of Liénor’s chemise, previously described.86 In addition, it pales in comparison to the smock at the most extravagant end of a continuum of literary smocks, that sewn by Soredamors in Cligés. In Cligés, the queen makes a gift to Alexander of a soft, white silk shirt with “delicate texture” and gold and silver stitchery. The queen does not know that the gold threads have been augmented by Soredamors’ own blond hair. Because this embroidery includes Alexander’s chosen lady’s hair, it is indeed a most intimate gift to him,87 and because Soredamors made the shirt, including her own hair in its golden embroidery, she is present in person in this garment. Her hair has become a “synecdochical substitute” for herself,88 entwined in a gift that he will wear on his own body. Alison’s portrait in the Miller’s Tale, structurally composed as a rhetorical decoration set forth in the introductory manner of romance descriptio, is stylistically a masterpiece in the social satire mode, and her decorative smock and large brooch occupy pride of place among the other costume signs described in this Ross, A Variorum Edition of The Miller’s Tale, p. 35. He notes, p. 145, that Chaucer uses coler three times, and thereby repeatedly “calls attention to Alison’s neck and bosom.” 86 Nor is it so elaborate as the white silk chemise embroidered in gold, silver, and manycolored silks, described by P. Basc in the poem “Ab greu cossire,” discussed by SarahGrace Heller, “Limiting,” p. 132. 87 Chrétien de Troyes, Cligés, ed. Alexandre Micha (Paris, 1957), pp. 41–43; Cligés, Chrétien de Troyes Arthurian Romances, trans. W.W. Comfort (New York, 1975), p. 106, verses 1147–96. Also see E. Jane Burns’s discussion of this chemise in Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia, PA, 2002), pp. 63–65. 88 According to Monica Wright, “Their Clothing Becomes Them: The Narrative Function of Clothing in Chrétien de Troyes,” ArthL 20 (2003), pp. 31–42, at 3–4. 85

Reading Alison’s Smock in the Miller’s Tale  139  portrait. The additional touch of oversized brooch accentuates Alison’s elaborate and transgressive costume. Chaucer creatively combines rhetorical tradition and select romance costume rhetoric with homely natural imagery in this fabliau portrait as he depicts Alison, the carpenter’s wenche and adulterous wife, wearing a beautiful smok more suitable to grace the body of Griselda in the role of Marquis Walter’s faithful wife. In addition, the Miller’s Tale provides yet another reversal of audience expectation as Chaucer, who has given us Criseyde, Emilye, and Griselda portrayed with a minimum of costume signs, now presents a peasant popelote surrounded by the romance rhetoric of descriptio, which he has witheld from his noble heroines.

5 Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “knyght auntrous”

“No writer of Middle English stanzaic verse shows such versatile technical mastery as Chaucer does in the Prologue and Tale of Sir Thopas,” states E. G. Stanley, hastening to add that this mastery is demonstrated in Chaucer’s “incompetence.”1 Stanley refers here to the General Prologue fiction of the pilgrim-narrator’s “incompetence,” of course, and to the court poet extraordinaire Geoffrey Chaucer’s “versatile technical mastery.” Both of these Chaucers produce the Tale of Sir Thopas, managing to incorporate numerous romance motifs and conventions, at the same time satisfying and exasperating audience expectations. Nowhere is this process of reversal so apparent as it is in his costume rhetoric for this tale that provides two complete costumes – one for court and one for combat – thus embellishing the identification2 and characterization of Sir Thopas, Flemish knight, resident of Poperyng. We recall Chaucer’s presentation of other protagonist knights who people his works and especially his romances as described in the preceding chapters of this book, knights whose meager descriptions contrast with his extended depictions of Thopas. A primary example of sparse costume description is the unnamed pilgrim Knight of the General Prologue who is identified sartorially only by his “gypon” that is “bismotered” by râme, rust, derived from his habergeon. Ironically, this knight narrates a tale in which knightly participants in Theseus’s tournament scour and shine their arms and armor in preparation for the spectacle. This is a preparation that culminates in Chaucer’s descriptio of Lygurge and Emetrius, E. G. Stanley, “The use of Bob-Lines in Sir Thopas,” NM 73 (1972): 417–26, 426. Clothing as vital evidence in establishing legal identity is described by Valentin Groebner, “Describing the Person, Reading the Signs in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Identity Papers, Vested Figures, and the Limits of Identification, 1400–1600,” Documenting Individual Identity, eds Jane Caplan and John Torpey (Princeton, NJ, 2001), pp. 15–27, esp. 24–26. Also see Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2012), pp. 68–113, regarding clothing as social identity; and Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity (Chicago and London, 1994), for a sociological treatment of identity and fashion.

1 2

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  141  two minor characters, whose widely divergent formal depictions are designed to capture audience imaginations.3 Another of Chaucer’s knights is Troilus, who is not described in the traditional descriptio frequently employed for romance protagonists, but instead is limned only sketchily, through Criseyde’s eyes, and dressed in armor that bears witness to the ferocity of battle in which he is victorious.4 Further, although Chaucer likens him to a peacock, Troilus never appears in this poem arrayed in the colorful princely court dress to which he is entitled. We learn little about the costume of the knight in The Book of the Duchess, other than that he is dressed in black, contemporarily suitable both for fashionable dress and for mourning. As for “old Januarie” in the Merchant’s Tale, whose festive attire for his wedding might have entertained audiences had it been verbally depicted – Chaucer specifically dresses him only in a night sherte worn on his wedding night. Also disappointing romance expectations regarding sartorial descriptions is the costume rhetoric bestowed upon the faithless lover of Anelida and “hero,” Arcite in Anelida and Arcite, who metaphorically dresses himself in “newfanglenesse,” as he literally wears the colors of his new lady-love, even as Anelida enjoys a deceptive dream of him clad in blue clothing signifying faithfulness. And finally, we recall the rapist-knight in the Wife of Bath’s Tale who bears no identification in name, dress or armor. Chaucer presents the romance ideal of “knights in shining armor” only in his group depiction of the tournament knights in the Knight’s Tale. Meanwhile, the protagonists of this tale, Arcite, Palamon, Emelye, and Theseus, do not receive the sartorial benefits of this conventional idealization.5 In contrast to the knights mentioned above, Sir Thopas bears the distinction of being Chaucer’s only knight-protagonist who is thoroughly identified by name, geographic origin, and two complete costumes, one in descriptio depicting dress for courtly wear, and one for combat, in a scene modeled on the conventional literary arming scene describing, among other things, his identifying coat of arms.6 This chapter will demonstrate that through his costume rhetoric, Chaucer both follows conventions and frustrates audience expectations as his descriptions function to reveal Thopas’s character and underscore Chaucer’s comedy.7

See Chapter 1 pt 1, pp. 25–28. See Troilus and Criseyde (Book II, lines 638–42), as discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 63–64. 5 Regarding Chaucer’s attitude toward knighthood, chivalry, and war see R. F. Yeager, “‘Pax Poetica’: On the Pacifism of Chaucer and Gower,” SAC 9 (1987): 97–121, esp. 110 and nn. 39, and 111, describing Chaucer’s method of undercutting positive portrayals of chivalry via follow-up statements and “contextual circumstances.” 6 Louis August Haselmayer, Jr., omits treatment of Thopas’s costumes in “Chaucer and Medieval Verse Portraiture,” Diss., Yale University, 1937, pp. 213, 256–61. 7 Regarding Chaucer’s focus, see Joseph A. Dane, “The Eighteenth-Century Creation of Chaucerian Burlesque,” Parody: Critical Concepts Versue Literary Practices, Aristophanes to Sterne (Norman, OK and London, 1988), pp. 185–203, at p. 193; J. A. Burrow, “Chaucer’s Sir Thopas and La Prise de Nuevile,” Yearbook of English Studies 3 4

142  Chaucer and Array Although its opening leads the audience to think that the Thopas is an ordinary romance, the audience soon learns that this tale’s collage of romance motifs, its up-so-doun rhetorical techniques, and its author’s insistence on making up rules as he goes along8 produces, instead, a mock romance9 written in the traditional English romance rhythms of tail rhyme. Thopas in “Courtly” Dress Chaucer’s opening depiction of the protagonist for this tale, “a knyght … fair and gent / In bataille and in tourneyment,” a knight named Thopas (VII, lines 715– 17), suggests that this knight will play his part in a usual kind of romance, one that might encompass a descriptio following Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s directions for the rhetorical amplification of beauty, beginning with the head and proceeding to the toe, and adding the details of attire that would enhance this portrait.10

14 (1984), pp. 44–55, for a comparison of style, especially in the arming scenes. Burrow states that the target of Chaucer’s burlesque is the “‘high’ world of the English romances,” and that Thopas is “essentially a literary burlesque,” pp. 49, 54–55. 8 See Thomas J. Garbáty, “Chaucer and Comedy,” Versions of Medieval Comedy, ed. Paul Ruggiers (Norman, OK, 1977), pp. 173–90, at 175. 9 See the discussion of this tale’s genre in Laura F. Hodges, “Costume Comedy: Sir Thopas’s ‘Courtly’ Dress,” Interpretations and Performance: Essays in Honor of Alan T. Gaylord , eds Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné (Provo, UT, 2013), pp. 171–83; also Walter Scheps, “Sir Thopas: The Bourgeois Knight, the Minstrel and the Critics,” TSL 11 (1966): 35–43, esp. 36 n. 13, 38–39; Melissa Furrow’s Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 57–58, 94, esp. 201, and her “Middle English Fabliaux and Modern Myth,” ELH 56 (1989): 1–18, at 15–16; J. A. Burrow’s explanatory notes to this tale in Riverside, pp. 917–18; Dane, Parody, pp. 177, 186; Irving Linn, “The Arming of Sir Thopas,” MLN 51 (1936): 300–11, at 300; Mary Hamel, “And Now for Something Completely Different: The Relationship between the Prioress’s Tale and the Rime of Sir Thopas,” ChauR 14 (1980): 251–59, at 252–53; Scheps, “Sir Thopas,” 35, nn. 1–7; Alan T. Gaylord, “The Moment of Sir Thopas: Towards a New Look at Chaucer’s Language,” ChauR 16 (1982): 311–29, esp. 313–14, 319 and his “Chaucer’s Dainty ‘Dogerel’: The ‘Elvyssh’ Prosody of Sir Thopas,” SAC 1 (1979): 83–104, at 103; Dana M. Symons, “Comic Pleasures: Chaucer and Popular Romance,” Medieval English Comedy: Profane Arts of the Middle Ages, eds Sandra M. Hordis and Paul Hardwick (Turnhout, Belgium, 2007), pp. 83–109; Yeager, “‘Pax Poetica’,” 115, n. 55, 121; Glenn Wright, “Modern Inconveniences: Rethinking the Parody in The Tale of Sir Thopas,” Genre 30 (1997): 167–94, especially the bibliography for this topic, 191–94; Lee Patterson, “‘What Man Artow?’: Authorial Self-Definition in The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Tale of Melibee,” SAC 11 (1989): 117–75, at 134–35; Laura Alandis Hibbard Loomis, “Sir Thopas,” Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, eds W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York, 1958), pp. 486–559, at 486; and William Henry Schofield, Chivalry in English Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1912), pp. 44–45. 10 “Geoffrey of Vinsauf: from The New Poetry,” trans. Margaret F. Nims, Chaucer Sources and Backgrounds, ed. Robert P. Miller (New York, 1977), pp. 66–68, at

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  143  However, Chaucer’s choice to deviate from Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s rules of order works quickly to destroy audience expectations of enjoying the usual kind of romance11 starring an illustrious, “topazius”12 Thopas. Initially, then, this tale’s audience would expect a “topazius” costume, one that is bright and of superlative quality, to adorn a romance knight-protagonist so-named13 as he is first described in lines 715–17. And, initially, Chaucer does 67–68. We note that Geoffrey of Vinsauf specifies this technique for the description of female beauty, but his rules were applied generally. 11 Medieval romance knight-protagonists ordinarily represented idealized chivalry and dressed as chivalric manuals and knighting ceremonies required with the expectation that chivalric values expressed outwardly would be inwardly internalized. Such expectations, also expressed in religious orders regarding dress regulations as well as in secular sumptuary laws, were often disappointed by actual practice. For religious dress, chivalric dress, and medieval dress in general, see Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (C&Cl), pp. 1–5. 12 John Conley, “The Peculiar Name Thopas,” SP 73 (1976): 42–61, at 60 and n. 87, and referring to Dante’s Paradiso XV, 85, regarding vivo topaz and Dante’s use of this term in his Divine Comedy regarding his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, a crusader, with a “resplendent and gem-like spirit.” See J. A. Burrow’s Explanatory Note for line 717, Riverside p. 918, regarding the name of Thopas where it is critically associated with signifying “such a gem of a knight,” with biblical excellence, and a name bestowed upon males and females in French poetry; with “ironical eulogy”; also with effeminacy and chastity; and, in medieval lapidaries, with protection against lust. Other associations are less favorable. Roland M. Smith, “The Name of Sir Thopas,” MLN 5.5 (1936): 314–15, provides examples of Topas used in romances as a name for females and views Chaucer’s employment of it for Sir Thopas as a feminizing touch. E. S. Kooper discusses medieval interpretations of the topaz as possible illuminations of Chaucer’s name choice for this knight in “Inverted Images in Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas,” SN 56:2 (1984): 147–54, at 147–50. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Diminishing Masculinity in Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas,” Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Peter G. Beidler, Chaucer Studies 25 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 143–55, at 154, posits that Chaucer’s naming Sir Thopas after a precious stone is “a highly unusual appellation.” Cohen compares this naming to that of Amourant in Amis and Amiloun. See also Loomis, “Sir Thopas,” p. 493; Joanne A. Charbonneau, “Sir Thopas,” S&A 2, eds Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, Chaucer Studies 35 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 649–714, at 653, 655–56; and “The Reply of Friar Daw Topias,” Political Poems and Songs Related to English History, From the Accession of Edw. III to that of Ric. III, vol. 2 (London, 1965), pp. 39–113. 13 Regarding the gemstone topaz, see Ronald W. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery: with a catalogue of the collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum ([London], 1992), pp. 29, 31; also George Frederick Kunz, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (Philadelphia, PA, 1913), pp. 311–12, equating the topaz with St. Matthew and with uprightness; and Sir John Ferne, The Blazon of Gentry (London, 1586; Amsterdam, 1973), p. 169, where the topazion is associated with the lion, the young age of adolescence, and gold. Kooper, “Inverted Images,” pp. 147–50, provides

144  Chaucer and Array not disappoint: he begins with a description of Thopas’s head, but with the third word in this line, he deviates from convention in providing Thopas with a “berd.” Yes, Thopas has the usual blond hair of medieval heroes, but its presence in a “berd … lyk saffroun,/ That to his girdel raughte adoun” (lines 1920*, 730) startles. These lines disturb in several ways: numerous romance knights have blond curly hair,14 but they do not have beards. Further, Thopas’s blond hair seems not to be curly – at least Chaucer does not say that it is. This beginning that both does and does not follow rhetorical tradition, alerts the audience to the idea that the poet may play fast and loose with literary conventions. And the succeeding lines confirm that apprehension: the poet details the following costume items in a downward, but occasionally sketchy, progression, mentioning Thopas’s girdle, and his Cordovan shoes. Here is the correct rhetorical direction, but the description is incomplete with the image of the girdle, ordinarily an important costume item, being too brief to be satisfactory. The poet then reverses the process and moves upward to describe “broun” hose from Bruges, and a “syklatoun” robe (lines 732–35), naming the most important of Thopas’s costume items last. These additions supply the portion of the costume omitted in the poet’s previous rapid descent, but such a down-then-up procedure produces a disorderly poetic effect. In addition, the jumble of this rhetorical process adds to the effect produced by Chaucer’s selection of tail-rhyme stanzas as the metrical form for this tale and assists narrator-Chaucer’s demonstration of “his incompetence”15 as a poet. Although tail-rhyme was considered to be “the archetypically English form of medieval romance,” the irregular rhythms of this form produced poetic lines that did not lend themselves to a smooth oral performance.16 In order to counteract such disorder and irregularity and to better determine the overall effect of Thopas’s court costume, we shall examine each garment and accessory, in the order that Geoffrey de Vinsauf recommends; going item by item down the body: first the robe of syklatoun, then the girdle, the broun hose from Bruges, and finally the Cordovan shoes. Thopas’s robe17 made of syklatoun, when



14



15 16



17

lapidary information: the topaz is reflective like a mirror, signifies chastity, repesents “superlative quality,” and it is called “the stone of kings,” and it “eulogize[s] the chivalric virtue of loyalty.” However, Conley, “Peculiar Name,”pp. 54–56, disagrees that Chaucer’s audience would have connected the topaz with chastity, but agrees that a topaz signifies the superlative, is bright and linked with royalty and gold, and with chivalric loyalty, pp. 56–61. Medieval romances with such characteristics as the Thopas possesses are too numerous to serve as conclusive sources. Charbonneau cites numerous romances and the features they have in common with Sir Thopas’s description, “Sir Thopas,” pp. 657– 712; as does Loomis, in “Sir Thopas,” pp. 486–559, providing extracts from romances, although many such features may be found elsewhere. Stanley’s term in “Use of Bob-Lines,” p. 426. According to Rhiannon Purdie, Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 12, 77. A robe is a set of garments to be worn together over appropriate body linen.

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  145  considered first, is especially attention-getting because this fabric was renowned for being a costly silk frequently woven with gold, and was often mentioned as being worn by saints and eminent noblemen or being the property of emperors.18 This fabric’s beauty and its silken sheen, possibly a two-fold sheen if it was indeed woven or embroidered with gold, would make an extraordinary robe for any knight to wear, and it is even more astonishing to find it in, as we later learn, a relatively unknown Flemish knight’s wardrobe. Such a robe worn by a knight would constitute a walking fortune. This syklatoun would most likely have been dyed with costly dyes, but Chaucer gives this silk no hue; wearing it

MED; Riverside gloss:”costly silken material.” James Robinson Planché describes syglaton as “a garment made of a rich stuff or silk, manufactured in the Cyclades” (citing Guillaume le Breton), the fabric, embroidered or interwoven with gold, worn by Henry III and his queen at their coronation, and the fabric used by knights for their surcoats worn over their armor, for mantles trimmed with fur, and he mentions the Spanish syglatons given as expensive gifts in Le Roman d’Alexandre, in An Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Costume: From the First Century B.C. to c.1760 (Mineola, NY, 2003), pp. 159–60. See E. Jane Burns’s Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), where siglaton is described as “gold brocades originally from Baghdad and other sites in the Middle East,” p. 45; as purchased by Christian pilgrims in Syria, p. 148, n. 33; and glossed as “Silk cloth decorated with patterned circles,” p. 186; Anna Murthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World,” The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), 1: 325–77, at 346–47; and Burrow’s Riverside note for line 734 recommending seeing Guy of Warwick, EETS, e.s. 42, 49, 59 (1883–91), Auchinleck MS 2835, p. 918, re: syklatoun; and Maurice Lombard, Les Textiles dans le monde musulman 7e–12e siècles (Paris: Mouton, 1978), p. 90. Ann S. Haskell, “Sir Thopas: The Puppet’s Puppet,” ChauR 9 (1975): 253–61, at 255, remarks on this fabric’s use in ecclesiastical vestments, garments worn by the Knights of Bath at the royal court, and mentioned by one commentator concerning the marriage of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence; this fabric is listed among late-fourteenth-century textiles in Wendy Childs, “Textiles,” Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, eds Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2012), pp. 604–05. Finally, Judith H. Anderson, “‘A Gentle Knight was Pricking on the Plaine’: The Chaucerian Connection,” English Literary Renaissance 15 (1985): 166–74, at 170, reminds us that “checklatoun” and its cost figured by the “jane” are among Edmund Spenser’s borrowings for Giant Disdain’s jacket: Book VI (Canto vii, stanza 43); however, Spenser’s own note for p. 626 defines checklaton as “a ‘kind of guilded leather with which they [the Anglo Irish] embroider theyr Irish jackes [i.e. jackets]’,” as depicted in Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland, in The Complete Poetical Works of Spenser, R. E. Neil Dodge, Cambridge ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1936). Spenser’s definition here is more reminiscent of the padded jacks of defense previously discussed in Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue, Chaucer Studies 26 (Cambridge, 2000) (C&C), pp. 42–47, esp. nn. 73–74, pls 3–4, and regarding soft armor, n. 87. According to Spenser’s own definition, his checklaton is clearly not the same fabric making up Thopas’s court robe.

18

146  Chaucer and Array Thopas would gleam and that is the significant quality of this robe – it would be “topazius.” Bisecting Thopas’s robe, at some point,19 was a girdle,20 a costume item often displayed with some pride by literary characters, whether it is made of woven silk, carved leather, precious metals, or some combination of these materials and decorated with metallic embroidery, metallic mounts, or jewels.21 Girdles were important enough to be mentioned as special bequests in medieval wills. Chaucer does give Thopas a girdle, but only as a measuring point for the length of his beard, in what is virtually a throw-away rhetorical move from a costume rhetoric perspective. The girdle might have complimented Thopas’s syklatoun robe. Had this been the case, it would have merited a detailed description of materials used and decoration applied. But Chaucer’s descriptio renders it neglible, and so must his audience. Chaucer’s audience, deprived of what could have been a gorgeous girdle description, receives another surprise when they learn of Thopas’s hose: “Of Brugges were his hosen broun” (line 733). These hose have a most respectable origin – Bruges, “the main commercial center in Flanders.”22 Although Poperinghe had its own textile industry, a purchase of goods from Bruges, a more prestigious commercial city, would possess its own cachet.23 However, and ironically, “hosen broun” might be a mundane purchase whatever its origin.24 We cannot know what fabric was used to make up these hose – perhaps a woolen cloth dyed brown,

This point varied depending on contemporary fashion. See David Humphrey, “Girdle: post-1100,” Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, eds Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward, pp. 232–33. Regarding variety in girdle decoration, see C&C, pp. 84–85, 111, 121–23, 181, and C&Cl, pp. 12, 33, 6567, 72, 76, 89–90. 21 Regarding girdles (belts), see Nicole D. Smith, Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature (Notre Dame, IN, 2012), pp. 37, 101; as important to chivalric dress, 107. 22 See Riverside Explanatory Notes for line 719 regarding Flanders, and for lines 720 regarding Poperyng and 733 regarding Bruges, p. 918. 23 William Askins, writes of Poperinghe’s textile industry in “All that Glisters: The Historical Setting of the Tale of Sir Thopas,” Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning, eds Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior (Notre Dame, IN, 2005), pp. 271–89, esp. 277–78. 24 I discuss fashionable hosen in the fourteenth century in “Costume Comedy,” pp. 176–79, citing Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1980; rpt. 1999), pp. 25, 55, 58; and Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, & Fine Clothing (Baltimore, MD and London, 2005), p. 45 and nn. 50–51, 102, and 106. See also Patricia Williams, “Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion,” MC&T 8 (2012): 83–113, at 101–02; regarding footgear described in the Mabinogian probably designed to make the wearers appear “absurd.” 19 20

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  147  or maybe an unbleached Flemish linen, known as “Holland brown.”25 Bruges woolen hose would have the advantage of allowing some stretching, but linen of less value was also made in Bruges and perhaps linen hose were purchased for that fabric’s particular qualities – coolness and texture against the skin. The question of fabric is pertinent because it affects the audience’s perception of color in Thopas’s costume. If his hose are woolen cloth dyed brown, then Chaucer has introduced a color term into this costume depiction. However, if Thopas’s hose are undyed linen and/or unbleached, then, although Chaucer’s contemporary audience would know the look of this fabric, still, the poet would have refrained from naming a specific color. A third possibility remains: broun or brun is sometimes used to mean gleaming or shining.26 This term conveys no color, but sheen was considered to be an attractive quality, and gleaming hose could be a match of sorts for Thopas’s shining syklatoun robe. This possibility is the least likely because the poet gives us no evidence of any process of weaving or added fiber, such as silk, that would produce a sheen and the MED specifies that broun used to indicate shining usually occurs in reference to steel, weapons, armor and glass. Possibly, Thopas’s hose were woolen dyed brown, an unfashionable color considered to be “dark,” “dull,” “cheerless,” and “gloomy.”27 Accordingly, such hose would be an unattractive accessory to Thopas’s syklatoun robe, and constitute a fashion faux pas. In the Middle Ages, as Herman Pleij posits, “Colors emphasized wealth and were therefore used to express power, ostentation, consequence, and distinction.”28 However, Pleij also mentions that brown hose were worn by a knight during his investiture, and they were intended to “remind him of the earth to which he would return.”29 But, most likely, and most satirically, we speculate that when he could be wearing the bi-color hose of contemporary high fashion,

Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (Cleveland, OH and New York, 1960); and OED. 26 See Sarah-Grace Heller, “Light as Glamour: The Luminescent Ideal of Beauty in the Roman de la Rose,” Speculum 76.4 (2001): 934–59. 27 MED 1a, and b. John Munro comments on the contemporary designation of brown as being “ugly” in “The Anti-Red Shift – to the Dark Side: Colour Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1550,” MC&T 3 (2007): 55–95, at 89. The MED lists Brǒun (adj.) defined as (def. 1a) “Dark, dull,” (b) “cheerless … gloomy,” (c) “deep”; (2a) “Of a brown color, brown”; and when referring to steel, weapons, armor, glass (5) “shining, polished, bright.” 28 Herman Pleij, Colors Demonic and Divine: Shades of Meaning in the Middle Ages and After, trans. Diane Webb (New York, 2004), p. 20. 29 Pleij, Colors. p. 31; see also 50: He cautions against the indiscriminate application of “medieval color symbolism [that] practically works on demand, offering a limitless range of possible applications,” stating that while brown also “stood for everything that was dark and sinister,” the most common interpretation was that brown signified “the utmost humility and a profound awareness of one’s own mortality.” 25

148  Chaucer and Array Thopas wears unbleached linen hose made of “Holland broun.”30 This fabric31 would mark him indelibly as a provincial knight, and as one unlikely to know how to put together a proper court ensemble. I have found no other medieval romance knight who wears such hose.32 Next in this sequence of Thopas’s costume items is his “shoon of cordewane” (line 732), a pair of Cordovan shoes. Cordovan33 leather was highly valued, and in the Middle Ages shoes made of this leather were considered fine footwear.34 According to the fifteenth-century Hastings MS, 122b, Cordovan was the type of leather recommended for shoes worn by knights who jousted on foot.35 As early

Regarding qualities of Holland linen, see C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late medieval England (New Haven, CT and London, 1999), p. 149. Unbleached Holland is the lowest quality of linen mentioned. Regarding “broun” meaning unbleached, see Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language. The OED gives essentially the same definition, and its examples indicate that the quality of some Holland linen was also “feyn.” The MED does not list Holland as a fabric. 31 The pricey luxury fabrics of the Netherlands (cited in medieval literature) that are discussed by Raymond van Uytven do not include Holland. However, he mentions chauces, “good trousers,” from Bruges and worn with “soft shoes of Cordovan leather,” alluded to in Des deux Bordoers ribauth in A. De Montaiglon, ed., Recueil général et complet des Fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe Siécles, 1 (Paris, 1872), in “Cloth in Medieval Literature of Western Europe,” Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, eds N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting, Pasold Studies in Textile History 2 (London, 1983), pp. 151–83 esp. 155–56. Van Uytven references Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s clothmaking in comparison with that of Ypres but makes no allusion to the Holland brown hose of Sir Thopas. They do not figure, apparently, in his catalogue of luxury Flemish fabrics. 32 “Well-made hose from Bruges,” however, are among the items advertised by the Mercer in the thirteenth-century anonymous trade poem, “Le Dit du Mercier,” ed. Philippe Ménard in Mélanges de langue et de litterature du moyen âge offerts à Jean Frappier (Geneve 1970) 2.797 – 818, and translated by John Block Friedman in “Chaucer’s Pardoner, Rutebeuf’s ‘Dit de l’herberie, the ‘Dit du Mercier,’ and Cultural History,” Viator 38.1 (2007): 289–319, at 315–18. As many of the wares hawked by this mercer have bogus qualities (with the mercer’s own falseness being established by Friedman [pp. 305–6] and his merchandise including items of silver-gilded pot metal sold as silver, “deceitful little trumperies,” and loaded dice being among them), the depiction of Bruges hose as being “well-made” might be suspect as well. It is possible, but unprovable, that “well-made hose from Bruges” is an oxymoron, well-known in its time. 33 Riverside glosses Cordewane as “Cordovan leather.” This term implies that the leather for Thopas’s shoes, or the shoes themselves, were imported from Spain. 34 Cordovan leather is often mentioned in medieval literature. For example, see Williams, “Dress and Dignity,” pp. 99–101. Williams, p. 100, states that “good quality shoes” constituted a “status symbol.” 35 See Charles Ffoulkes, The Armourer and His Craft: From the Xith to the XVIth Century (New York, 1988), p. 107, who writes of laced shoes of “‘thikke Cordwene’”; note the “shoen of red Lether thynne laced & fretted underneth wt whippecorde & persed,” 30

I  Arcitas and Palemon gaze at Emilia as she makes a rose garland, in Osterreich Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, MS Cod 2617, fol. 53, reproduced with the kind ­permission of the Austrian National Library.

II  An armed knight of Prato in tournament dress, in the c. 1335–1340 British Library, MS Royal 6 E IX, fol. 24. III  (opposite) Knights and ladies riding to the tournament, from a fifteenth-­ century French manuscript in the British Library, MS Harley 4379, fol. 99.

IV  Fabric-draped viewing stand and John Astley (left) jousting, in Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.775, fol. 2v. V  (opposite) Criseida in widow’s weeds leaving Troy, in a French translation by Pierre de Beauveau of Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato (dated XV 3/4), in the Bodleian Library, the University of Oxford, MS Douce 331, fol. 52

VI  Battle coat adorned with Criseida’s brooch, being displayed in Troy, in Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, translated by Louis de Beauvare into French (c. 1455–56), the Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 25,528, fol. 89v.

VII  The God of Love dressed in flowers, from The Romaunt of the Rose: Rendered Out of the French into English by Geoffrey Chaucer, Illustrated by Keith Henderson and Norman Wilkinson; 1908, published by Chatto & Windus; r­ eproduced with ­permission of the Random House Group Limited, London, UK.

VIII  The God of Love dancing, wearing floral-patterned gown, c. 1405, ­reproduced with the kind permission of the John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, MS Ludwig XV 7, fol. 8.

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  149  as 1272 in England, there was an active Cordwainer’s Company,36 that employed a variety of leathers such as sheepskin, goatskin, and, at some point, cattle hides from Cordoba, making it probable that Chaucer would be familiar with all of these leathers and that he would know Cordovan leather to be characteristically reddish in hue. It is possible, too, that his contemporary audience would share this knowledge. We note that once again the poet has evoked in this descriptio an idea of color while not mentioning any specific color term. In any case, Thopas’s high-quality Cordovan shoes would stand in sharp contrast to the Flemish clogs ridiculed in La Prise de Nuevile.37 In addition, these shoes would be a suitable accessory to Thopas’s extravagant silk robe; these two qualitatively superior costume items would book-end the other accessories: the girdle that is necessarily plain because it is not described, and the poor quality hose of broun, probably made of unbleached linen. Set off by these luxurious extremes, Thopas’s hose would be notable in contrast, and especially so if his robe is one of the short lengths, so popular in the second half of the fourteenth-century, that put the wearer’s hose on display. In addition, the notability of Thopas’s hose is diminished when we consider them only amidst the poet’s original down-and-up rhetorical disorder. Revealed as important to a considered analysis of Thopas’s ensemble, these homely hose undercut the notion that Thopas is fashionably or tastefully dressed. Moreover, the poet further reduces regard for Thopas’s ensemble as he gauges its value in terms of the “jane” (line 735), a Flemish coin worth very little: His shoon of cordewane, Of Brugges were his hosen broun, His robe was of syklatoun, That coste many a jane.

(lines 732–35)

It would be difficult to imagine how many janes would be needed to pay for his syklatoun robe alone, never mind including his Cordovan shoes in this monetary assessment. Perhaps bushel baskets would be needed to transport them. The jane as a point of reference in this regard is outrageous, but it does heighten the poet’s humor. Chaucer adds two further accessories to Thopas’s mismatched courtly costume: “And in his hand a launcegay, / A long swerd by his side” (lines 752–53). The long sword serves as a knight’s badge of office,38 and often in romances it is

in the treatise of 1434, p. 173ff.; and Francis Grew and Margrethe de Neergaard, Shoes and Pattens, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London: 2 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2006), pp. 4, 44, 46, 123, concerning the quality of Cordovan leather. 36 See Elizabeth Coatsworth, “Cordwainers,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles, eds Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward, p. 149. 37 Burrow, “Chaucer’s Sir Thopas,” pp. 44–55, at 51. 38 See S. J. Herben, Jr., “Arms and Armor in Chaucer,” Speculum 12 (1937): 475–87, at 477, regarding the long sword. See also Gavin Hughes, “Fourteenth-Century

150  Chaucer and Array minutely described and even named, but Thopas’s sword does not bear this distinction. His second weapon, the launcegay, is glossed as “a light lance” and often deemed a lightweight weapon: “Thopas is not fully armed for knightly combat … nor is he out hunting, so his purpose in ‘riding out’ is not clear.”39 A launcegay is “a parade or costume lance, a prop,” and unsuitable for use against a giant, according to Cohen’s judgment.40 However, Richard II thought this weapon was dangerous in the hands of enemies; as a result he forbade its use by horsed men in England unless he had granted them license to carry it.41 However the strength of the launcegay might be judged in England, Thopas, subject only to Flemish law, would be free to carry this weapon. Dressed in a girdled luxurious robe and Cordovan shoes, inadequately accessorized by his broun hose, and carrying two weapons, Thopas rides into the forrest and meets Olifaunt the giant who is armed with a mace and a “staf-slynge” (lines 807–08, 828–29). The weapons that Thopas carries and his skill at wielding them go untested because he retreats from this combat, promising to return with better weapons the following day. By his own standards, his long sword and launcegay are inadequate. So far in this tale, the poet has described the protagonist in a disorderly fashion that omits the customary, but not mandatory, detailed depictions of girdle and sword; and this presentation includes, as well, Thopas’s avoidance of combat. Because of this rhetorical disorder Chaucer’s audience members must make their judgments about Thopas while bringing their own sense of spatial sequence to bear upon this tale as they compare it to their experiential background of medieval romances. And they must do this reorganization as they are regaled within the jogging or “cantering” rhythms of tail-rhyme.42 At the same time, their familiarity with Chaucer’s customary rhetorical methodology and its abandonment in this tale could have given rise to wonder: why does Thopas merit this lengthy, if

Weaponry, Armour and Warfare in Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Chaucer in Context: A Golden Age of English Poetry, ed. Gerald Morgan (Bern, 2012), pp. 83–108. 39 According to Burrow, Riverside, p. 919, note for line 752. 40 Cohen, “Diminishing Masculinity,” p. 147. Herben posits that the “launcegay” is synonymously used in this work with “spere,” although others disagree, in “Arms and Armor,” p. 482. 41 These statutes, recorded in the Statutes of the Realm, date from the seventh and twentieth years of Richard II’s reign; see Sir William David Evans, Knt., A Collection of Statutes Connected with the General Administration of the Law; Arranged According to the Order of Subjects: with Notes, 3rd ed., corrected, 10 vols (London, 1836), 5:217–19, listed under “Riots, and Offences Attended with Riot and Violence.” I am grateful to Kenneth Thompson for pointing out these references; email to author of October 25, 2011. Also see David Scott-Macnab, “Sir Thopas and his Lancegay,” Chaucer in Context: A Golden Age of English Poetry, ed. Gerald Morgan (Bern, 2012), pp. 109–34. 42 Purdie, Anglicising Romance, pp. 4, 7, 77. See my “Costume Comedy,” pp. 182–83, regarding the effect of this meter on Chaucer’s costume rhetoric.

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  151  not complete, description, when Chaucer rarely provides a full costume for his romance characters and never for his other noble knight protagonists? Thopas’s costume, slightly lacking in its details, but otherwise complete in its enumeration of garments, is unique within the body of costume rhetoric for protagonist knights in Chaucer’s works. Although this ensemble is presented in a disorderly fashion, and its costume items are emphasized by their placement in its tail-rhyme rhythms, Chaucer’s audience would nevertheless understand, above all, that Thopas’s syklatoun robe was excessively grand for him to be wearing under ordinary circumstances, and that his Cordovan shoes were the best footwear available. Both costume items would be acceptable in any court, although the silken robe constitutes over-reaching for a knight of Thopas’s stature; but, at court – and even in his own manor – Thopas’s broun hose would proclaim his lack of courtly sartorial taste. In addition, this uncoordinated dress is unacceptable as a suitable outfit for “riding out” in a forest, or for combat with a giant; and, considered altogether as a fashion statement, it should certainly fail to impress his “elf-queene” (line 788). Chaucer’s Only Arming Scene In the second Fit of this tale, Chaucer produces his version of a conventional arming scene for his protagonist. Such a scene traditionally highlights a knight’s heroic and spiritual virtues and his serious preparation for battle. Further, this literary convention simultaneously illustrates the customary procedure for a knight’s arming, as described in chivalric manuals. Coming upon this arming scene in Thopas, audience expectations, having already been jostled about by Chaucer’s comedic court costume, might well be primed for more disorder. If so, they would not be entirely disappointed. We learn that Thopas prepares for his forthcoming armed encounter with Olifaunt by enjoying the “game and glee” orchestrated by his “myrie men” and his “mynstrales and geestours,” which include, at his request, the recounting of romances “roiales, / Of popes and of cardinales,” as well as of “love-likynge” (lines 845–*2040). Here is an all-purpose mélange of romance topics lumped into one command, and surely Burrow is correct in stating that “Chaucer certainly intends some incongruity here.”43 The festivities are accompanied by a feast of wine and an array of spiced sweets.44 This festive context bodes ill for any expectation that Chaucer will follow up with a serious arming scene. In the midst of this merriment, Thopas apparently arms himself, for no squire or comrade-in-arms is said to be assisting him. Perhaps Chaucer’s contemporaries would take such assistance for granted and it is only his modern audience who Explanatory Note for lines 848–50, Riverside, p. 921. Derek Brewer says that he knows no literary precedent for this wine scene, in “The Arming of the Warrior in European Literature and Chaucer,” Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C.S.E., eds Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy (Notre Dame, IN, 1979), pp. 221–43, at 238.

43 44

152  Chaucer and Array might question this procedure. However, a knowledge of the arming ritual order makes it clear that a single knight could not arm himself in the time sequence that Chaucer provides in this, the only full-scale arming scene in the corpus of his works, a scene written in a more or less conventional manner. Over time, Chaucer’s critics have accepted that Thopas’s arming scene is “a fairly realistic description of the successive stages of arming” and “any satire intended … must reside in the overelaboration of detail and in the emphasis upon the obvious.”45 Derek Brewer, having surveyed arming scenes from classical literature and medieval texts, comments on this point: “The arming of Sir Thopas contains a very usual selection of usual elements, with the quite reasonable and realistic addition of breeches and shirt beneath,”46 but he also raises the issue of the greaves, commenting that “they indeed are in a wrong and silly place.”47 This acceptance of Thopas’s arming scene as generally conventional with one minor exception in the donning of greaves is where the critical discussion has rested for some time, except for the occasional addition of details concerned with specific elements of Thopas’s armor. Alternatively, I should like to suggest that Sir Thopas is possibly both overarmed and under-armed, and in a manner that underscores his (or his unmentioned squire’s?) lack of experience in both “bataille” and “tourneyment.” Moreover, this failure in chivalric practice is either pathetic or bathetic. Thopas’s ineptitude as a knight shows plainly in several related instances that Chaucer deftly intermingles with correct practices. Thopas first dons his undergarments of breeches and shirt made of fine linen known as “cloth of lake”48 (lines 857–59), a detail that is missing from the numerous arming scenes recounted by Brewer, all of which begin with the donning of actual pieces of armor. However, Brewer notes that over time authors add to the canon of armor pieces: “the great poet reveals himself by the way he accepts with all its advantages of accumulated feelings the traditional topos, and yet adapts it to the purposes of his own poem … . Such adaptations require a response in the reader.”49 In this case, Chaucer adds underwear. And we Burrow’s note for lines 857–87, Riverside, p. 921, quoting Herben, “Arms and Armor,” from Spec. 12, 1937, pp. 475–87. Burrow also mentions Manly’s comments that this tale is full of deliberate mistakes and comic absurdities, in Essays & Studies 13:70. 46 The underwear issue was included among J. M. Manly’s comments in Essays and Studies, 13, p. 70 ff., as cited by Herben, “Arms and Armor,” p. 479, where Manly finds the addition of undergarments as a reasonable inclusion. Loomis, “Sir Thopas” p. 529, references Libeus Desconus regarding “a scherte of silk.” However, Linn, “Arming of Sir Thopas,” p. 309, claims that “clearly the shirt and breeches in Sir Thopas were added for humorous effect.” 47 Brewer, “Arming of the Warrior,” at pp. 237–38. 48 MED definition: lāk(e, laike [from MDu, MLG laken], “Fine linen, ?cambric.” The examples show that this fabric name is used as a comparative for white. 49 Brewer, “Arming of the Warrior,” p. 223. He also mentions, pp. 226–27, the two ways in which expansion of arming scenes are done in Irish folklore: “by adding extra articles of clothing or weapons … , and by adding clauses … describing the history and properties of the article and how it was put on,” citing Alan Bruford, “Gaelic Folktales 45

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  153  note that both “breech” and “sherte” are placed in the “afterthought” position, the bob-line, thus emphasizing the quality of the fabric from which they are made, as described in the four-beat couplet preceding that bob-line. This emphasis on quality is a motif carried forward in the mention of additional costume items, as if the quality of what Thopas wears, rather than the quality of the man himself, is the most important aspect of an armed knight. Ffoulkes mentions underwear worn under armor and for the armed man on foot (in the joust) as consisting only of “a thick doublet lined with silk, but with no shirt underneath; … “for when the body is hot from exertion and exercise a shirt is apt to ‘ruck up,’ and it would be impossible to readjust it when fully armed.”50 Notably, Thopas dons breeches and shirt of “lake fyn,” that is, fine linen. He arms for what could be a fatal encounter, but goes to his possible death as a dandy, serious about the fashion quality of his intimate garments.51 This dandy image stands in stark contrast to another that Brewer summons up – that of St. Paul’s warrior who has prepared for battle and “girded … [his] loins with truth.”52 Brewer lists no literary example that names the hero’s undergarments in an arming scene, although he does mention Gawain’s initial dress in his first arming scene in SGGK consisting of a “dublet of a dere tars,” which Winny translates as “a costly doublet of silk” (line 571).53 This silken doublet would constitute the protective layer, known as “soft armor,” worn under his byrné, his “linked mail-shirt” (line 580). In the second arming scene in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK) lines 2013ff., his chamberlain dresses Gawain: “fyrst he clad hym in his clothez the colde for to wear” [First he puts clothing on him to keep out the cold]. Clearly, here are garments worn beneath the armor, but although we learn their function, no details specifically designate them as body linen. Gawain’s silk dublet corresponds in its purpose to Thopas’s next layer as Chaucer describes the arming of the trunk of his body: “And next his sherte an aketoun” (line *2050).54 Claude Blair provides a detailed list and order of arming, and Medieval Romances,” Bealoideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society, IML, 34, 1966 (Dublin: 1969), p. 184. 50 Ffoulkes, Armourer and His Craft, pp. 105–08, esp. pp. 107–08, for reference to the document of his Appendix C, dated 1434, by Johan Hyll, Armorer Sergeant in the Kinge’s Armory, in his “Treatise of Worship in Arms” written for Henry VI. 51 Mark Dicicco points out that Thopas’s undergarments are made of the wrong fabric for combative purposes: “any soldier who has been wounded knows [that] linen or cotton fibres stick in a wound and are not easily removed whereas silk undergarments do not,” in “The Arming of Sir Thopas Reconsidered,” N&Q (March 1999): 14–16, at 14. 52 Brewer, “Arming of the Warrior,” p. 224. 53 See Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. James Winny (Lewiston, NY, 1992), pp. 34–35. 54 The aketoun is a quilted jacket worn under armor, according to Riverside’s gloss. This item is listed among the pieces of armor worn by Sir John de Creke, on his brass at Westley Waterless, Cambs, 1325, in Ffoulkes, Armourer and His Craft, fig. 53, p. 106. The order of donning armor is given as Beinbergs or jambs, Poleynes, Gambeson

154  Chaucer and Array which includes close-fitting body linen of “shirt, short breeches and hose,” followed by “mail chausses, gamboised cuisses with poleyns attached, schynbalds or greaves, sabatons and spurs,” topped by an aketon. In the usual order, the knight next dons either a “hauberk or haubergeon,” then a coat of plates [my emphasis]. Over this he wears a surcoat or gambeson, then a waist belt and sword-belt. Last come the gauntlets, “bascinet with its aventail,” possibly “supplemented by a helm surmounted by its crest.”55 After describing Thopas’s undergarments, Chaucer omits mention of the armor for feet and legs, but such omissions are not unusual, as medieval authors normally chose which pieces to highlight or omit in arming scenes. Thus, after this omission of leg/foot armor, Thopas proceeds to arm following the usual ritual and places his chain-mail shirt, his haubergeoun, over his aketoun. The two layers double the chances that an attempt to pierce the heart would be unsuccessful, as Chaucer’s line 862 suggests. But now comes an area of confusion, as Chaucer writes: or haketon, Hauberk, Upper pourpoint, Cyclas or surcoat, Vervelles and camail. and Bascinet, listed in order from last donned to first, which I have reversed here. See his discussion of materials incorporated in the aketon (haketon) of buckram in 1383; further details of fabric armor, p. 92; and gloss pp. 160–61 equating “Haketon” with “Gambeson, defined as “a quilted tunic, XI cent.” The MED defines aketŏun as “A quilted or padded jacket worn under the armor for comfort and protection; also, a decorative garment worn over the armor,” illustrating the dual usage of such a term that contributes to the general confusion of costume/armor terms for this period. Planché, Illustrated Dictionary, pp. 2–3, discusses the acton and defines it as “A tunic or cassock made of buckram or buckskin, stuffed with cotton, and sometimes covered with silk and quilted with gold thread, worn under the hauberk or coat-of-mail, used occasionally as a definsive military garment without the hauberk”; it is usually white but might be other colors if it is worn without the hauberk. He references BL Roy. MS. xiv, E. 5, “where a knight is depicted as being wounded while he is putting on or taking off the hauberk which was worn over it.” Also, see Herben, “Arms and Armor,” p. 480. 55 Claude Blair, European Armour circa 1066 to circa 1700 (London, 1959), p. 53, describes the order for c.1330–c.1410; see pp. 33–34, 46, 75 for pourpoint, aketon, gambeson. Ffoulkes, Armourer and His Craft, p. 109 says, “The arming of a man began at the feet, and as far as was possible each piece put on overlapped that beneath it, to ensure that glancing surface upon the utility of which such stress has been laid [that nothing should be worn that would impede a blow from glancing off of the armor, such as irregular decoration]”. Further, the arming of a man was done as listed: “Sollerets or sabatons, jambs, knee-cops, cuisses, skirt of mail, gorget, breast and back plates, brassards with elbow-cops, pauldrons, gauntlets, sword-belt, and helmet,” as is illustrated in his fig. 58, p. 110, that shows sixteenth-century plate armor.   See the c.1370–90 armor of Ulrich IV of Matsch, Milan; his breastplate is “one of the earliest surviving pieces of plate armour and bears the mark of a member of the Missaglia family of Milanese armour-makers,” in fig. 83, a color plate in Susan Marti, Till-Holger Borchert, and Gabriele Keck, eds, Splendour of the Burgundian Court: Charles the Bold (1433–1477) (Brussels, 2008), p. 230; see 231 for comments on production of armor.

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  155  And over that a fyn hawberk, Was al yroght of Jewes werk, Ful strong it was of plate.

(lines 863–65)

Thopas dons, over his habergeon, yet another body protection – a hauberk.56 But a knight, as Blair writes, would wear either a “hauberk or haubergeon” [my emphasis]; Thopas apparently wears both.57 The confusion is augmented by the Riverside gloss that defines hawberk as “plate armor.” However, Ffoulkes glosses Hauberk as a “long shirt of chain mail” as compared to Haubergeon glossed as a “short shirt of chain mail.”58 The significant difference here is length, which explains why only one of these, by personal choice, would be worn at a time. Of the haubergeon, Blair writes, “After c. 1350 it usually extended only to just below the hips and the sleeves only to the elbows,” and might be decorated at cuff-edges.59 He also describes a “hauberk of plates”: A cloth or leather garment lined with metal plates was the most widely used type of body-defence throughout the 14th century. Modern students usually refer to it as the coat of plates, but at the time when it was in general use it was known variously as pair of plates, hauberk of plates, cote á plates or simply plates. … It was usually worn between the surcoat and hauberk.60

In Blair’s expert opinion, a hauberk and a coat of plates are two separate entities; and this interpretation of these lines would be the most comic. Blair describes the development of plate armor from c.1330–c.1410,61 and separately describes

Note the MED definition of maille as “(a) A small metal ring or plate used for making chain armor”; and (b) “a mesh of such rings or a series of such plates overlapped, chain mail,” etc.; examples include both habergeons and hauberks of mail. Examples of usage show that layers of arms were worn but do not show the same layers worn by Sir Thopas. Similarly, none of Brewer’s literary examples in “Arming the Warrior” include all of the layers worn by this knight. See also Planché regarding hauberk and habergeon in Illustrated Dictionary, pp. 264–68, 236–37. 57 One can trace the historical development of the hauberk in Blair, European Armour, pp. 23–24, 27, 29, 33, 37, 46, 53, and 64. Also see p. 74 regarding the haubergeon. 58 Ffoulkes, Armourer and His Craft, Glossary p. 161. The MED definition for haberğeŏun is “A coat or jacket of mail or scale armor, often worn under plate armor; also a hauberk.” The MED contributes to the confusion of terms, making no distinction between the length of these two pieces of armor by defining hauberk as “A coat of mail; also, plate armor or a coat of mail reinforced with plates; – sometimes used interchangeably with habergeoun.” 59 Blair, European Armor, p. 74. 60 Blair, European Armor, p. 40, and fig. 14, a line-drawing of the brass of Sir John de Creke, c. 1325–30, Westley Waterless, Cambs., with four layers of body-defences, listed in reverse order of donning: “coat armour, coat of plates, haubergeon and aketon.” 61 Dicicco, “Arming of Sir Thopas,” p. 14, states that plate armor “first appeared c. 1250 and was widely used by 1330,” citing Blair, European Armor, p. 11. See Blair’s fig. 56

156  Chaucer and Array the development of plate armor as we know it in the fifteenth century, with the earliest example dated at c. 1400.62 Thus Chaucer’s description of Thopas’s next armament of a “fyn hawberk, / … al yroght of Jewes werk, / Ful strong it was of plate” (lines 863–65), could be a picture of some interim state of development between 1. a separate coat of plates and a pre-1330 hauberk and 2. a later version in which the plates had fused and supplanted the function of the former hauberk and separate coat of plates, but retained the previously used term hauberk. Confusion of terms is most common in the history of costume and armor, especially during periods of changes and development in style.63 However, as Chaucer’s lines 863–65 are now written, we might suppose that Thopas wears a habergeon, plus a hauberk that incorporates a coat of plates, and, drawing from the store of all old and new armor pieces in his armory, vastly over-arms himself to meet the challenge of combat with Olifaunt.64 This comic interpretation of these lines, offers an additional grin based on the thought that Thopas might not know he is over-arming. Such an interpretation is entertaining, but it is not satisfactory to a point of certainty. One puzzle concerning this hauberk has happily been addressed by Jerome Mandel – the question of the reference to “Jewes werk.” Burrow’s note for line 864 regarding “Jewes werk,” summarizes earlier work on this phrase; he explains, “A fine Saracen hauberk in one French chanson de geste is said to have been forged by ‘Ysac de Barceloigne,’ presumably a Spanish Jew (La Prise d’Orange, ed. Régnier, 1969, 969).” He adds, “Skeat suggested an allusion to damascening,

20, p. 50, a photograph of a “coat of plates” (No. 7) in European Armor, from the site of the Battle of Wisby (1361). The coats of arms on the copper mounts are possibly those of the Flemish family Roorda, National Historical Museum, Stockholm”; see discussion on pp. 55–56 of the “poncho” construction of this coat and his description of the development of plate armor. 62 Blair, European Armour, pp. 57–58. 63 Linn, “Arming of Sir Thopas,” pp. 304–05, discusses Thopas’s wearing of both hauberk and habergeoun and explains how both might be worn together c. 1370, during the period of change between the early fourteenth century and mid-fifteenth century. He illustrates this theory with descriptions of arming taken from two versions of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun dated from these two periods, in the E. Kölbing ed. EETS, XLVI (1885), p. 45. Linn “doubts” that Chaucer’s audience would have found Thopas’s simultaneous wearing of aketon, hauberk, and habergeoun an anomaly, p. 305. He does not claim certainty. Also May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307–1399 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 238–39, lists the sequence for arming and cites the memorial brass of Sir John de Creke, c. 1325, as showing that he wears both hauberk and habergeon (disagreeing with Blair’s description noted on p. 154 and n. 55 above), as she describes the fourteenth century as a time of changing styles in arming. 64 Patterson, “‘What Man Artow?’,” pp. 129–30 and n. 41, characterizes Thopas’s arming, stating that Thopas is a child dressing up, but this designation ignores Thopas’s long blond beard (lines 730–31, *1920). Cohen comments on the arming scene that “the effect is again ridiculously doll-like,” “Diminishing Masculinity,” p. 147.

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  157  but this is more characteristic of late armor.65 However, Mandel states that “it is plausible that Chaucer could attribute to Thopas’s armor the fine quality of Jewish workmanship which was reputed throughout Europe,” their recognized skill in metal-working and in doing “fine and dainty work.” If Mandel is correct, the phrase “Jewes werk” does not signify any particular form of decoration for armor such as damascening; instead it primarily signifies quality armor that is well-constructed, whether or not some decorative pattern has been added.66 And yet, there remains the implication that some element of “dainty work” may detract from the manliness that armor normally signifies. Is Chaucer addressing, through his reference to “Jewes werk,” the issue of appearance vs. substance, questioning whether or not Thopas will live up to the quality of his armor? Any lingering impression of Thopas’s manly stature is further undercut when we note that his cote-armour 67 is white: And over that [his hawberk] his cote-armour As whit68 as is a lilye flour, In which he wol debate.

(lines 866–68)

Although S. J. Herben states that “white arms are to be found elsewhere in passages where no question of satire or absurdity can be raised,” and he provides examples,69 elsewhere, a white coat of arms sometimes signals the inexperience of, or the incognito status of, the knight.70 Clearly, Thopas makes no effort to

Burrow’s explanatory note for line 864, Riverside, p. 921, and also citing Blair, European Armor, Chapter 8. 66 Jerome Mandel, “‘Jewes Werk’ in Sir Thopas,” Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings, ed. Sheila Delany (New York and London, 2002), pp. 59–68, at 60, 65. 67 Riverside glosses this term as the “coat of arms, worn over the armor.” 68 Pleij claims that “the earth was linked to the color white,” Colors, p. 16, and this is a color that represents purity. He cites it as a color of one of the horses mentioned in the book of Revelation in the Bible, and, p. 24, as representing chastity. Loomis, “Sir Thopas,” p. 529 n. 3, names other romance knights wearing white. 69 Herben, “Arms and Armor,” p. 481 and n .2. See also Charbonneau, “Sir Thopas,” p. 693 n. 72, regarding the lack of satire or absurdity in white arms and white as representing silver as an heraldic color. See also the listing of white knights in Florin Curta, “Colour Perception, Dyestuffs, and Colour Terms in Twelfth-Century French Literature,” MÆ 1 (2004): 43–65, at 47 nn. 85–86, and Curta’s comments on white symbolism, p. 46. Linn cites Launfal where “the context shows that the whiteness of the armor was the result of a fairy spell;” and he maintains that Thopas’s surcoat “should properly have displayed Sir Thopas’s armorial bearings,” “Arming of Sir Thopas,” p. 306. 70 Michel Pastoureau states that in heraldry white never has a pejorative significance, in “Figures et coleurs péjoratives en héraldique médiévale,” Figures et couleurs: études sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médiévale (Paris, 1986), p. 198. White knights are plentiful in medieval literature, but nowhere more so than in Malory Works, ed. Eugène 65

158  Chaucer and Array be secret; thus we may assume that, despite his previously vaunted prowess, he has achieved no fame – he is unknown. His escutcheon is yet to be written large on his cote-armour or in romance literature,71 and Chaucer compares this blank white space to “a lilye flour,”72 an image of purity, but hardly an image to inspire terror in an opponent. According to James Hall, the lily is a “Symbol of purity, associated particularly with the Virgin Mary and the virgin saints.”73 And on Thopas’s cote-armour it may well signal that his forthcoming encounter with Sir Olifant will be his virgin fight, performed for his elf-lady love. However, he does take up his shield which is not so blank: His sheeld was al of gold74 so reed, And therinne was a bores heed, A charbocle75 bisyde … .

(lines 869, *2060, 871)

A shield made of gold, a soft metal, would not be strong enough to provide adequate protection; if gold describes the decoration of the shield, its heraldic field, then it is part of his coat of arms, completed by the boar’s head and carbuncle. The boar’s head depicted on this shield is certainly not a pacific sign, but is, instead, a “common heraldic bearing” which appears “most often in threes.”76 The boar is a sign associated, obviously, with brute strength, of which Thopas’s shield visually possesses only one sign of the expected three. Chaucer employs the image of a boar in Troilus to represent that experienced warrior and lover, Diomede. Also, a

Vinaver (2nd ed., Oxford, 1977), where this phrase usually signals blamelessness or serves as a disguise, but it may also be used ironically. 71 Hamel, “And Now for Something Completely Different,” p. 254, remarks that this whiteness “symbolizes the blankness of his identity, and perhaps some doubt … that he is actually armigerous.” 72 Ferne, Blazon of Gentry, p. 169, shows, among numerous associations, that white signifies hope, innocence, infancy, and is associated with the lily and the metal of silver. Hamel, “And Now for Something Completely Different,” states that the lily symbolizes the elf-queen, the lady Thopas serves. 73 James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (London, 1984), pp. 192–93. 74 See Burrow’s note for lines 869–71 for other such literary shields. Loomis lists more shields of gold, “Sir Thopas,” pp. 527–28; Also see H. D. Austin, “Heavenly Gold: A Study of the Use of Color in Dante,” PQ 12 (1933): 44–53, at 47–51; and Ferne’s listing showing the medieval association of gold with the topaz, Blazon of Gentry, p. 169. 75 Riverside glosses Charbocle as “carbuncle, red gemstone.” Also see Ferne, Blazon of Gentry, p. 170, regarding the carbuncle’s association with “Latten;” Kunz’s discussion of red stones’ ability to make one safe from wounds, Curious Lore, pp. 33, 311–12; Alan of Lille’s equation of the carbuncle with Prudence, The Plaint of Nature, trans and comm. James J. Sheridan, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto, 1980), p. 81; and Lightbown regarding the terms ruby and carbuncle, Mediaeval European Jewellery, p. 29. 76 Burrow’s note for lines 869–71, Riverside, p. 921.

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  159  boar kisses Criseyde in Troilus’s dream (Book V, lines 1234–41), and Cassandra interprets the dream: the boar signifies Diomede, who has won Criseyde’s heart away from Troilus (Book V, lines 1459–1519). Any comparison between Diomede and Thopas as warriors and lovers is certainly ludicrous. Despite their dual display of the same device on their shields, Hall’s interpretive remark, that the boar is an “attribute of LUST personified” which is portrayed as “trodden underfoot by CHASTITY,”77 actually contributes to the sense of the disparity between these protagonists. Here in Thopas’s shield, an armament spiritually and metaphorically deemed to represent the spiritual defense of faith,78 we ironically find Lust serving as its foremost sign. Yet not much is made of Thopas’s desire for his elf-lady in this poem, and his bearing the sign of the boar is comic here,79 or at least ironic. Such a sign contrasts sharply with Sir Gawain’s pentangle in SGGK that symbolizes his numerous virtues. Further, Thopas’s sign of the boar is accompanied by a charbocle, often thought to be a ruby, another multivalent sign familiar to us from Troilus and Criseyde (Tr).80 In medieval thinking, among the many vertus of the ruby is that it “prevents being vanquished in battle”; it should be, therefore, a most welcome addition to the shield of any timorous, and perhaps lustful, knight who places his faith in such prophylactic properties.81 Nevertheless, we note that despite its quality and excellent attributes, Chaucer places this jewel in the bob-line, as if he thought it, relatively speaking, negligible. There are mixed messages in the depiction of Thopas’s shield, falling amidst

Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols, pp. 49, 65, 196. See the discussion of the “metaphors of spiritual armor” in C&C, pp. 29–32. For an example of one system equating pieces of armor with spiritual virtues, see “A treatise of ghostly battle,” Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and His Followers, ed. C. Horstmann (New York, 1896), 2:424–27, esp. at 425; the “treatise” was apparently authored by one of Rolle’s followers. 79 Cohen denies that any taint of “fleshly desire” is “attached to his [Thopas’s] diminutive body, rendering the quest for a fairy mistress appropriately ludic.” Further, “Even the gem for which Thopas is named is noted in the lapidaries for its power against that most carnal of sins, lust,” citing English Medieval Lapidaries, eds Joan Evans and Mary E. Serjeantson, EETS os 190 (London, 1933), “Diminishing Masculinity,” pp. 19, 106, 122. 80 Regarding “charbocle,” see Burrow’s notes for lines 869–71, and specifically for line 871, Riverside, p. 921. Concerning the significance of the ruby, see Chapter 3, pp. 72–76, nn. 46, 51, 54. We note that lapidaries list many vertus for gemstones, some meanings conflicting with others; thus we may assume the same skeptical attitude toward gem lore as we do for the conflicting associations included in color symbolism. Also regarding the ruby, Kooper states that it is called “‘lord of all stones’,” which corresponds closely to the “description of the topaz as the most bright and precious of all stones,” “Inverted Images,” p. 150; Howard R. Patch discusses the significance of the ruby in “Precious Stones in The House of Fame,” MLN 50 (1935): 312–17. 81 Herben comments on Thopas’s shield that it “is of more interest for its blasonry than for its use,” “Arms and Armor,” p. 484. 77 78

160  Chaucer and Array the plethora of arming details as it does, which contribute an air of confusion concerning the whole of this scene. And finally, the narrator mentions protecting this knight’s legs, and inserts at this odd point, “His jambeaux were of quyrboilly (line 875).82 Notably, no mention is made of his spurs, that badge of knighthood itself. According to Blair’s specified order for arming, Thopas has earlier skipped the step in which his legs should be armed and his spurs attached; he has gone forward to put on his soft body armor, his aketoun, his haubergeon, and his hawberk, and even to take up his shield. What are we to make of this disorderly process, especially as the mention of jambeaux occurs just after the audience had perhaps become accustomed to the order of the foregoing arming process and been lulled into thinking that, perhaps, Chaucer has lapsed into providing the order of a traditional arming scene? The effect of this displacement is indeed comic. Possible interpretations are that 1. the narrator reveals that Thopas does not know the proper order, or 2. his unmentioned squire or chamberlain does not know it, or 3. the narrator-Chaucer himself does not know it. Here is an absurdity, because if Thopas waits until his body is fully armed and he is holding his shield in his hand, he cannot possibly manage to don his leg armor by himself. This disorder constitutes one of the numerous “inversions” in this tale that Kooper declines to list when he comments: We all know that Thopas is the opposite of a royal and noble hero, that the poem is practically devoid of action, and that yet what does happen has been topsyturvied, that the metre is of a murderous regularity and yet full of boobytraps. Every reader will be able to expand this list endlessly.83

Brewer mentions this anomaly of order in arming concerning Thopas’s greaves, stating that “they indeed are in a wrong and silly place,”84 but he does not discuss the effect this displacement creates. Given Chaucer’s verbal failure to provide assistance for Thopas’s arming, the audience might construct a mental picture of Thopas, wearing all of his body armor, awkwardly struggling to put on his leg protection.

The Riverside glosses are: for jambeaux, “greaves, leg-armor,” and for quyrboilly, “hardened leather.” See Ffoulkes’ discussion of popular leg pieces of engraved leather in the fourteenth century, and arm pieces (brassards) also possessing “lightness and cheapness as compared with metal,” Armourer and His Craft, pp. 100–01; and glosses, pp. 158, 162. Ffoulkes, p. 97, reads Sir Thopas’s “jambs of cuir-bouilli as being part of the ordinary equipment of the knight,” and claims that they were “used largely for jousts and tourneys … [which were] more of the nature of mimic fights.” He claims that the best leather came from Spain, citing Cordovan leather as “far better than that of France or Flanders.” Ffoulkes credits Spain’s tanners for this quality and describes their process: “The hide of the animal was cut thick, boiled in oil or in water, and, when soft, moulded to the required shape. When cold it became exceedingly hard and would withstand nearly as much battle-wear as metal.” 83 Kooper, “Inverted Images,” p. 151. 84 Brewer, “Arming of the Warrior,” pp. 237–38. 82

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  161  However, Mark Dicicco claims that the absurdity in Thopas’s arming resides in the fact that he “would wear a plate chest piece and no other items of plate armour.” Other pieces of his armor that should have been plate are his greaves and jambeaux. Instead, Thopas’s are made in the older fashion of boiled and hardened leather, quyrboilly. In short, his armor is a mis-matched suit: “Thopas’s armour is a hodgepodge collection of mismatched pieces displaying types and technologies of armour used in different centuries but never together.”85 Elegant niceties of arming scenes presented in other medieval romances are omitted in the Tale of Sir Thopas – the carpet upon which the armor is laid out and the assisting servant or squire who knows the ritual and goes about arming his lord in an orderly and convenient manner. However haphazardly – or through deliberate omission – Thopas’s arming may have been accomplished and, perhaps, some time after the reader has tired of this topos, Chaucer makes additional and final touches. Thopas takes up “His swerdes shethe of yvory” (line 876), conjuring up another image of whiteness and yet another image of impotence, as no mention is made of a sword within this scabbard. We know that Thopas possesses a sword because he had it with him earlier when he first met Olifant; however, at that time, he considered it and his launcegay to be insufficient for use in fighting this giant. Having first been deemed insufficient in the arming scene, his sword, which we might assume to be present, goes unmentioned. The poetic effect is that Thopas’s sword is rendered negligible. Irving Linn claims that “the omission of sword and spurs” in Thopas’s arming provides “the crowning absurdity in Chaucer’s account.”86 But the ivory sheath is certainly a beautiful image,87 one evoking the smooth, satin-like gleam of its exotic material. If this image is ineffective here, it is now one of many such in this text. And we note that Joanne A. Charbonneau comments, “It is peculiar that Chaucer would pay attention to the ivory sheath without mentioning the more important sword, which often has a proper name in romance and epics.”88 Thopas then dons “His helm89 of latoun bright” (line 877), ostensibly a protection for his head, but unfortunately made of latoun, a brass-like alloy.90 This helm is rightfully included in a bob-line where it receives less emphasis: latoun is a

Dicicco, “Arming of Sir Thopas,” p. 15. Linn, “Arming of Sir Thopas,” p. 310. However, Thopas’s lack of spurs is not clearly broad burlesque such as we find in some romances, where protagonists avoid stirrups and have their feet tied by linen cord beneath the horse as an aid to remaining mounted. See Burrow, “Chaucer’s Sir Thopas,” p. 51, where he discusses Maquesai and Liépin in La Prise de Nuevile. In contrast, when Thopas dismounts there is no mention of linen cord. 87 Herben in his discussion of the history of arms, does not mention beauty, but does say that “Elaborate scabbards are rare,” “Arms and Armor,” p. 477. 88 Charbonneau, “Sir Thopas,” p. 694. 89 See Blair’s descriptions of helms along with line drawings esp. no. 86 with crest, dated 1403, European Armour, pp. 196–97. 90 Riverside gloss. 85 86

162  Chaucer and Array relatively soft alloy; it would afford less protection than its shiny metallic appearance might suggest.91 However, here is another instance of description presented out of order, and the poet returns to this helm a number of lines later: “Upon his creest he bar a tour,92 / And therinne stiked a lilie flour,” a description followed by a narratorial prayer: “God shilde his cors fro shonde!” (lines 906–08).93 This crest, too, makes a decorative picture, but one that belongs to the helmets worn for jousts and not for battle.94 As Burrow states, “The lily stuck in the tower is unparalleled and probably, like Thopas’s escutcheon, fanciful.”95 However, Sherman Hawkins comments that “Sir Thopas wears the Virgin’s tower and lily in his crest.”96 Given the narrator’s prayer in line 908 and acknowledging the fragility of this helm’s protection, Thopas might well welcome assistance from the Virgin whose device he displays. The lily image, again, combines whiteness, delicacy, and beauty. However, a tower displaying a lily, however accurately it might serve as a family emblem or devotion to the Virgin, is not a fearsome image. A beautiful appearance, yet again, supplants strength and force. The further details of his array, now both comic and tedious, include a saddle made of ivory (line 878), a gleaming bridle97 (lines 879–80), a sharply pointed cypress-wood – “a wood not known for its strength”98 – spear (lines 881–83), and Ferne states that the “old” Romans valued Latten before they learned to make jewelry from gold and silver, and it is the metal associated with vermillion jewels, such as the ruby and carbuncle, with “Virillity or man’s age” in the category of the Ages of Man, and with cholerous complexion, which matches Chaucer’s description of Thopas’s face, Blazon of Gentry, p. 170. There is no mention of using this metal for any type of protective arms. 92 Riverside gloss defines creest as the “top of the helmet” and tour as “tower.” 93 Blair, European Armour, p. 53, lists such a helm “surmounted by a crest” as a possible “supplement” to the bascinet in the arming procedure. Such a crest is described in line 906 as it appears in Thopas’s coat of arms on his shield. Herben remarks that, throughout his works, this device is Chaucer’s “sole reference to the crest,” “Arms and Armor,” p. 478. See also Loomis regarding the literary Hero as depicted in helms and crest, “Sir Thopas” pp. 526, 529. 94 See Ffoulkes’ pl. XIX, in Armourer and His Craft, opposite p. 76, regarding fifteenth-century pictures of arming for the lists; pl. II a. for a picture of the Effigy of Richard Beauchamp, Earl, of Warwick, 1454, that shows his jousting helm, topped by the neck and head of what appears to be an eagle, pictured to the side of his head. Jousting crests are pictured in Marie-Louise Ollier, Masques et déguisements dans la littérature médiévale (Montreal, Canada, 1988), figs 3–4, pp. 135–37. 95 Burrow’s note for line 907, Riverside, p. 922. 96 Sherman Hawkins, “Chaucer’s Prioress and the Sacrifice of Praise,” JEGP 63 (1964): 599–624, at 622. 97 Such a gleam might be achieved by the embellishment of metallic placques or studs. See Herben’s description of saddles and horse furnishings, “Arms and Armor,” pp. 484–85. 98 According to Charbonneau, “‘Sir Thopas’,” p. 694, who also points out that cypress is sometimes associated with cemeteries and death. Shafts were preferably made of ash (the strongest and toughest wood),” and she lists other woods preferable to cypress. 91

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  163  a dapple gray horse that ambles slowly (lines 884–86). Thopas’s placid ambler, the total opposite of the customary literary knight’s war horse, undercuts the crisp preceding images as well as any hope the audience might still be holding out for Thopas to achieve a fierce appearance, to look “fighting fit” as he sets forth to find Olifaunt. Chaucer wrote Thopas’s arming scene and account of his accoutrements for an audience who would instantly recognize the incorrect and awkward order of the arming sequence, any error in a knight’s wearing both habergeon and hawberk, and who could know the difference between armor and helm appropriate for a joust as opposed to that suitable for battle. For this audience, Chaucer declares in vain, or possibly tongue-in-cheek, that Thopas, ineptly armed, “was a knyght auntrous”99 (line 909). In this and following lines ( *2100–914), we see Thopas going through the motions of a romance hero, while his “dextrer” peacefully grazes on fine grasses, but the term dextrer can only be ironic. A “dappull gray” that “gooth an ambil in the way / Ful softely and rounde/ In londe” does not a war horse make. The audience for this tale would know this horse, and would have no real expectation that he could be urged to make a strong charge when needed or, concurrently, that Thopas, so mounted and armed so erratically, might prove himself against the three-headed giant Olifaunt. Encouraging such audience reactions, throughout this arming scene, the arming terminology sits awkwardly within the tail-rhyme meter of this poem when it is orally presented. Abundant and even fascinating costume rhetoric notwithstanding, we may partially agree with Harry Bailly, who has heard the oral performance of this tale: He declares that this tale is “rhym dogerel,” and “drasty rymyng … nat worth a toord” (lines 925, *2120), and that in the end the tale lacks “some doctryne” (line 935). Nevertheless, Alan Gaylord, in “Moment,” has claimed a “special set of meanings” for this tale100 but does not immediately spell them out, and Dane points out that a burlesque “is intended to ‘ridicule’ something – but what?”101 In “The ‘Miracle’ of Sir Thopas,” Gaylord offers an answer regarding both of these issues: “it is the figure of the poet as craftsman – particularly one in danger of becoming bedazzled or self-satisfied with the polish of style – that his parody aims at.”102 Ultimately, it is most amusing that Chaucer, in composing his arming scene, follows a long line of illustrious poets, many of whom have made contributions to the expansion of this topos – and that Chaucer’s contribution to this expandable catalog of arms and armor is fine linen underwear. It is amusing that he emphasizes the quality and beauty of Thopas’s arms and armor over the quality of the Loomis discusses auntrous, “Sir Thopas” pp. 547–50, stating, “No word in the romances more compactly suggests fantastic knight-errantry than does auntrous,” and provides examples of literary knights sleeping outdoors en route to achieving their stated goals. 100 Gaylord, “Moment,” p. 325. 101 Dane, Parody, p. 193. 102 Alan T. Gaylord, “The ‘Miracle’ of Sir Thopas,” SAC 6 (1984): 65–84, at 65. 99

164  Chaucer and Array knight himself. It is further amusing that an arming scene that should ennoble the hero and stir the audience should become, in its lavish details, tiresome. And, finally, it is amusing that Thopas, out of all of Chaucer’s knights, should receive the benefit of his most lavish costume rhetoric. Clearly, Thopas demonstrates the inherent dangers in the poet’s use of mixed, ambiguous, costume metaphors. Amidst this abundance of detail, the task that Chaucer sets for his audience is that of discriminating between appearance and substance. It is no accident that in his romances Chaucer never includes the rhetorically decorative, lavish descriptions of costume for the heroes and heroines of these tales that are present in his sources,103 saving his copious and evocative clothing details for selected fabliaux where they contribute to his satire. And yet he supplies Thopas, with prodigality, more than ample romance-type costumery, from which he borrows numerous clothing and armor terms,104 the better to ridicule him within the form of tail-rhyme. As Garbáty comments on the use of such terms: “when the word mocks the word, … then indeed our sense of humor is cerebrally challenged.”105 Chaucer employs the literary conventions of romance as the basis for his comedy in depicting Thopas. This protagonist is certainly a knight in shining armor, but Chaucer overturns the effect of this trope by proving that even armed, Thopas is ultimately not a knight in whom an audience member could imagine placing his or her hopes and faith. Further, Melissa Furrow points out additional targets of Chaucer’s humor: Chaucer has two targets for his mockery of romance: the mundane, rational, workaday and déclassé on the one hand, the marvellous, unmotivated, ceremonial mystification of aristocratic privilege on the other, neatly skewered on the same brochet in Sir Thopas, but more usually separated. Chaucer’s Thopas is funny because it parodies violations of his romance expectations of courtly, chivalric behaviour and the reverential tone in which it is often depicted. His fabliaux are funny because they mock those very expectations.106

That the Tale of Sir Thopas is “delighted with its own sport” is readily perceived through an analysis of Chaucer’s choices in his method of description, his assembly of two complete costumes, and his encapsulating the result of this See especially Benoît’s costuming, omitted in Chaucer’s Tr., mentioned in Chapter 2, pp. 82–83 and nn. 70–71, and the lack of major costume rhetoric for the main characters in the KnT, discussed in Chapter II pt 1, pp. 14–32. 104 Scheps lists these terms and claims that there are thirty-six nonce words altogether, “Sir Thopas,” p. 38. He groups them according to his thesis regarding the object of Chaucer’s satire. Among them are the following terms used in Chaucer’s costume rhetoric: aketoun, charbocle, crest, jambeaux, launcegay, quyrboilly, rewel-boon, cordewayne, goore, lake, syklatoun. T. L. Burton, “Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas,” Expl 40 (1982), 4, comments that Chaucer is “pouring scorn on the mechanical style which was the besetting sin of the arming scenes in Middle English romances.” 105 Garbáty, “Chaucer and Comedy,” p. 184. 106 Furrow, Expectations of Romance, pp. 136–37; see also Furrow, “Middle English Fabliaux,”, p. 11. 103

Costume Rhetoric for Sir Thopas, “Knyght Auntrous”  165  combination within the rhythm and semblance of a tail-rhyme romance. The result is “overkill,” his comic technique previously deployed to depict Pandarus in Tr, as described by Gretchen Mieszkowski: The usual impact of his [Chaucer’s] comedy is to dislodge multiple levels of meaning that have already been attached to feelings and actions. Instead of presenting an opposed position, Pandarus and his comedy change the meaning of action from within … . What makes Pandarus funny … is how tiresome he is. Overkill produces the comedy. He heaps up moment after moment, verse after verse until the reader is aghast at the sheer magnitude of it all.107 (My emphasis)

Similarly, Thopas lavishly combines familiar costume elements drawn from medieval romances in general, elements that are either missing or scantily treated in Chaucer’s romances and Breton lais and, in doing so, overturns initial expectations of Thopas as a romance when the audience realizes that this tale is, instead, a parody, satire, bourd, burlesque, fantasia, mock romance, or all of the above. *** In the end, Gaylord’s conclusion concerning Thopas is that Chaucer’s readers “are left to make of this little mis-adventure in elvishness what we may.”108 This tale does not, as romances usually do, supply an “edifying effect”;109 at least, it does not within its fictive plot and characterization. However, nothing else among his works so soundly illustrates the kind of writer, in style and content, that Chaucer does not wish to be. Gaylord underscores Chaucer’s “high resolve,” as it is expressed in the House of Fame:110 I wot myself best how y stonde’ For what I drye, or what I thynke, I wil myselven al hyt drynke, Certeyn, for the more part, As fer forth as I kan myn art.

(lines 1878–82)

In his satiric compilation of so many romance elements of costume rhetoric in his dressing and arming of Sir Thopas, Chaucer demonstrates how awkwardly they fit into his own serious poetic language and characterization.111 When used separately and judiciously in many medieval romances, these terms for garments Gretchen Mieszkowski, “Chaucerian Comedy: Troilus and Criseyde,” Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning and Consequences, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin, NY, 2010), pp. 457–80 at 463–64. 108 Gaylord, ‘“Miracle’,” p. 84. 109 Regarding edifying effects in medieval romances, see Gaylord, ‘“Miracle’,” p. 72. 110 Gaylord, “‘Miracle’,” p. 66. 111 As Monica L. Wright puts it, “The vestimentary code at its most creative, that is the codified behavior and meaning of making clothes, thus becomes, in romance, a self-reflexive and highly interpretative vehicle to depict the craft of the writers,” in Weaving 107

166  Chaucer and Array and arms are rhetorically decorative but normally unremarkable; collectively and liberally dressing Sir Thopas, they are comically excessive. Over- and underdressed, over- and under-armed – Thopas and the Tale of Sir Thopas do supply one “edifying effect”: they tell us about Chaucer the fictional narrator and historical author and, by contrast, they illustrate the many ways in which we may savor his more restrained depictions of a host of other characters.112

Narrative, Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance, Penn State Romance Studies (University Park, PA, 2010), p. 170. 112 Haskell comments, “He creates characters whose fictive, unreal behavior is so true that it seems real, though it is not. But his masterpiece of reality may be this creation of a character [Thopas] for the verisimilitude of artificiality, which is ultimately the most real of all,” “Sir Thopas,” p. 259.



6

Conclusion: Other Facets of Chaucer’s Fabric and Costume Rhetoric

C

haucer’s “masterpiece of reality … [his] verisimilitude of artificiality,”1 achieved in his Tale of Sir Thopas, marks the pinnacle of his costume rhetoric deployed to comic effect and even to the point of “overkill.”2 Thopas, with its two complete costumes for its inept knight, outdoes even the Miller’s Tale’s fulsome portrait of Alison, an elderly artisan’s wanton young wife, and her overreaching embroidery; and it more than outshines the Reeve’s Tale’s description of colorful peasant Sunday dress and excessive armaments. In tracing Chaucer’s overall pattern of usage, the General Prologue (GP) to the Canterbury Tales proves his mastery of literary sartorial depiction within character portraits, but this penetrating portrait technique is never brought into play when Chaucer introduces the major characters in his romances, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. In the Knight’s Tale, contrary to audience expectations, two minor personages in the plot, Lygurge and Emetreus, benefit from Chaucer’s genius in sartorial characterization in descriptio, although the intent of their portraits is apparently not to characterize or to highlight their later actions, but rather to illuminate the spectacle of the tournament as a whole, as it illustrates Theseus’s magnificence. Conversely, the major characters in this tale, Theseus, Emelye, and Palamon, at best receive only brief general costumes; Arcite is graced with lavish funerary dress that is somewhat more detailed but, again, this array primarily reflects Chaucer’s portrayal of Theseus’s magnificence manifest in the spectacle of a royal funeral. Also underscoring the spectacles of the two-part entry-­ tournament procession and Arcite’s funeral procession, Chaucer’s ­contrasting but complementary fabric images of “clooth of gold” and “blak” (possibly “sarge”)

As Ann S. Haskell puts it in “Sir Thopas: The Puppet’s Puppet,” ChauR 9 (1975), pp. 253–61, at 259. 2 “Overkill” is Gretchen Mieszkowsk’s term for Chaucer’s comic method, in “Chaucerian Comedy: Troilus and Criseyde,” Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning and Consequences, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin, NY, 2010), pp. 457–80, at 463–64. 1

168  Chaucer and Array provide appropriate symbolic street decor. These fabrics are the backdrop against which the tragic drama of the Knight’s Tale (KnT) plays out before this drama dissolves into the “blisse and melodye” (I, line 3097) of Palamon’s and Emelye’s wedding concluding this romance. Similarly, Chaucer’s romance Troilus and Criseyde (Tr) lacks introductory descriptio for its major characters, but provides a number of costume signs that contribute to characterization as well as combining to make signature costumes for the title characters: gleaming widow’s weeds for Criseyde and war-battered armor for Troilus. Pandarus, their devious go-between, is characterized by his hood alone, signaling his role as prankster. Chaucer’s discriminating choice of fabric is again evident in his description of Criseyde’s “widewes habit large of samyt broun” (Book I, line 109, my emphasis). This fabric with its eastern or Mediterranean origin suits its Trojan setting, and its black or brown color is appropriate for a widow’s habit. At the same time, “broun” means “shining”3 and this diction makes Criseyde’s silken garments part of the numerous images throughout this poem that depict her as having a celestial, angelic luminescence. As already discussed, Chaucer’s costume rhetoric marks each significant turn of the plot in Tr, at the same time depicting a character’s social and economic status, and their state of being within the tale. Illustrating the themes of mutability, betrayal, and loss, the costume signs in Tr, although they are not enclosed in formal descriptio, both punctuate and decorate this romance. In the Clerk’s Tale, an exemplum with romance elements, Chaucer highlights a basic medieval undergarment, the smok, as he portrays the peasant rags-to-riches, reduced-to-rags, and ultimate reinstatement-to-noble-riches story of Griselda. Throughout this tale, although individual garments are not descriptively emphasized, this heroine’s clothing is of great importance in portraying her current economic and social status. Her garments’ importance is significant, apparently, to everyone else in the tale but Griselda; in contrast, she continues to be impervious to sartorial considerations beyond the need to keep her vow to Walter and maintain his honor. Even with Chaucer’s continual focus on Griselda’s smocks, he contributes no stylistic information concerning these garments that necessarily changed in their quality as her social status changed at Walter’s whim. Her early smock is old, of poor cloth, and worn; her noble smocks are never described, and all are left to the experiential knowledge and/or imagination of Chaucer’s audience. Contrasting with the nearly absent description of the “saintly” Griselda’s smocks, the smock Alison wears in the fabliau Miller’s Tale displays Chaucer’s attention lavished on its smallest details. This difference in costume rhetoric underscores the difference in genre between the two tales with a corresponding shift in audience expectations. Chaucer’s Miller tells a fabliau and, with great relish, presents an unexpectedly intricate portrait of an artisan-wife heroine wearing a decorative silk-embroidered smock. Her body is noted – “wezele her body

See Chapter 2, n. 7.

3

Conclusion  169  gent and smal” (I, line 3234) – and emphasized as the particulars of her costume are delineated. However, in this descriptio Chaucer omits the usual covering garment, an over-dress, for her fancy smock. D. S. Brewer calls this descriptive passage “partly a rhetorical joke”4 in which a carpenter’s wanton wife is rhetorically treated as if she were a noble lady in a romance. Co-opting the rhetorical technique, descriptio, into fabliau affords Chaucer the opportunity to depict the embellishments of Alison’s headdress, her girdle, her shoes, her purse, her barmcloth, and especially her smock, in order to achieve a comedic effect. Further, as she interacts with her lover, “hende” Nicholas, and her would-be lover, the clerk Absalon, we note that, in omitting mention of her outer gown, the narrator has either counted on his contemporary audience to mentally supply it as a matter of course, or he has, rhetorically, left Alison partially undressed.5 In addition to incorporating lavish costume rhetoric for comedic purposes, the Tale of Sir Thopas incorporates other reversals. Thopas is unique among Chaucer’s other literary knights as his only knight-protagonist who is named, geographically located by the town and country of his birth, liberally costumed both for court and combat, and provided with a detailed coat of arms. He is also the star of Chaucer’s only arming scene. Literally, Thopas and his un-eventful tale are the shining examples of romance tropes employed with a prodigality that produces initial comedic, then poetic, overkill, and finally the tedium that causes Harry Bailly to declare this tale to be “nat worth a toord” (lines 925, *2120). In Thopas’s robe of syklatoun, fine shoes of Cordovan leather, underwear of fine linen (lake), hawberk of “Jewes werk,” lily-white “cote-armour,” shield of gold decorated with carbuncle, ivory sheath for his sword, decorative helm, and ivory saddle, he gleams to out-match the best of romance knights, despite his less than elegant “broun hosen” from Bruges. Yet Thopas proves with certainty that a catalogue of exquisite minutiae of ornamentation, alone, makes neither a worthy knight, nor an engaging romance. The Telling Detail Beyond employing his verbose passages of costume rhetoric to achieve comedic effect, Chaucer, throughout his works, is master of the telling detail. Nevertheless, audience expectations for costume description, raised by the abundant costume rhetoric in Chaucer’s GP, might be lowered when considering many of his remaining works. The GP is the zenith of his characterization by costume in terms of the number and variety of costumes depicted, although there are other high points in his canon. In two of his poems, his capacity for deploying the telling detail of dress is especially notable: The Complaint of Mars (Mars) and the Legend of Good Women (LGW). D. S. Brewer, “The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, Especially Harley Lyrics, Chaucer and Some Elizabethans,” MLR 50 (1955): 257–69, at 267–68. See Chapter 4 for discussion of this idea. 5 At least from the standpoint of the fashion of his day. 4

170  Chaucer and Array In Mars, Chaucer depicts the “broche of Thebes” made of rubies and “stones of Ynde,” and the Riverside gloss for this brooch, perhaps not needed for Chaucer’s contemporary audience, refers today’s reader to its literary predecessor in Statius’s Thebiad that tells the story of a brooch constructed by Vulcan. Vulcan’s gem embodied a curse: “That every wight that had hit shulde have wo” and, more specifically, “That every wight, that sette on hit an ye, / He wende anon to worthe out of his mynde; / So sore the beauty wolde his herte bynde” (IV, lines 245–62). The Mars brooch evokes and embraces the idea behind Statius’s story – that coveting beauty provokes suffering. Further, Chaucer’s costume rhetoric here is enriched by his audience’s knowledge of Statius’s earlier version of such a dangerous jewel, although the stories that form the setting for this brooch and the jewels themselves are different enough to give one pause for thought.6 The portraits of the God of Love and his queen in LGW also possess noteworthy sartorial details. The queen of Love’s costume emulates the “floures white and rede, / Swyche as men calle dayesyes” (lines 42–43) honored in the service of Love and “service of the flour” (lines 81–82), a devotion described in lines 115ff. Chaucer provides the details of this queen’s costume: And she was clad in real habit grene. A fret of gold she hadde next her heer, And upon that a whit corowne she beer With flourouns smale, and I shal nat lye; For al the world, ryght as a dayesye Ycorouned ys with white leves lyte, So were the flowrouns of hire coroune white. For of o perle fyn, oriental, Hire white coroune was ymaked al; For which the white coroune above the grene Made hire lyk a daysie for to sene, Considered eke hir fret of gold above.

(lines 214–25)

The poet first establishes that the queen’s robe is green, like the first of May meadow that is the poem’s setting. But this is a green meadow of “softe, swote grass, / That was with floures swote enbrouded al”7 (lines 118–19), a description that gives rise to his lengthy description of the queen’s headdress, which provides the flower imagery. Above the gold fret, a decorative hairnet made of gold thread or wire that dresses the queen’s hair, she wears a white crown of flowers imitating a May garland of daisies. However, these white petals are made of fine oriental pearls. Altogether this green, white, and gold costume gives the queen a daisy-like appearance. The queen appears hand-in-hand with Love, come fresh from having taken a walk in the flowery meadow previously described. Later, we learn

Such a brooch reminiscent of Statius, is also evoked in Tr, as I have discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 75–78, esp. nn. 55–59; see Appendix C. 7 Reminiscent of the Squire’s embroidered gown in GP lines 89–90. 6

Conclusion  171  the queen’s name, Alceste, and the significance of her crown is further explained as evidence of her goodness: Hire white corowne berith of hyt witnesse; For also many vertues hadde shee As smale florouns in hire corowne bee. In remembraunce o hire and in honour Cibella maade the daysye and the flour ycrowned al with whit, as men may see; And Mars yaf to hire corowne reed, pardee, In stede of rubyes, sette among the white.

(lines 527–34)

The second of this royal pair, the god of Love, also receives a detailed description: Yclothed was this myghty god of Love In silk, enbrouded ful of grene greves, In-with a fret of rede rose-leves, The fresshest syn the world was first bygonne. His gilte heer was corowned with a sonne Instede of gold, for hevynesse and wyghte.

(lines 226–31)8

In this costume the background of Love’s silk robe would surely gleam behind the sheen of the embroidered green branches and leaves comprising a lattice effect that is decorated with red roses or rose-leaves. The shine of his “gilte” or blond hair is crowned by a “sone” rather than a heavy gold crown (lines 232–40), although we cannot know the make-up of this headgear. Following these lines, the overall shimmering effect is enhanced as the poet describes Love’s bright face, the fiery darts held in his hand, his angelic spread wings, and finally mentions his blindness, although the dreamer senses, perhaps fears, that Love might see him anyway (lines 232–40). Both Alceste the queen’s costume and that of the god of Love summon associations with the images of spring decorating the beginning lines of LGW as well as with the well-known contemporary daisy poems by Froissart, Machaut, and Deschamps. In addition, Chaucer’s learned audience would read or hear of these costumes and recall not only the contemporary debates between the flower and the leaf but also the portraits of Love in Chaucer’s Romaunt and its source Le

The lines from G, the alternative manuscript text of this poem supplied in Riverside, give the god of Love a red and white floral garland:

8

Yclothed was this myghty god of Love Of silk, ybrouded ful of grene greves, A garlond on his hed of rose-leves Stiked al with lylye floures newe.

(lines 158–61)

172  Chaucer and Array Roman de la Rose.9 Because of these numerous literary associations, Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in LGW resonates between and among meanings, while, as always, his individual artistry, his distinctive language, and his enhancement of substantive details strengthen his work. Chaucer’s Characteristic Discretionary Omissions The collector of clothing and textile imagery will find numerous intricate descriptions of legendary costumes scattered across the spectrum of medieval literature. We may beneficially consider Chaucer’s works within this context. He briefly refers to some of these legends,10 but does not elaborate or reshape these garment descriptions or costumes with his own pen. For example, in House of Fame (HF) (line 402–03), he mentions “Ercules’” falseness to “Dyanira,” and in The Monk’s Tale (MkT) (VII, lines 2095–142), he retells their story, describing the shirt11 given by “Dianira” (also Deianira) that poisons12 Hercules: She hath hym sent a sherte, fressh and gay Allas, this sherte – allas and weylaway! – Envenymed was so subtilly withalle That er that he had wered it half a day It made his flessh al from his bones falle.

(lines 2122–26)

All references to these works derive from Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la rose (Paris, 1970), referred to as RR; and trans. Charles Dahlberg, The Romance of the Rose (Hanover, 1983), referred to as Romance. Regarding the associations between these works with the description of the Squire’s embroidered costume, see my Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue, Chaucer Studies 26 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 57, 62–70. 10 These references add to our list of literary works known to Chaucer. 11 “Dianira, second wife of Hercules, gave her husband the poisoned shirt of the centaur Nessus, believing that it had the power to restore waning love,” states the explanatory note by Susan H. Cavanaugh to line 2120, Riverside p. 931, citing Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in Robert Root, “The Monk’s Tale,” S&A, eds W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York, 1958), pp. 615–44, at 630–31. 12 This poison comes immediately from the blood of the centaur Nessus, which was tainted by the venom of the Lernean Hydra. Hercules employed arrows dipped in the Hydra’s venom to kill Nessus, according to J. E. Zimmerman’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology (New York, 1966), pp. 82, 130, 174. Apparently actuated by body heat, this poison appears to work like an acid, destroying Hercules’s flesh. Other such killing garments impregnated with poison are Medea’s wedding gift sent to Jason’s new bride and Morgan’s gift of a cloak sent to Malory’s King Arthur, in Malory’s Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1977), pp. 93–4. I have been unable to acquire any modern chemical explanation and/or certain parallels for such a poison; however, see www.osha.gov/dts/hib_data/hib19980309.html detailing a recent death by mercury poisoning, a site suggested by Kenneth Thompson. 9

Conclusion  173  Beyond being new, “fressh and gay,” the gift-shirt in Chaucer’s version lacks detail and shows no sign of being the bearer of envenomed blood incorporated in the fabric so “subtilly.” In contrast, Ovid’s version spells out more of Deianira’s motivation. His Deianira lacks faith in Hercules’s love for her. She believes that the shirt, “soaked in Nessus’ blood,” possesses powers that would renew Hercules’s love (which she thinks is lost to her), but she does not know that the fabric is poisoned. Nevertheless, although her intention is benign manipulation, her lack of faith proves fatal to Hercules.13 Chaucer’s presentation of Deianira in the MkT depends on his audience’s knowledge of this myth, without which one might well presume that her shirt-gift was intended as revenge for Hercules’s unfaithfulness to her with Yole, a motivation which Ovid claims was only rumored. The modern audience, perhaps less well-versed in mythology, might wonder why Chaucer gives such a fascinating garment story, worthy to be dwelled on at length, such relatively short shrift. However, Chaucer’s audience will have noticed that in his HF Chaucer has made Hercules’s death by means of the infamous shirt the ironic result of a cycle of Hercules’s actions – his killing of Nessus rebounding on him via his wife’s reaction to his unfaithfulness to her with Yole, which Chaucer presents as fact and not simply rumor (lines 402–04). Fame has bestowed the responsibility on Hercules’s shoulders for being “fals and reccheles” (line 397), at the same time suggesting that Deianira is both personally justified and the agent of poetic justice when she sends the fateful shirt to her husband. The fact remains, however, that Chaucer does not dwell on this famous literary garment. In his story of Medea told in LGW, Chaucer omits another poisoned garment entirely – the murderous dress sent by Medea to her husband Jason’s new wife. Sending a poisoned garment to her successor is an act that would not have worked to illustrate Medea as a good woman, of course, and that is a likely reason for its omission. Nevertheless, it is a loss for those interested in literary costume that we do not have Chaucer’s version of this garment. Given Chaucer’s mastery of textile and costume imagery manifest in his GP, his audience may well have felt short-changed by other omissions of such imagery. In LGW, he provides only a summary of the story of Philomela and her capacity to weave a telling tapestry that portrays her seizure and subsequent rape by her sister’s husband Tereus, King of Thrace. Chaucer explains that her ­education provided the means for her revenge against Tereus: This woful lady lerned hadde in youthe So that she werken and enbroude couthe, And weven in hire stol the radevore14 As it of wemen hath be woned yore.

(lines 2350- 53)

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 9.147–58, in Thomas H. Bestul’s essay on The Monk’s Tale in Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, eds, S&A 1 (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 409–47, esp. 419. 14 Gloss for “stol the radevore”: “frame (for making tapestry)” and “tapestry.” 13

174  Chaucer and Array Thus, even in captivity, despite having her tongue cut out by her captor, she was prepared to communicate with her sister Progne by means of her needlework.15 She hadde ywoven in a stamyn16 large How she was brought from Athenes in a barge, And in a cave how that she was brought; And al the thyng that Tereus hath wrouht, She waf it wel, and wrot the story above, how she was served for hire systers love.

(lines 2360–65)

In Ovid’s account a number of textile and clothing details enhance this brutal and bloody tale. However, Chaucer provides no account of the “rich apparel” that Ovid mentions as worn by Philomela, nor of Procne’s “robe with golden border” and its exchange for “mourning black” once she hears the false report of Philomela’s death from her husband. Nor does Chaucer give the particulars of Philomela’s tapestry as supplied by Ovid: that she weaves with purple threads on a white ground. And, it is noteworthy that Chaucer omits Ovid’s fascinating depiction of Procne’s costume assumed for the festival of Bacchus: she was “Armed for the rites of Bacchus, in all the dress / Of frenzy, trailing vines (ivy leaves) for head-dress, deer-skin / Down the left side, and a spear over the shoulder.” Procne subsequently dresses and disguises Philomela in this same costume before bringing her back to the palace, where the sisters take their terrible revenge on Tereus.17 Chaucer omits another celebrated costume depiction in Parliament of Fowls (PF), as he alludes to the Goddess of Nature (lines 303, 316–19), described so brilliantly in Alanus de Insulis’s The Complaint of Nature.18 Chaucer’s allusion suggests that this goddess and her dress was already so well-depicted that nothing more need be said about her: Aleyn, in the Pleynt of Kynde, Devyseth Nature of aray and face, In swich aray men myghte hire there fynde. See Susan Frye, Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), regarding women in the Renaissance Period, in life and in literature, who exert their agency by means of needlework. 16 Broad woolen cloth. The MED defines stāmin as “(a) Cloth of some kind, usu. made of wool.” James Robinson Planché defines stamin as “‘a worsted cloth of a coarse kind, manufactured in Norfolk in the sixteenth century’,” and posits that it is likely the same type of fabric known as the Stanium of the thirteenth century, in An Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Costume: From the First Century B.C. to c. 1760 (Mineola, NY, 2003), p. 480. 17 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington, IL, 1955), lines 430– 578, esp. lines 452–55, 567–68, 577–78, 592–4, 598–600. 18 See Alanus de Insulis, The Complaint of Nature, trans. Douglas M. Moffat (New York, 1908; rpt. 1972); and Alan of Lille, The Plaint of Nature, trans. and commentary, James J. Sheridan (Toronto, 1980). 15

Conclusion  175  This noble emperesse, ful of grace. (lines 316–19)

Characteristically, Chaucer works within the vast body of literary conventions, and often refers to some iconic literary figures that receive detailed and wellknown sartorial elaboration elsewhere, but he does not expand these images, as witness his frequent but brief references to Fortune.19 Clearly, Chaucer evinces no desire to attempt to outdo the masters he acknowledges through his literary allusions. Costume Translations When Chaucer translates closely, for the most part he provides costume descriptions that are faithful to his primary sources, for example, the costume worn by Lady Philosophy20 that we find in his Boece. In addition, from Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae, he includes Philosophy’s aesthetic concerning all kinds of sartorial display, especially extraordinary decoration in fine dress and jewelry, dyes, and even royal dress. Chaucer carries Philosophy’s ideas forward, ascetic as they are, in his other poems which we now characterize as “Boethian,” for example Former Age21 and Gentilesse (Gent). In the Form Age he grieves over the loss of a better time in which all cloths were worn in their natural undyed state: “No mader, welde, or wood no litestere / Ne knew; the fleese was of his former hewe” (lines 17–18), and further, “Unforged was the hauberk and the plate” (line 49). Here he depicts a society in which both simple, undyed dress and lack of protective armor symbolize a blissful time before “oure dayes,” Chaucer’s own time, in which “covetyse, / Doublenesse, and tresoun, and envye, / Poyson, manslawhtre, and mordre” (lines 61–63) had corrupted the world. Gent embodies this idea in a somewhat different fashion: The poet states plainly that, rather than honoring the worldly costume signs of “mytre, croune, or diademe” as signifying “gentilesse,” we should acknowledge that it is the practice of “rightwisnesse” that constitutes the intrinsic sign of true “gentilesse,” (lines 1, 7, 14, 21). This Boethian ethic Fortune is described and visually depicted with great variety and detail throughout other medieval literature and mss. illuminations, but Chaucer makes no additions to her collective costume rhetoric, as was pointed out by Laurel Broughton in her unpublished paper, “Jean de Meun’s Glad Rags on the Rack: Missing Fortune’s Sartorial Opportunities,” presented May 9, 2008, at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. See also Andrea DennyBrown, “Fashioning Change: Wearing Fortune’s Garments in Medieval England,” PQ 87 (2008): 9–32, at 15, 19–22, 28, where she discusses Chaucer’s characterization of Fortune as changeable; and her comments in Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England (Columbus, OH, 2012), pp. 65–72. 20 See Denny-Brown’s comments regarding Lady Philosophy’s dress in Fashioning Change, pp. 33–34. 21 See Lorraine Kochanske Stock, “Past and Present in Chaucer’s The Former Age: Boethian Translation or Late Medieval Primitivism?” CarmP 2 (1993): 1–37; and Liam Purdon, “Chaucer’s Use of Woad in The Former Age,” PLL 25 (1989): 217–18. 19

176  Chaucer and Array is prevalent throughout the MkT, a tale especially known for its definition of medieval tragedy. In a rare reference to Fortune’s appearance, Chaucer depicts Fortune covering her “brighte face with a clowde” (line 2766) as she withdraws her favor from those who are proud. Such pride, repeatedly in this poem, is poetically expressed in costume rhetoric, with the story of Cenobia being the most noteworthy of these descriptive passages (lines 2249, 2257–58, 2303–05, 2343, 2363–66, 2371–74).22 Further, Lady Philosophy’s sartorial ethics echo in the Parson’s Tale (ParsT). Although this tale is primarily a translation, Nicole D. Smith points out that the “diatribe on dress seems to be a rare example of original Chaucerian invention.”23 In the Parson’s sermon, regarding the sin of Pride, especially in X, lines 409– 31, he castigates those who wear “outrageous array of clothing” and quotes St. Gregory, listing the particulars of such array: its scantiness, softness, “strangenesse24 and degisynesse,”25 “superfluitee,” and costliness (lines 411–15). In all of the “wrong” costumes, the moral error resides in wearing either too little or too much. He especially denounces as superfluous all costly additions of Embrowdynge, the degise endentynge26 or barrynge,27 owndynge,28 palynge,29 wyndynge30 or bendynge,31 and semblable wast of clooth in vanitee … also costlewe furrynge in hir gownes … daggynge of sheres … superfluitee in lengthe of the forseide gownes, trailynge in the dong and in the mire [length that should be given to the poor]. (X, lines 416–19)

Many of these costly embellishments have to do with stripes of one kind or another because stripes carry negative social connotations.32 In addition to decoration of garments, the Parson pays special attention to the flaunting of the body resulting from the closer fitting new styles adopted from 1340 onward. Smith points out that “Of the ten lines devoted to the sinfulness of scanty dress, nine Alan Baragona treated the costume rhetoric in the MkT in two unpublished papers presented at succeeding conferences of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, in May 2003 and 2004: “Haute Couture and Heigh Degree: Costume Rhetoric in The Monk’s Tale,” and “Clothes Unmake the Man: Ill-Suited Tragic Heroes of The Monk’s Tale.” 23 Nicole D. Smith, “The Parson’s Predilection for Pleasure,” SAC 28 (2006): 117–40, at 120; her n. 9 summarizes the critical work done on sources for this sermon. 24 Glossed as “exotic style.” 25 Glossed as “elaborateness.” 26 Glossed as “Ostentatious notching of the borders.” 27 Glossed as “ornamenting with decorative strips;” i.e. creating stripes with embroidered or braided strips. 28 Glossed as “undulating stripes.” 29 Glossed as “vertical stripes.” 30 Glossed as “folding.” 31 Glossed as “decorative borders.” 32 Regarding stripes and cloth of ray in the Sergeant of the Law’s costume; see C&C, pp. 113–18, 122. 22

Conclusion  177  address men’s fashions,” and she posits that the “Parson’s position of moral authority is compromised” because his “interest in the male body permits him to experience delight in storytelling.”33 Smith maintains that this emphasis on male sartorial revelation actually reveals the Parson, but because this long passage of twenty-two lines is a Chaucerian addition to his sources, might not the same charge be laid at Chaucer’s door? Yet another of Chaucer’s translations, his Romaunt of the Rose,34 carries forward its original author’s fulsome costume rhetoric. While adapting the Old French poem Le Roman de la rose (RR)35 for his English audience, Chaucer, as a matter of course, substitutes English for French dress terminology. On the other hand, he does not seek in his translation to delete the original lavish textual decoration by fashion description as he does elsewhere. For example, in Tr he eliminates Benoît’s fanciful description of Criseyde’s costume worn as she leaves Troy,36 and in his LGW, Chaucer omits descriptions of Procne’s and Philomela’s dress for the rites of Bacchus, as provided by Ovid. Instead, and beyond that, Chaucer often enhances the OF poem through using a greater variety of fashion terms. For example, in RR the poet frequently uses cote37 to describe a garment, but Chaucer is more specific, supplying “courtepy” (line 220) to replace “cote” (RR 208, 210, 214), while later retaining “Burnet38 cote” (line 226) and changing the spelling of the OF fabric name “brunete” (RR 214). Elsewhere, for the two dancing damsels in the garden dressed in “cotes” (RR 760), Chaucer designates “kirtles”39 (line 778). In Myrthe’s, Gladness’s, Richesse’s, and Largesse’s depictions, Chaucer retains the term robe40 where it is used in RR, with a notable exception being in Smith, “The Parson’s Predilection,” pp. 131–33. Regarding this author’s revised opinion, see also Nicole D. Smith, Sartorial Strategies: Outfitting Aristocrats and Fashioning Conduct in Late Medieval Literature (Notre Dame, IN, 2012), p. 235 n.88. 34 I cite only section A (referred to as Rom) of this work as it appears in Riverside, unless otherwise specified. 35 See n. 9 above. 36 As discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 82–83 and n. 71. 37 Defined variously by Alan Hindley, Frederick W. Langley, and Brian J. Levy, Old French – English Dictionary (Cambridge, 2006), as “coat, robe, tunic; overgarment; a armer, surcoat (tunic worn over armour).” 38 Glossed as “coat made of coarse brown cloth,” but Planché, Illustrated Dictionary, under the English spelling burnet, burnette, defines it as: “A fine cloth of a dark colour, mentioned in the thirteenth century, not necessarily brown,” 65–66. The MED defines burnēt as a plant or medicinal ingredient and does not supply a definition relating to cloth. Francis Henry Stratmann, A Middle English Dictionary (Oxford, 1891), rev. Henry Bradley (Oxford, 1961), lists “burnet” as “brown, brown cloth.” 39 Glossed as “frocks,” a generalized depiction of this garment that Stratmann, Middle English Dictionary, defines as: curtel = “tunic”; Riverside Glossary has “simple frocks, outer petticoats Rom A 778.” 40 Robe may refer to a single garment or an ensemble of garments, as I mention in Chapter 2, n. 7. See Kay Staniland’s description of the ensemble made for the Queen, included in that note. 33

178  Chaucer and Array the description of Povert, who wears an “old sak” (RR “viel sak”). Chaucer sums up Povert’s costume with “This was her cote and hir mantell” (lines 457–59), while RR states, perhaps more generally, “S’estoit sa robe et ses mantiaus” (lines 448–50, my emphasis). Chaucer also retains the interesting fashion term supplied by RR (line 1221) – souquanie – changing only the spelling: “sukkenye” (line 1232).41 Beyond that, Chaucer alters the fanciful RR depiction of the costume of the God of Love made of flowers organized in designs to make it more realistic.42 In his Rom, Chaucer changes RR’s garment made of flowers, meaning that the god of Love’s garment was made of natural blooms and assembled by Nature, oddly best illustrated in an early twentieth-century book illustration (Plate VII)43 to, “Portreied and wrought” with flowers, a phrasing that indicates man-made weaving or embroidery as illustrated in the c. 1405 manuscript illumination JPGM, MS Ludwig XV, fol. 8 (Color Plate VIII).44 Thus we note that Chaucer is, in general, a faithful translator in his Boethian works and in his translation of RR. Also notable is his addition to his translation of the ParsT, his diatribe against the wearing of too much or too little in the manner of fashionable dress. In this one spectacular passage, Chaucer delineates the prideful sins of costume against which other costumes in his canon might be judged. Figures of Speech Characteristically, we find Chaucer using medieval figures of speech that employ contemporary garments metaphorically, such as “in his sherte alone,” a phrase deployed in several works,45 and the burel cloth metaphor characterizing the Franklin. Another such phrase is “game in my hood.”46 Chaucer includes a variant

Glossed “a loose frock,” and the Riverside explanatory note, p. 1106, further explains that it was worn “over the robe.” As the RR and Rom tell us, it “was made of fine material (probably linen), not of hempen hards (the coarse part of flax).” In a variant spelling, soscanie is defined as an “outer garment: smock, tunic (usually coarse and lower-class),” according to Hindley, Langley, and Levy, Old French-English Dictionary. See Planché, Illustrated Dictionary, regarding the confusion of definitions for this garment term, under sequanie, sosquenie, suckeney (Surquanye, French), pp. 448–49. The MED does not list this term. 42 As discussed in C&C, pp. 61–67, esp. 64–66. 43 Frontispiece in Romaunt of the Rose: Rendered Out of the French into English by Geoffrey Chaucer, eds Keith and Norman Wilkinson (London, 1908). 44 Roman de la Rose, 1405 Paris ms. illumination captioned “God of Love, [with] Beauty, Wealth and Generosity,” in JPGM, Ms Ludwig XV 7, fol. 8. 45 See Chapter 2, pp. 69–70, 79–80 and n. 65; Chapter 3, p. 91 and n. 2. 46 Sarah Stanbury Smith illustrates the various uses and significations of this phrase in “‘Game in Myn Hood’: The Traditions of a Comic Proverb,” SIcon 9 (1983): 1–12. I refer to this practice in my discussion of Pandarus’s hood in Chapter 2 of this book, pp. 65–66 and nn. 25–26. 41

Conclusion  179  of this garment metaphor as he describes the reaction of the seventh group of petitioners of Fame, in HF, to Eolus’s “blasen” of sound from his “blake clarioun”: that every wight gan on hem shoute And for to lawghe as they were wod, Such game fonde they in her hod. (my emphasis) (lines 1800–10)

However, the phrase “game in my hood” is blatantly reproduced in Pandarus’s speech in Tr when he describes his seductive intentions regarding (in modern parlance, “hoodwinking”) Criseyde for Troilus’s benefit. He tells his niece, “’Loke alwey that ye fynde / Game in myn hood’” (Book II, lines 1109–10).47 Familiarity with this poem reveals that this phrase also suggests the more sinister meaning of Pandarus’s plot to accomplish the sexual union of his niece Criseyde and his friend Troilus, with or without her acquiescence in advance and by trickery if necessary.48 And, as mentioned earlier, this figure of speech is incorporated in the stated moral of the Shipman’s Tale. Color Symbolism In some of his shortest costume descriptions, Chaucer both employs conventional medieval color symbolism and sometimes expands and converts conventional usage in surprising ways. For example, blue normally signals constancy in the Middle Ages, but in Anelida and Arcite, Chaucer plays with this symbolism. Chaucer’s audience knows that Anelida’s lover Arcite is unfaithful to her in that he has worn another lady’s colors (lines 141–47). However, Anelida dreams of a faithful Arcite “clad in asure” (lines 328–32). Her dream of Arcite as a constant lover, as symbolized by his blue clothing, demonstrates through its untrue color imagery that it is a false dream of a false lover, a dramatic irony likely perceived by Chaucer’s audience. Elsewhere, Chaucer employs conventional imagery while he pairs contrasting color opposites. The dreamer in the Book of the Duchess (BD) dreams that he meets a “man in blak” (lines 445, 457), an outfit that signals a mournful state while at the same time maintaining its high-style color status.49 This “wel-farynge knyght” grieves for his lady Blanche, whose name signifies the contrasting color white and symbolizes both her appearance and character, as the knight describes her:

As discussed in Chapter 2, pp. 65–66 and n. 25. See Pandarus’s role as go-between, within the context of fabliaux and romance go-betweens, as described by Gretchen Mieszkowski, Medieval Go-Betweens and Chaucer’s Pandarus (New York, 2006), pts 1 and 3, esp. pp. 175–83 which describes the duality of his role. 49 John Munro, “The Anti-Red Shift – to the Dark Side: Colour Changes in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1550,” MC&T 3 (2007): 55–95; also see discussion of Criseyde’s black garments in Chapter 2, pp. 56–58 nn. 5–7. 47 48

180  Chaucer and Array my lady swete, That was so fair, so fresh, so fre, So good that men may wel se Of all goodnesse she had no mete!

(lines 483–86)

And further, And goode faire White she het; That was my lady name ryght. She was bothe fair and bryght; She hadde not hir name wrong.

(lines 948–52)

Chaucer plays with the connotations of white in yet another manner when he characterizes Sir Thopas by numerous costume signs described as white and/ or shining. Thopas is descriptively a white knight, but this characterization is humorous in effect.50 Elsewhere, Chaucer maintains the usual negative association of black and positive association of white as present in analogues for the Manciple’s Prologue and Tale.51 However, we should notice that the white crow in this tale tells the truth to Phebus about his wife’s betrayal, with the result that the bearer of bad news gets punished. Phebus causes the metamorphosis of the crow from white to black, a punishment only saved from being considered unjust because it illustrates the designated lesson of the story “to restreyne and kepe wel thy tonge” and the moral that too much speech brings evil results (IX, lines 310–62, esp. 333). Green is a color that Chaucer mentions only occasionally and to varied effect; it is obviously the background color of the Squire’s embroidered gown, likened to a “meede” in the GP, the customary color of the garments worn by yeomen and, therefore, the GP Yeoman-Forrester,52 the color of the God of Love’s and his queen’s silk garb in LGW, and the color of the garments worn by the “diabolical yeoman”53 of the Friar’s Tale (FrT).54 However, in the FrT ,55 the color green has been critically treated as signifying both the traditional garments worn by a yeoman and as informative of the supernatural element in the story.56 The 52 53

See Chapter 5, pp. 152 n. 48, 157–58 nn. 68–72, and 161–62. As V. J. Scattergood remarks in his note for lines 295–96, Riverside, p. 954. Also as echoed in the dress of the Canon’s Yeoman in his Ellesmere illumination. So described by Katie Homar, “Chaucer’s Novelized, Carnivalized Exemplum: A Bakhtenian Reading of the Friar’s Tale,” ChauR 45.1 (2010): 85–105, at 97. 54 Regarding Lincoln and Kendal green, see C&C, Chapter 6, dealing with the costumes of the GP Yeoman and Shipman. 55 Discussed by Homar in terms of “a carnivalized exemplum,” but also as a fabliau and a work composed of “multiple genres,” in Chaucer’s Novelized, Carnivalized Exemplum, pp. 99–100. See also Introduction, pp. 10–11, above. 56 See Janette Richardson’s note in Riverside, p. 875, for lines 1380–83. She states that green is “traditional in Celtic mythology for underworld spirits who walk the earth,” citing Garrett, JEGP 24 (1925), p. 129. 50 51

Conclusion  181  protagonist Summoner meets “a gay yeman” carrying bow and arrows “brighte and kene,” and wearing a “courtepy57 of grene,” who says he is a “bailly,” then a “feend” (lines 1392, 1448), and who also admits to being a shape-shifter (lines 1461–68). Such a resumé is congruent with the medieval idea of green being an unstable color.58 Completing the fiend’s outfit is a hat fringed in black, a color which Richardson says is “always” associated with devils, although in other associations black has positive connotations.59 In this case, specifically in conjunction with the ornamental “frenges,” a purely decorative element, the black fringe indicates an element of sinfulness, specifically pride or arrogance, that would not be part of an ordinary yeoman’s dress. Ironically, Chaucer’s most colorfully clad character is not one of his romance protagonists, but is, instead, the rooster Chauntecleer in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale (VII, lines 2659–67). The palette here is that of heraldry – red, white, black, azure, and gold. So arrayed, he is, quite comically, a noble cock indeed. Context is all-important in arriving at any interpretation of color symbolism in Chaucer’s works. In general, Chaucer’s knowledge of conventional medieval color symbolism is often best demonstrated as he manipulates its capacity to signify in bono et in malo the ambiguity for which he is best known. Fabric References and Allusions No other medieval poet is more skilled than Chaucer in the choice and employment of cloth terms in literary descriptions throughout his works. Such fabric names add definitive touches evocative of the contemporary material culture, and while they decorate the text, they variously signify the essence of the wearer, including social status and, sometimes, even spiritual health. Chaucer’s experience as the Controller of the King’s Custom and Subsidy of Wool, Hides, and Wool Fells provided intimate and detailed knowledge of medieval cloths. Thus, Glossed as “jacket”; see the discussion of the courtepy of the GP Clerk’s costume in Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Studies 34 (Cambridge, 2005) (C&Cl), esp. pp. 166–70. 58 Regarding green as an unstable color, see Michel Pastoureau, “Formes et couleurs du desordre: le jaune avec le vert,” Figures et Couleurs: Études sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médiévales (Paris, 1986), pp. 23–34, at 29–30. For green as a liturgical color, see Michel Pastoureau, “Le Temps mis en couleurs: des couleurs liturgiques aux modes vestimentaires XIIe–XIIIe siècles,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes (Paris, 1999), pp. 111–35, at 117–18; and John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London, 1993), p. 60. Regarding green in the vocabulary of blazon, vert, see Gage, Colour and Culture, p. 82; as the color of Justice, p. 84; as the color of faith, p. 85 and fig. 52; and as beautiful in nature, pp. 143 and 281 n. 95. Gage provides numerous favorable and unfavorable associations for all colors discussed throughout his book. 59 For varied symbolism of black, see Pastoureau, “Les Couleurs Médiévales: Systemes de Valeurs et Modes de Sensibilité,” Figures et couleurs, pp. 35–49, at 42–43, and Michel Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color, English language ed. (Princeton, NJ, 2009). 57

182  Chaucer and Array when he includes a fabric term in his literary descriptions, we cannot doubt that he knew this fabric’s impact on his contemporary audience for whom it signified a monetary value, a social significance, and sometimes a spiritual condition. His major literary use of multiple fabric terms is the GP: in this work, Chaucer’s Knight wears a gypon of fustian, a durable fabric of the right quality for his strenuous activities. The Friar’s semycope is made of double worstede, a cloth more expensive than it might have been, given his vows of poverty, thus signifying pride. The Merchant’s robe of mottelee, of many colors or shades, suggests mercantile prudence, as this fabric’s quality is dificult to establish. The Sergeant’s livery of medlee was that striped clothing he must wear as required by law, and it represents his professional obedience at the same time it announces him to be a servant of the people. The Franklin’s gypser (purse) of silk delineates his gentlemanly status. The Shipman’s gown of faldyng, a coarse woolen cloth, was suitable for the hard life of a seaman. The Doctor of Phisik’s robe of sangwyn and pers lined with taffata and sendal displays his professional status and signals the eastern source of both these fabrics and much of his medical knowledge. The Reeve’s second-hand surcote of pers, an expensive fabric when new, represents his cunning nature and his servile success. And the Wife of Bath’s fine scarlet reed hose speak of this commoner’s affluence and vanity. Also, through his color choices, Chaucer indicates other fabrics. The Yeoman’s livery cote and hood of grene suggests that this cloth could be Lincoln green. The Miller’s whit cote was likely made of that fabric known as blanket; and his blew hood could have been fashioned of bluett, the color itself representing a commoner’s vanity.60 Chaucer’s mercantile and social knowledge was surely augmented by his familiarity with intermittent and often ineffective sumptuary laws throughout Europe and especially in England. In 1363, the English Parliament enacted laws for wearing apparel that expressed this governing body’s attitudes on this subject. In these sumptuary laws, types of garments, fabrics, decoration, and jewels were prescribed for each socio-economic group designated, according to both birth status and income, with income being the deciding factor. However, these 1363 laws were the only English sumptuary laws enacted during Chaucer’s adult life, and they were revoked in less than a year’s time. There are no records to show that they were ever enforced, and it is unlikely that they should have had any large influence on Chaucer’s costume rhetoric, although they have been often cited in that regard by critics. In any case, in the late fourteenth century, the attitudes expressed by these sumptuary laws were in the moral, political, and financial air. Chaucer’s works make it clear that he knew these material values permeating certain levels of medieval society, as they were both accepted and rejected. Sumptuary laws across England and Europe appear generally to have been frequently circumvented and were, therefore, largely unsuccessful; even the religious

See Laura F. Hodges, “Chaucer: dress,” Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c.450–1450, gen ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker with Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2012), pp. 118–21; also C&C, pp. 233–35.

60

Conclusion  183  orders had difficulties enforcing their requirements for proper habits among their members.61 This difficulty is exemplified in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale by the Yeoman’s costume62 where the Yeoman’s garments are ruined by their exposure to alchemical practice. Alchemists wearing soiled clothes illustrate Chaucer’s use of “clothing as a sign of misplaced treasure,” referring to Matt. 6:19, according to Lynn Staley.63 When Chaucer dresses a character in fabric or garments that stray from the generally accepted path of usage, these are telling sartorial details that speak to both the issues of degree (social rank) and array (expected dress and accouterments suited to the wearer’s degree), and they are often key to the characterization of this character. Beyond the numerous fabrics in the GP, Chaucer is also judicious in his mention of fabrics in the KnT. He designates the most expensive clooth of gold drapery as the cloth used for decorating Athens for the festivities and welcoming participants in Theseus’s tournament, and conversely mentions the inexpensive sarge (serge) as a contrasting cloth that possibly constitutes the black mourning hangings covering the city during the funeral procession for Arcite. Thus each spectacle, tournament, and royal funeral is given its own appropriate fabric.64 Also Chaucer orchestrates a dramatic contrast when, in the midst of black-draped Athens, Arcite’s body and his bier are draped with lustrous “clooth of gold” (line 2872), portraying Arcite’s nobility and celebrating his victory over Palamon in the tournament that cost him his life. Chaucer’s selection of fabric that contributes to characterization is especially discriminating, and nowhere more so than in Tr. where his choice for Criseyde, samyt (Book I, line 109), as the fabric of her widow’s weeds, evokes both her character and the poem’s setting. This fabric is woven of silk and was produced in the Mediterranean area and in Asia, evoking the setting of the poem; furthermore, it is a silk that because of its weave has a special sheen. Samyt provides Criseyde with luxurious and lustrous black widow’s garb at the same time that it is geographically right for this poem, set at a crossroads of the East–West traffic in cloth. Similarly, cloths of gold and richly dyed satyns are mentioned in the MLT (II, 136–37) as part of the stock sold by the wealthy chapmen who carry Custance’s fame abroad. These goods convey to the reader that the chapmen are silk merchants sailing and selling in that vast Mediterranean territory that is the setting for Custance’s forced travels.65 These same two fabric terms figure in the decor that the dreamer in the BD imagines as a suitable bedroom/cave fitted out for Morpheus as a reward for granting him sleep. This luxurious cave, with its goldpainted walls covered in narrative tapestries (lines 242–61), includes among its See C&Cl, pp. 1–15, and throughout that volume. Discussed in C&Cl, pp. 270–71, 274. 63 Lynn Staley, “The Man in Foul Clothes and a Late Fourteenth-Century Conversation About Sin,” SAC 24 (2002): 1–47, esp. 37, 45. 64 See Chapter 1, pt 2. 65 This would make them part of the extensive population of the metaphorical Sea of Silk described in detail by E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia, PA, 2009). 61 62

184  Chaucer and Array furnishings a feather bed with linens woven in Reynes,66 and a bedcover of “fyn blak satyn,” “Rayed with gold” [black satin striped cloth of gold].67 The costliness of this decor expresses the depth of the dreamer’s desire for sleep, but at the same time, he knows himself to be safe from incurring this expense because he does not know where to find Morpheus’s cave. Syklatoun, the silk fabric of which Sir Thopas’s robe is made (VII, line 725), is another of Chaucer’s evocative fabrics. This cloth is often woven with gold threads as well as with silk. 68 Chaucer’s mention of this highly luxurious fabric is part of his costumed caricature of the undistinguished knight Sir Thopas, at the same time as it evokes the idea of the international trade in silks that contributed to making Bruges the prosperous cloth-marketing city that it was in the Middle Ages – a city so near to and yet so culturally far from Thopas’s smaller home town of Poperinghe. Stamin, as previously mentioned, is Chaucer’s contribution of the ground fabric (cloth on which Philomela weaves) for Philomela’s eloquent pictorial weaving of her abduction and rape. The strength of such a woolen cloth, worsted or not, would complement the effectiveness of Philomela’s embroidery and the forcefulness of its maker as she seeks her revenge upon Tereus. According to Chaucer’s Parson, stamyn was sufficiently coarse that wearing it next to the body would be a penitential experience (X, lines 1051–52). And we must not forget the burel that serves the Wife of Bath in her manipulation of husbands (III, line 356) as she complains that it diminishes her husband’s stature when she wears it. Burel also figures in the Summoner’s description of the character of the poor who wear this homely cloth (III, lines 1872, 1874); and it forms the Franklin’s metaphor for himself as a common man who is uneducated (V, line 716). Elsewhere in Chaucer’s works, a scantily covered Venus in the PF provides an additional example of his careful diction. Her nakedness is hidden only by a “subtyl coverchef of Valence,” where “subtyl” means “delicate” and/or “thin.”69 This coverchef apparently hides less of her beauty than it enhances, although we cannot know this for certain. I have found no documentation of the actual historical characteristics of this fabric; Riverside glosses it, bas de page, as the product of Valence, France, and the notes for this poem tell us that this town has

Glossed Rennes, France. The Riverside Explanatory Note for line 255, p. 968, specifies Rennes, in Brittany. This note also cites Skeats’s examples and estimates of the cloth’s value, which he offers without providing sources. 67 See Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150-c.1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 4 (London, 1992; rpt. 1996), pp. 86–89, esp. 87, regarding the consumption of cloth embellished with metal threads, beginning at least in the twelfth century, and the use of various kinds of metallic threads employed. Also see Nancy Andrews Reath, “Weaves in Hand-Loom Fabrics. IV. Satin Weaves,” Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, 22.110 (Feb. 1927): 318–26, esp. 321. 68 See Chapter 5, pp. 144–45 and n. 18. 69 Riverside Glossary. 66

Conclusion  185  an ongoing textile industry.70 Is it fine linen, or silk; is it opaque or, as Chaucer’s lines perhaps suggest, sheer enough to leave little to the viewer’s imagination? As Chaucer phrases it, this fabric highlights Venus’s beauty: Hyre gilte heres with a golden thred Ibounden were, untressed as she lay, And naked from the brest unto the hed men myghte hire sen; and sothly for to say, The remenaunt was wel kevered to my pay [pleasure, satisfaction], Ryght with a subtyl coverchef of Valence Ther was no thikkere cloth of no defense. (lines 267–73).

Chaucer’s contemporary audience might well know the nature of cloth from Valence, and yet still be in doubt as to just what the poet’s “pay,” his pleasure or satisfaction, might demand – less or more transparency; line 273 might be interpreted either way. Ambiguous Chaucer has named a cloth, but left his present-day audience to wonder about its quality, and the image of Venus remains mysterious, covered and perhaps uncovered, in mental imagery according to the audience member’s “pay.” Finally, Chaucer’s presentation of fabrics periodically features penitential hair- or sack-cloth, a “heyre clowt” as desired by the Old Man of the Pardoner’s Tale (PardT) (III, line 736), a penitential garment as worn by Cecilia beneath her cloth of gold wedding garments when she marries Valerian (VIII, lines 130–33), and to that same penitential end, recommended by the Parson: Thanne shaltow understonde that bodily peyne stant in disciplyne or techynge, by word, or by writynge, or in ensample; also in werynge of heyres, or of stamyn, or of haubergeons on hire naked flessh, for Cristes sake, and swiche manere penances./ But war thee wel that swiche manere penaunces on thy flessh ne make nat thyn herte bitter or angry or anoyed of theyself, for bettre is to caste awey thyn heyre, than for to caste awey the swetenesse of Jhesu Crist. (X, lines 1051–52)

Scratchiness was this fabric’s chief characteristic, and for that purpose it was woven of goat’s hair, camel’s hair (the outer hair, not the softer belly hair), and / or horsehair.71 A comparable effect was achieved by wearing a pigskin garment

Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1980; rpt. 1999), pp. 27–28, describes a wardrobe made for the wife of Ponce Clair in 1345; he was both a lawyer and a citizen of Valence-sur-Rhône. She compares this list of garments with those also made in Valence for the English queen and finds them to be quite similar. The fabrics mentioned are scarlet (luxury woolen), camelin (a woolen hood lined with sandeli, cendal [a silk]), and de persico (woolen cloth of some shade of blue). Fur, pearl, embroidery, and button decorations are mentioned. Newton cites Recueil d’Anciens Inventaires, ed. M. Brun-Durand, I. p. 390ff; p. 402, pièce 77; p. 403, pièces 88–89. No coverchef is mentioned. 71 For some of these details, I am indebted to a most informative discussion of this fabric on Chaucernet, April 27–30, 2001. 70

186  Chaucer and Array with the “raggedy-cut bristles against … [the] skin,” as St. Clare did.72 Hair-cloth is an apposite fabric to be included within the Canterbury Tales for it serves as a repetitive reminder, to the pilgrims within this work and to Chaucer’s audience at large, of the hair garments worn by St. Thomas Becket.73 Summary Chaucer’s patterns of deploying costume rhetoric, overall, provide numerous surprises for his audience by upsetting their expectations. Where they might expect lengthy descriptio – including detailed costume rhetoric – to be included in romances, Chaucer omits fascinating costume depictions from some of his sources, and fails to add descriptio for his major characters. In contrast, he makes frequent – sometimes pervasive, as in the Tale of Sir Thopas – use of costume rhetoric in his comedic tales. However, throughout his works, he often satisfies audience expectations in brief rhetorical costume depictions of social class. In his translations into English, beyond his excisions of exotic costumes from his romance sources and from Ovid, he is generally faithful to his sources, and he also especially carries forward in his own works the ethics of dress as described by Boethius’s Lady Philosophy. In addition, he provides an original insertion for the ParsT – a detailed and lavish diatribe against the excesses of fashion that illustrate the sin of pride. He occasionally deploys figures of speech featuring clothing and textiles in his texts that contribute colloquial atmosphere and depict the material culture of his day. In his inclusion of color symbolism, Chaucer is both traditional and innovative as well as economically and socially evocative. He avoids “gilding the lilies” of traditional literary costume icons from earlier literature but signifies his knowledge of these costumes by alluding briefly to them and their significance. Above all, and no matter that his costume rhetoric is sometimes derived from literary sources, his life experience, or his imagination, Chaucer’s descriptions demonstrate that he is the master of the telling detail. And nowhere is this mastery more evident than in his judicious choice of fabrics, mentioned or worn by characters, and woven into the texts of his poetry and prose.

Fra Tommaso da Celano, The Life of St. Clare Virgin, trans. Catherine Volton Magrini (Assisi, n.d.), p. 16. 73 As included in The Lives of Thomas Becket, ed. and trans. Michael Staunton, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester, 2002), pp. 66–67, 69, 203–05. See also the explanatory note, p. 910, for the PardT suggesting that lines 948–49 refer to the hair breeches worn by St. Thomas when he died. 72

Appendix A Timeline of Processions – Some Having Street Drapery

No claim is made for this list being complete. It is constructed only from materials referenced in Chapter 1. Also, because terms such as “cloþes” in medieval records might be read as meaning banners or fabric hangings that are suspended from windows, balconies, or roofs, it is not always clear just how the streets were decorated. “Ouerhead” is another ambiguous medieval term – it is impossible to know if this means fabric is used to construct a covering of the open space above the heads of the procession, or if it only refers to the hangings or banners being placed high up on the building walls along which the procession travels. 942 Religious procession in Constantinople: Draping of a processional route occurred at least as early as 942 when the walls along the short pedestrian route from the Great Palace to the religious site of Hagia Sophia were hung with brocade.1 1236 Coronation of Eleanor, queen of Henry III: The first known English occasion on which the festivities began to transcend decoration and procession took place in 1236 with the coronation of Eleanor, queen of Henry III. In preparation for the arrival of the king and queen, the citizens decorated the city somewhat more sumptuously than usual, it seems, with [wearing] mantles of fine linen and flags, garlands and hangings [my emphasis], candles and lamps, and ‘certain great and marvelous inventions.’

The participants in the official proceedings of 1236: came dressed in fine linen and encircled about by gowns woven with gold and covered with ornamental capes. Mounted on valuable horses with new bridles and saddles glittering, they were arranged in orderly troops and bore three-hundred and According to Albrecht Berger, “Imperial and Ecclesiastical Processions in Constantinople,” Byzantine Constantinople, ed. Nevra Necipoglu (Leiden, 2001), pp. 77–79.

1

188  Appendix A sixty gold cups. As the trumpeters of the king led the way and sounded their trumpets, all those who beheld it were excellently astonished so extraordinary was the wonder.2

1267 Louis IX’s knighting of Philip his elder son: Paris was “marvelously decorated with multicolored hangings and precious ornaments.” The hangings were supplied by the bourgeoisie.3 1271 [& 1275] Coronation celebrations of King Philippe of France (1271) and his queen Marie de Brabant (1275), respectively: Records show that the streets of Arras and Paris were decorated with luxurious fabrics for the coronation celebrations.4 1272 Edward I’s royal entry into London: þe stretes wer’ couered ouer his heued wiþ riche clopbes of silk, wit[h] tapiʒ of riche coueryng.5

1298 Edward I’s victory celebration for defeating the Scots: Citizens’ guilds participated in a procession, but the Fishmongers were especially notable for their “Pageants and shews” which included four gilt sturgeons, four silver salmon each borne on a horse, followed by forty-six knights on horseback

According to Charles Roger Smith (trans., ed. of Richard Maidstone’s Concordia), “Concordia …” Diss. Princeton University, 1972, pp. 44–45, citing in his n. 8: Matthew of Paris, Chronica Majora, III, pp. 336–37. However, neither Smith’s translation (45), nor Matthew of Paris’s text (cited in Smith’s n. 12) for that passage includes mention of “hangings.” John Stow, Survey of London, 2 vols, ed. C.L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1908), 1:95 states that “the Citie was adorned with silkes,” but fails to specify if these were banners, cloths, or tapestries. He does specify that the citizens’ clothes were embroidered with gold. 3 Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Nancy Freeman Regaldo, “La grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the knighting of His Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313,” City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, eds Barbara Hanawalt and Kay Reyerson, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 6 (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), pp. 56–85, esp. pp. 57 and 73. 4 According to Guillaume de Nangis, Gesta Philippi Regis Francorum Filii Sanctae memoriae Regis Ludovici, ed. P.C.F. Dannou, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France 20 (1840), pp. 488–90, 496–97; and Les Grandes chroniques de France, selon que elles soni conservées en l’Eglise de Saint-Denis en France, ed. Paulin Paris, 6 vols. ( Paris, 1937), esp. pp. 29–30, 39–40. Catherine Jean Parsoneault, “The Montpellier Codex: Royal Influence and Musical Taste in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris,” Diss., University of Texas at Austin, TX, 2001, p. 178, theorizes that these decorations may have taken the form of banners. 5 As recorded in The Brut, Part 1, ed. F.W.D. Brie, EETS, OS 131 (London, 1906), p. 179. 2

Appendix A  189  in the guise of “Luces of the sea” with one dressed as St Magnes. A thousand horsemen are mentioned in the accounts.6 1308 ? Edward II of England and Queen Isabella’s royal entry into London: Tandem Londoniam venerunt, cui copiosa civium turba obviabant, et per regales vicos tapetos aureos dependebant, et tunc visa est Londonia quasi nova Jerusalem monilibus ornata [then was London seen (hung with golden tapestries) ornamented with jewels like New Jerusalem … .]7

Weir mentions “streets that were gaily decorated with banners and pennants.”8 1308 Edward II of England and Isabella’s coronation9: For their coronation (24 February), after riding “in procession” [no details given] to Westminster Hall, they walked from there to the Abbey over a wooden walkway covered in “blue cloth strewn with herbs and flowers” and under a portable “embroidered canopy borne by the Barons of the Cinque Ports.”10 1313 Parade of Parisians for Pentecost Feast: The streets were decorated “with hangings of many colours … [of] blue or green.” 11 Stow, Survey, 1:95–6. From William Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles of Edward I and II , Rolls Series 76, vol. 1 (London, 1882), p. 152, cited and translated by Gordon Kipling only as: [“’then was London seen ornamented with jewels like New Jerusalem,’” citing the Latin in his n. 31 in Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford, 1998), p. 15. Clearly, a Latin phrase “et per regales vicos tapetos aureos dependebant” conveying the information that the splendid [procession] route was hung with golden hangings [cloths or tapestries], which I have supplied in parentheses, is omitted in the English translation supplied by Kipling. 8 Alison Weir, Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England (New York, 2005), p. 29. 9 Weir, Queen Isabella, p. 33. 10 Weir, Queen Isabella, pp. 28–33, esp. 33, citing Foedera; Annales Paulini; Vita Edwardi Secundi; Gesta Edwardi; Robert of Reading; and Walsingham. For a depiction of Queen Isabella’s later approach to the gates of Paris, see Froissart’s Chroniques, vol. 1, Paris, BN MS. Fr. 2643, fol. 1, reproduced in Maximiliaan P. J. Martens, Lodewijk van Gruuthuse (Bruges, 1992), p. 128. 11 Citing the metrical chronicler of this event mentioned in Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Nancy Freeman Regaldo, “Universitas et communitas: The Parade of the Parisians at the Pentecost Feast of 1313,” Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, Ludus: Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 5 (Amsterdam and Arlanta, GA), pp. 117–54, at pp. 117–54, esp. 118, 121, and 126. N. 30 in this same article also mentions the colors white, “noir,” yellow, and red used in the street decor. See also their “La grant feste,” pp. 61, 67, 73, mentioning Grandes Chroniques, Viard, ed., n. 8:288; and Donald Perret, “The Meaning of the Mystery: From Tableaux to Theatre in 6 7

190  Appendix A 1357 Triumphal Entry into London of the Black Prince and captive King John of France, after the French are defeated at Poitiers: Attending him on a small black palfrey, the prince paraded his prisoner through the London streets on a white charger while bells clanged, fountains spouted wine and thousands of liveried guildsmen marched behind their mounted wardens and aldermen through streets hung with tapestry.

The procession was followed by feasts and tournaments.12 1377 Coronation of Richard II, London Procession. 1380 Coronation of Charles VI of France: It included a “richly decorated church,” “an elevated throne, adorned with cloth of gold,” low benches covered in the same for the knights, and at the feast horses in gold brocade drapes transporting the servers.13 1380 Royal entry into Paris of Charles VI of France: The streets were decorated with tapestries as if they were temples [“les rues et les carrefours étaient tendus de tapisseries comme des temples”].14

the French Royal Entry,” Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, Ludus: Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 5 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 2001), pp. 187–211, at p. 297 n. 12. 12 Sir Arthur Bryant, The Age of Chivalry: The Atlantic Saga (Garden City, NY, 1963), p. 416. Unfortunately, Bryant provides no chronicle or record source for his mention of tapestry hangings, and his book lacks a bibliography. I am grateful to Jo Kostner and B. S. Lee for this reference. 13 According to Sir John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries, trans. Thomas Johnes (London, 1839), 1:621. 14 Says Perret, “Meaning of the Mystery,” esp. p. 207 n. 12, and Perret cites Guenée and LeHoux, Les entrées royales, pp. 56–7. Guenée and LeHoux present the older version and the modern French translation from Chronique du Religieux de SaintDenis, Édition Bellaguet (trans.), 1839, t. I, p. 32 et suiv.: Première entrée du roi Charles VI à Paris … cives in vestibus bispartitis ex albo et viridi usque ad Cappelam equestri ordine eidem occurentes vici et compita ville paliis variis ad templi similitudinem exornata, necnon et ubique musicorum concentus instrumentorum auditus, ostenderunt. [Les bourgeois, en habits mi-partis blanc et vert, allèrent à sa recontre jusqu’à la Chapelle; les rues et les carrefours de la ville étaient tendus de tapisseries comme des temples; on entendait de tous côtés le son harmonieux des instruments.]

Appendix A  191  1389 Royal entry of Charles VI of France: The king rode along streets draped with hangings “like temples.” 15 1389 Royal entry of Queen Isabeau of France into Paris: The whole street of Saint Denis was covered with a canopy of rich camlet and silk cloths, as if they had had the cloths for nothing, or were at Alexandria or Damascus. I, the writer of this account, was present, and astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments could have come; for all the houses on each side the great street of Saint Denis, as far as the Châtelet, or indeed to the great bridge, were hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histories to the delight of all beholders.

The bridge of Notre Dame, too, was enhanced with drapery – “covered with a starry canopy, of green and crimson, and the streets were all hung with tapestry as far as the church of Notre-Dame.” Also, “The great bridge of Paris was hung all its length with green and white sarcenet.”16 1392 The “reconciliation” procession of Richard II of England: Hiis animata loquelis, tota cohors sociatur, Preparat et cultu se meliore suo. Ornat et interea se pulcre queque platea; Vestibus auratis urbs micat innumeris. Floris odoriferi specie fragrante platea, Pendula perque domos purpura nulla deest. Aurea, coccinea, bissinaque, tinetaque vestis Pinxerat hic celum arte iuvante novum. Quos tulit ante dies istos plebs ista labores, Quas tulit expensae os reserare nequit.17

(lines 55–64) [my emphasis]

[Moved by these words, the entire city unites and the people bedeck themselves with their finest attire. Meanwhile, each street is beautifully decorated; and soon the city gleams with countless vestments ornamented with gold. The street is fragrant

According to Bernard Guenée, States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, trans. Juliet Vale (Oxford, 1985), p. 27. The phrase “like temples” may have become a standard description. 16 Froissart’s account in Chronicles, 2:398–405. See the depiction of this scene in the fifteenth-century illumination in Froissart’s Chronicle, BL MS, reproduced in Bryan Holme’s Medieval Pageant (London, 1987), p. 27. 17 Maidstone, Concordia. Kipling describes Richard II’s triumphal “reconciliation” procession of 1392 as the “earliest … royal entry to employ multiple pageants and to leave detailed descriptive records.” The streets and pageants were designed to depict London as the New Jerusalem, according to Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 6, 12, 14–15, 17. In contrast, see Thomæ Thomæ Walsingham, Quondam monachi S. Albini, Historia Anglicana, ed. Henry Thomas Riley (London, 1863), 1:331–2 regarding the king’s procession through London for the coronation of Richard II, in 1377. 15

192  Appendix A with a kind of sweet-smelling flower, and from the houses no purple hanging is lacking. Golden, scarlet, silken, and dyed cloth deftly created a new heaven. No mouth can tell what expenditures the people bore or what labors they undertook in anticipation of that day.]18

1392(93?) King Richard II’s London entry: Richard II arrived at London Bridge where he received gifts ii. fayre stedys, trappyd in ryche cloth of golde, partyd of redde and whyte, … he came at the standarde in Chepe, the cytezyns of the cytie standyng vpon eyther syde of the stretys in theyr lyuereys, & crying ‘kinge Rycharde, kynge Rycharde,’ and at theyre backys with wyndowys & wallys hangyd with all ryche tapettys & clothys of arasse, in moost goodlye & shewynge wyse … .19

1399 Duke of Lancaster’s coronation as King of England: London’s streets “were all handsomely decorated with tapestries and other rich hangings.”20 ca.1421 Royal entry of King Henry V and his Queen Kateryne: (From Galba E. VIII): “euyry strete hongid rychely with riche clothis of gold and silke, and of velewettis and clothis o. araas, the beste that myght be gotyn,” and, (from Harley 53): “and þe stretes were rially hanget with rich clothes.”21 1432 Henry VI of England – royal entry into London and procession. Taken from Maidstone’s Concordia, Smith, ed. and trans.; see pp. 170–1. The slow procession moved to enter the area known as Chepe where the decor is noted:

18

Quales texture picturarumque figure, Qualis et ornatus scribere quis poterit! Nempe, videtur ibi de summis usque deorsum Nil nisi divicie vultus et angelici.

(lines 267–70)

[(W)ho could describe the decorations, the pictures and figures of the tapestries! Truly, nothing but rich ornamentation and angelic faces can be seen from the heights down to the street.]



See also Helen Suggett, “A Letter Describing Richard II’s Reconciliation with the City of London, 1392,” EHR 62 (1947), pp. 209–13, at p. 213. 19 Entry dated M.CCC,lxxx.xiii (it is the same procession as described above, dated 1392) in The New Chronicles of England and France by Robert Fabyan, ed. Henry Ellis (Londres, 1811), pp. 537–38. I have spelled out all words abbreviated in this entry. 20 States Froissart, Chronicles, 2:698–9. At this same time he tells us that a “scaffold covered with crimson cloth” surrounded the royal throne covered in “cloth of gold.” See, too, R. Withington, English Pageantry (Cambridge, MA, 1918; rpt. New York, 1963), pp. 124–32. 21 Brut, Pt. 2, ed. F. W. D. Brie, EETS, OS 136 (London, 1908), p. 426 [from Galba E. VIII]; and p. 558 [from Harley 53].

Appendix A  193  1486 Henry VII of England–first royal entry into York and procession. The king, commyng up the stretes, shall se the same furnished wt clothis of the best which may be gottyn wtin the citie for the honourment of the same, and at his entrie unto Use brigge, in the end of the streetes of Skeldergate and Northstrete, becauce no gappes shall appeir, shall y’ be clothes hangid, and a convenient thing divisid whereby, if the weder be fair, of the lordes before and othre ne before the king schall rayne rose water.22

16th c. Adventus processions and civic triumphs.23

“The Programme for the Reception of Henry VII on His First Visit to York in 1486,” A Volume of English Miscellanies Illustrating the History and Language of the Northern Countries of England, ed. James Raine (Durham, 1890), p. 55. Pp. 53–57 include descriptions of pageants before and after this date. 23 Gordon Kipling, “The King’s Advent Transformed: The Consecration of the City in the Sixteenth-Century Civic Triumph,” Ceremonial Culture in Pre-Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Howe (Notre Dame, IN, 2008), pp. 89–127. 22



Appendix B Processions to Tournaments1

1331 #”Feste of the thirty-one kings” at Tournai, at which a jousting fraternity of bourgeois honored Galehaut and the thirty kings he conquered: Records reveal expenses for civic decoration and the enclosure of the market place. 1339 #Feste de l’espinette at Lille: One contestant, Jehan Bernier, “was led into the lists by two … damsels by two golden cords, … [with another]two carrying each a lance.”2 The front of the loges for the échevins, consuls, governor and bailiff of Lille, etc. was covered in cloth; the loges were rented to these notables.3 1331 London tournament, held by Edward III: William Montague and 16 mounted knights, “masked and dressed as Tartars, paraded through London to Cheapside, each knight leading a lady [each wearing a tunic of red velvet and a white hood] by a silver chain.”4

See Stephen Slater, The Illustrated Book of Heraldry: An international history of heraldry and it contemporary uses (London, 2003), esp. pp. 8, 14, 22–24, for numerous reproductions of tournament scenes. 2 According to R. Coltman Clephan, The Tournament: Its Periods and Phases (1919; New York, 1967), p. 36, citing Hewitt’s citation of the Chronicle of Flanders for 1339, as reported in Ancient Armour and Weapons, II, p. 340. 3 According to Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and its Contexts, 1270–1350 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1982), pp. 25, 27–28, 32, 34. 4 As reported in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, eds Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2002; rpt. 2003), pp. 10, 221, citing Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs (Roll Series, 1883), 1, 354. See John Stow, Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1908), 1:268 for an account of the collapse of the viewing stand. 1

Appendix B  195  1357 and 1362 London, jousts at Smithfield, held by Edward III.5 1375 [1374?] Final tournament held under Edward III’s auspices: Alice Perrers was cast as “lady of the Sunne” to ride in the procession via Cheapside to Smithfield, in the company of ladies who led their lords by their horses’ bridles.6 1388 London processions to jousts held by Richard II at Smithfield.7 1389 Smithfield tournament held by Richard II: [A]ll such persones as came in vpon the kynges party, theyr armour & apparayle was garnysshyd with whyte hertys & crownys of golde about theyr neckys; and of this sorte were. xxiiii., with xxiiii, ladyes also apparaylyd as aboue is sayd, lad with. xxiiii. cheynys of golde the horses of them, and so conueyed them thorough the cytie vnto Smythfeelde from the Towre of London, where the kyng, the quene, & many other great astatys beyng present, and a “marciall iustis & tournament” was held.8

1390 Tournament of St. Inglevere [also Inglevert]: Froissart describes the tournament of St. Inglevere (preceding the London tournament in 1390), giving minute accounting of each tilt and the participants’ arms and behaviors, but no account of decoration of procession route or pageant performance at this event.9 Stow, Survey, 2:29. See in Sir John Froissart’s Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and The Adjoining Countries, trans. Thomas Johnes (London, 1839), the illumination depicting knights and ladies riding through London to a tournament beneath banners bearing the lions of England and the fleurs-de-lis of France, as reproduced in Bryan Holme, Medieval Pageant (London, 1987), p. 26. For other pictures of Smithfield tournaments see Pierpont Morgan Library MS M. 775, fols 2v, 175v, and 277v, available over the internet via CORSAIR. 6 As discussed in Heraldry, eds Coss and Keen, p. 221; see Stow, Survey, 2:29–30; and Glynne William Gladstone Wickham, Early English Stages 1300 to 1660 (New York, 1959; rpt. 1966; London 1959), p. 28, regarding “processions with minstrelsy and Lords on foot leading ladies’ horses by decorative bridles” as a “frequent” processionto-the-tournament practice – in 1366, 1374, 1391, 1395. 7 The Brut, Part 2, ed. F.W.D. Brie, EETS, OS 136 (London, 1908), p. 343; Froissart, Chronicles 2:478–80; Stow, Survey 2:30. 8 The New Chronicles of England and France by Robert Fabyan, ed. Henry Ellis (London; 1811), pp. 534–35. I have spelled out all abbreviated words. The date provided is M.CCC.lxxxix. 9 Froissart, Chronicles 2:434–46 does reproduce a black and white illustration of the event (435). Color reproductions of the Froissart manuscript illumination (from BL Harl. 4379, fol. 43), showing the use of cloth of gold in the decor of spectator 5

196  Appendix B 1390 Smithfield tournament held by Richard II of England: Richard II headed a procession to the jousts at Smithfield of twenty knights, all bearing his device of the white hart on their robes, shields and horse trappers, accompanied by twenty ladies displaying the same device in their dress.10 [T]here paraded out from the Tower of London, … sixty barded coursers ornamented for the tournament, on each was mounted a squire of honour that advanced only at a foot’s pace; then came sixty ladies of rank, mounted on palfreys most elegantly and richly dressed, following each other, every one leading a knight

with a silver chain completely armed for tilting; and in this procession11 they moved on through the streets of London, attended by numbers of minstrels and trumpets, to Smithfield.12 The queen of England and her ladies and damsels were already arrived and placed in chambers handsomely decorated.13

stands and in the horse trappings, may be seen in Bryan Holme, Princely Feasts and Festivals: Five Centuries of Pageantry and Spectacle (London, 1988), p. 18; and less clearly, in Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT, 1984), pl. 53. 10 Heraldry, p. 10, citing Barker, p. 100. 11 Such a parade of knights and ladies is pictured in Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (New York, 1989), p. 185, a b&w reproduction of BL Harley 43379 (fifteenth-century French ms), fol. 99, described as the entry of knights and ladies into Pavia for a tournament, but the banners show quarterings of fleur de lis and English lions. 12 An account of this procession is provided by Clephan, The Tournament, pp. 34–35. 13 Froissart, Chronicles, 2:477. This parade echoes Richard II’s 1388 tournament procession described in The Brut, Part 2, p. 343. Each evening, following the tilting, the company enjoyed feasts and dancing, entertainments described as “very magnificent,” according to Froissart 2:478–80. Stow’s account, Survey, 2:30–1 for the 14th year of Richard II’s reign differs in some details from Froissart’s.

Appendix C

Statius1 describes the monile given by Vulcan to Harmonia (I.2.265–305): … thou was wearing, Argia, the ill-starred ornament of thy husband’s giving, the dread necklace of Harmonia. Far back the story runs, but I will pursue the wellknown tale of woes, whence came it that a new gift had such terrible power.   The Lemnian, … long time distressed at Mars’ deceit and seeing that no punishment gave hindrance to the disclosed armour, and the avenging chains removed not the offence, wrought this for Harmonia on her bridal day to be the glory of her dower. Thereat, though taught mightier tasks, the Cyclopes labour, and the Telchines famed for their handiwork helped in friendly rivalry of skill; but for himself the sweat of toil was heaviest. There forms he a circlet of emeralds glowing with a hidden fire, and adamant stamped with figures of ill omen, and Gorgon eyes, and embers left on the Sicilian anvil from the last shaping of a thunderbolt, and the crests that shine on the heads of green serpents; then the dolorous fruit of the Hesperides and the dread gold of Phrixus’ fleece; then divers plagues doth he intertwine, and the king adder snatched from Tisiphone’s grisly locks, and the wicked power that commends the girdle; all these he cunningly anoints about with lunar foam, and pours over them the poison of delight. Not Pasithea, eldest of the gracious sisters, nor Charm nor the Idalian youth did mould it, but Grief, and all the Passions, and Anguish, and Discord, with all the craft of her right hand. The work first proved its worth, when Harmonia’s complaints turned to dreadful hissing, and she bore company to grovelling Cadmus, and with long trailing breast drew furrows in the Illyrian fields. Next, scarce had shameless Semele put the hurtful gift about her neck, when lying Juno crossed her threshold. Thou too, unhappy Jocasta, didst, as they say possess the beauteous, baleful thing, and didst deck thy countenance with its praise – on what a couch, alas! to find favour; and many more beside. Last Argia shines in the splendour of the gift, and in pride of ornament and accursed gold surpassed her sister’s mean attiring. The wife of the doomed prophet had beheld it, and at every shrine and banquet in secret cherished fierce jealousy, if only it might ever be granted her to possess the terrible jewel, nought profited, alas! by omens near at hand. What

Statius, Thebiad, 2 vols., trans. J. H. Mozley, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 1955).

1

198  Appendix C bitter tears she doth desire! To what ruin tend her impious wishes! Worthy is she, indeed but what hath her hapless consort deserved, and his deluded arms? And what the guiltless frenzy of her son?

Appendix D

Benôit’s Briseida’s costume worn when she leaves Troy1: In India the Great [Northern and Northeastern Asia to Northern China], by magic and marvelous means, they made an enchanted cloth: the rose is not so red nor the lily so white as it is during the day – it is five or six times as red and white. In daytime it has, indeed, seven colors, and there are no beasts or flowers under the heavens that cannot be seen pictured there – shapes, semblances, and faces. It is always fresh and always beautiful. The cloak was made of that cloth. A wise Indian magician who for a long time was taught with Calchas the Trojan, sent it to him from his country. Everyone who saw it marveled at the person who had made such a thing because great wisdom and great skill are needed to execute this work.   The lining of the cloak was very valuable, made completely and totally of one piece. It was neither pieced nor seamed. Scholars find in writings that there are beasts in the Orient – at three years old one of these beasts would be very large – and they are called Dindialos. Their fur is much valued and the bone even more so. Never – not in hue of herb or flower – did God make a color that does not appear in that fur. Savages called Cenocefali – ugly and strangely shaped men from another country – catch these beasts, but it is after a long wait and by means of the art that I shall describe for you. It is very hot there where they are. There are no bushes and no shade. But these monstrous men, foes to this beast, take balsam boughs and cover their bodies and arms with them – they make no other traps or nets – and the beast, a stupid beast, comes to the foliage and the shade. He does not recognize his agony and death; he grazes, then goes to sleep in the shade. The hunter kills him, and many times the hunter is nearly beaten to death on that account, or burned or killed by the heat. They certainly don’t go there every day! From that beast came the fur; neither balm, incense, nor aromatics smell as good as it did. Finer than any ermine, it covered the cloth of the cloak completely.

Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, trans. Gretchen Mieszkowski, “R.K. Gordon and the Troilus and Criseyde Story,” ChauR 15.2 (1980): 127–37. See Chapter 2, pp. 82–83 n. 69–71.

1

200  Appendix D The border of the cloak was not sable, but was made from beasts of great price. They inhabit the river of Paradise, as is known, if what we read is true. They are speckled with indigo and yellow and would be too dearly bought, whoever should find them. But, by my faith, as it seems to me and as I believe, fewer than ten of them were ever captured: there is no beast of their price. The fasteners of the cloak are made of two rubies. Never did anyone see or examine any so precious or so beautiful.

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Index Abarria, Alexandria 18 Abegg, Margaret 131 Absolon (MilT) 169 Agamemnon (Ovid) 56–7 Alan of Lille, The Plaint of Nature 158, 174–5 Albrecht, W. P. 137 Alceste (LGW) 22, 170–1, 180 Alexiou, Margaret 14 Alison (MilT) 8, 13, 99, 117–39 Anderson, David. 76–7, 83 Anderson, Judith M. 145 Anelida (Anel) 141 Arcite (Anel) 141 Arcite (KnT) 4–5, 15, 19–21, 23, 27–8, 30–2, 34, 38, 48–9, 53, 167, 183 Argive 57, 76, 83, 197–8 Ariès, Philippe, and Georges Duby 57 Arn, Mary-Jo 29 Arnold, Janet 129–30 arming scene 8, 23–4, 31, 63, 141, 151–63, 169 arms and armor 5–6, 9, 15, 17, 23–5, 31–2, 34, 49, 54–5, 63–5, 67, 69, 79, 88–9, 149–50, 152–3, 153–7, 159–62, 168, 197–8   aketoun 153–4, 164   aventail 154   bascinet 154   beinbergs, jambs 153   brassards with elbow-cops 154, 160   bridle 162   byrne 153   camail 153   chain-mail shirt 154   chausses, mail 154   clogs, Flemish 149   coat of plates 154   cote armour 157–8, 169   cuisses, gamboised 154   cyclas, surcoat 153   gambeson, haketon 153–4   gauntlets 154

  gorget 154   greaves 152, 154, 160–1   habergeon, haubergeon 140, 154–6, 160, 163   hauberk 154–8, 160, 163, 169, 175   hauberk of plates 155   helm 67, 84, 154, 158, 161–4, 169   helmet 154   knee-cops 154   jambeaux 160, 164   jambs 154   Jewes werk 155–7, 169   lance 194   launcegay 149–50, 161, 164   mace 150   pauldrons 154   plate armor 155, 160, 175   plates for breast and back 154   poleynes 153–4   quyrboilly 160–1, 164   rewel-boon 164   sabatons 154   saddle 162, 169   scabbard 161, 169   schynbalds 154   shield 64, 67, 69, 79, 84, 158–60, 162, 169   skirt of mail 154   soft armor 153, 160   sollerets 154   spear 150, 162, 174   spurs 19, 154, 160–1   staf slynge 150   surcoat 154   sword 79, 149–50, 161, 169   sword-belt 154   upper pourpoint 153   vervelles 153   waist belt 154 arms as metaphor 8, 159; see also garment metaphors Arveragus (FranT) 7 Ashley, Kathleen 37

224 Index Askins, William R. 75, 146 Aurelius (FranT) 7 Austin, H.D. 158 Baragona, Alan 176 Barber, Richard 24, 37, 196 Barker, Juliet R. V. 37–8, 196 Barrett, Gina M. 18 Baskins, Cristelle L. 110 Becket, St. Thomas 186 Beckman, Sabina 81 Beidler, Peter G. 135–6 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie 8, 82–4, 86, 164, 177, 199–200 Benson, Larry D. 24 Berger, Albrecht 46, 187 Berti, Luciano 137 Bestul, Thomas H. 173 Birch, C. G. R. 57 Blair, Claude 155–6 Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster 42, 51, 53 Blanton, Virginia 94 Boboc, Andreea 54–6, 88 Boccaccio, Giovanni 5, 11, 22, 25–6, 47, 49, 55, 57–8, 66, 68–9, 74–5, 80, 82–3, 87, 107, 110, 117   Il Filostrato 55, 58, 66, 68–9, 74–5, 80, 82, 87   Teseida 22, 25–6, 29, 34, 43, 45, 47, 49 Boethius 175–6, 178, 186 Bowles, John 37 Bradley, Helen 72 Breward, Christopher 127, 129, 131 Brewer, D. S. 22, 30, 43, 118–19, 151–3, 155, 160, 169 Bromyard, John 44 Bronfman, Judith 101, 111, 115 Broughton, Laurel 175 Brown, Elizabeth A. R. and Nancy Freeman Regaldo 46, 188–9 Brundage, James 127 The Brut 38, 43–4, 188, 192, 195–6 Bryant, Sir Arthur 190 Bumke, Joachim 116, 119, 127, 133, 137 Burden, Joel [F.] 17 Burne-Jones, Edward Coley, pencil drawings 22, 30 Burnham, Dorothy K. 95–7, 103–5, 129, 134 Burns, E. Jane 40, 68–70, 83, 92, 103–5, 134–5, 138, 145, 183

Burrow, J.A. 141–2, 145, 149–52, 156–9, 161–2 Burton, T.L. 164 Busby, Keith 9, 11 Calkas (Tr) 56, 79–80, 83 Cameron, Averil 37 Camille, Michael 19, 119, 122, 134 Campbell, Emma 102, 114 Cannon, Christopher 120–1 Canon’s Yeoman (CYT) 180, 182–3 Carlson, Cindy 114 carpenter, John (MilT) 118, 137, 139, 169 Cavallo, Adolfo Salvatore 129 Cecilia (SNT) 185 Cenobia (MkT) 176 Charbonneau, Joanne A. 143–4, 157, 162 Charles of Orleans. 29 Chaucer, Geoffrey, works   Anelida and Arcite 39, 141, 179   Boece 175, 186   Book of the Duchess 141, 179–80, 183–5   Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale 180, 182–3   Clerk’s Tale 12–13, 83, 91–2, 99–117, 168   Complaint of Mars 75–7, 169–70   Complaint of Venus 77   Former Age 175   Franklin’s Tale 7, 181   Friar’s Tale 4, 10–11, 180–1   General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales 1–2, 6, 115, 132, 148, 167, 169–70, 173, 180, 182–3   Gentilesse 175   House of Fame 3, 27, 159, 165, 172–3, 179   Knight’s Tale 4–5, 14–54, 141, 164, 167–8, 183   Legend of Good Women 3, 39, 169–74, 177, 180   Manciple’s Prologue and Tale 180   Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale 4, 7–8, 12, 39, 183   Merchant’s Tale 11, 66   Miller’s Tale 9, 13, 99, 117–39, 167–8   Monk’s Tale 172–3, 176   Nun’s Priest’s Tale 181   Pardoner’s Tale 185–6   Parliament of the Fowls 27, 174   Parson’s Tale 176, 178, 184–6   Physician’s Tale 12

Index  225    Reeve’s Tale 9, 12, 167   Romaunt of the Rose 22, 59, 69, 84–5, 94, 137, 171, 177–8   Second Nun’s Tale 8, 185   Shipman’s Tale 10, 13, 179   Squire’s Tale 4, 6   Summoner’s Tale 7, 10–11   Tale of Melibee 6   Tale of Sir Thopas 4, 8–9, 140–67, 186   Troilus and Criseyde 5, 27, 54–91, 141, 159, 164–5, 168, 170, 177, 179, 183   Wife of Bath’s Tale and Prologue 4, 6, 141 Chaucer-Life Records 46 Chaucer, pilgrim-poet 140 Childs, Wendy 94, 145 Chrétien de Troyes 35, 39–41, 43, 82, 84, 96, 117, 138   Cligés 117, 138   Erec et Enide 39, 41, 43, 82, 84, 96   Yvain 35, 40, 43 Christine de Pisan 123 Clark, S. L., and Julian Wasserman 72 Claudius (MLT) 13 cleanliness and dirtiness 25, 121, 132, 183 Clephan, R. Coltman 194, 196 Clerk (GP) 115 Cline, Ruth Huff 33 Clopper, Lawrence M. 35 clothing, functionality and meaning 90, 100; see also garment metaphors Coatsworth, Elizabeth 95, 149 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome 143, 150, 156, 159 Coleman, William E. 45 color 11, 13, 179–81, 186   black 5, 9, 17, 23, 32, 42, 50–3, 56, 58–60, 62, 80, 96, 119, 124, 128, 135, 141, 167–8, 174, 179–81, 183–4   blue 27, 72–4, 78, 96, 141, 179, 182, 189   brown 5, 54, 56, 58, 60, 146–7, 149–51, 168   crimson 191   green 5, 10, 17, 22, 31, 61, 170–1, 180–2, 189, 191   noir 189   purple 15, 19, 20, 23, 192   red 9, 12, 27, 31, 73, 96, 124, 127, 148–9, 158, 179, 182, 189, 192, 194, 199   white 31, 60, 92, 96, 119–20, 123–4, 135–6, 138, 157, 169, 179–80, 182, 189, 191–2, 194–5, 199   yellow 126–7, 189, 192

Condren, Edward I. 101 Conley, John 143–4 Cooper, Helen 5, 109 Correale, Robert M. 7, 11 costume/fashion sins 176–8, 186 Cramer, Patricia 115 Crane, Susan 22, 110 Cressy, David 50 Criseyde (Tr) 5, 8, 55–90, 139, 141, 159, 168, 177, 179, 183   Briseida 82, 86, 199–200   Briseis 56–7, 62, 82–3   Criseida 58, 66, 68, 74   Crisseid 74 Crowfoot, Elizabeth, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland 58, 124, 132, 134, 184 Cunnington, C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington 93–6, 99 Cunnington, C. Willett, Phillis Cunnington, and Charles Beard 41, 61 Cunnington, Phillis, and Catherine Lucas 15 Curta, Florin 157 Custance (MLT) 183 Dahl, Camilla Luise, and Isis Sturtewagen 135 Damyan (MerT) 12, 66 Dane, Joseph A. 141–2, 163 Daniell, Christopher 13, 51 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso in The Divine Comedy 143 Davis, Fred 140 Dean, Nancy 83 Dean, James 2 Deiphebus (Tr) 67–8, 89 Denny-Brown, Andrea 108, 115–16, 175 Dianira (MkT), Dyanira (HF) 172–3 Dicicco, Mark 153, 155, 161 Dido (LGW) (Eneas) 3, 20–1, 49 Digby, George Wingfield 130 DiMarco, Vincent J. 25, 48 Dinn, Robert 48 Dinshaw, Carolyn 76, 100 Diomede (Tr) 55, 81, 83–9, 158–9 “Le Dit du Mercier” 148 Doctor of Physik (GP) 182 Doob, Penelope 73 Dorigen (FranT) 7 Eco, Umberto 83 Edwards, Elizabeth B. 42, 49

226 Index Effros, Bonnie 48 Egan, Geoff, and Frances Pritchard & others 124 Ellesmere MS 180 elf-queen (Thop) 151, 158–9 Elliott, Dyan 70, 102, 109 Emaré 8 embroidery 15, 17–21, 23, 27, 33, 92–100, 106–7, 109, 115–17, 119–21, 123–38, 145 , 168 , 170–1, 173–4, 178, 180, 184, 188–9 Emelye (KntT) 4, 5, 17, 21–2, 30–1, 38, 48–9, 61, 139, 141, 167 Emetrius (KnT) 4–5, 13, 21, 24, 26–8, 31, 140, 167 Eneas (LGW) 3 Ennen, Edith 133 Erler, Mary 42, 80 Evans, Joan 15, 27, 73–4 Evans, Joan and Mary E. Serjeantson 27, 73 Evans, Sir William David 150 fabric 13, 32, 90, 181–6   blanket 42, 182   blue cloth 189   bluet 42, 182   brocade 187, 190   brunete 177   buckram 154   burel 7, 184   burnet 177   ?cambric 152   camelin 185   camlet 44, 191   cendal 94   chainsil 94, 133   cloth of Arras 192   cloth of gold 7, 12, 15–21, 26 , 32–4, 40–2, 47–9, 51–2, 115–17, 167, 183, 187, 189–90, 192, 195   cloth of lake 152–3, 163–4, 169   cloth of Rheims 93, 121   cloth of Tars 27   cotton 96, 153   diaper 26   faldyng 182   fustian 182   hair cloth 185–6   hemp 94, 121   holland, brown 146–8  holland fine 93

         

Holland linen 148 Kendal green 180 lawn 93, 123 Lincoln green 180, 182 linen 19, 93, 95–6, 116–17, 120–1, 123, 129–30, 133–4, 145–7, 152, 163, 184–5, 187   medlee 182   mottelee 182   pers 182   de persico 185   russet, “countrey” 111   samyt, samite 5, 54, 56, 58–60, 94, 168, 183   sangwyn 182   sarcenet 45, 191   satin 183–4   scarlet 6, 21, 84, 182, 185, 192   sendal 182, 185   serge 34, 41, 47, 50–1, 167, 183   silk 7, 11, 17–19, 21, 27, 33, 40–1, 44, 47–8, 58–9, 82 , 84, 94–6, 103–5, 111, 121, 124, 126, 134, 137–8, 144–5, 153, 171, 182–5, 188, 191–2   stamin 174, 184–5   syklatoun 144–6, 149–51, 164, 169, 184   taffata 182   velvet 111, 192, 194   woolens 9, 94, 146–7, 179, 182, 184–5   worsted 174, 184   worsted, double 182 Farrell, Thomas J. 102, 108 Ferne, Sir John 158, 162 Ffoulkes, Charles 148–9, 153, 155, 160, 162 Fiero, Gloria K. 15, 48 Finucane, R. C. 48–9 Fleming, John V. 77, 87 de Fontanès, Monique 132 Fortune, goddess of 29, 89, 175–6 Fortune’s Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s English Book of Love 29 Frankis, P. J., 43 Franklin (GP) 182, 184 Frese, Dolores W. 110 Friar (GP) 182 Friar John (SumT) 7, 10–11 Frick, Carole Collier 41 Friedman, John Block 119, 124, 126–7, 133, 148 Froissart, Sir John, 33, 38, 43–6, 49, 52, 189–92, 195–6

Index  227  funeral palls 15 funeral practices 14–17, 19–20, 31–2, 48–9, 51 fur 134, 185   Dindialos, sweet-smelling 199   ermine 41, 82, 84, 93, 199   indigo and yellow speckled 200   rabbit 41   sable 200   spotted 41 Furrow, Melissa 2, 4, 8–9, 142, 164 Frye, Susan 4–5, 99, 130 Gage, John 181 Garbáty, Thomas J. 142, 164 garlands and wreaths 15–16, 21, 25, 27, 29–31, 49, 171, 187 garment, deadly 172–4 garment metaphors; see also costume/fashion sins   actions, dressed in 87–8   arms and armor 55, 141, 159   shield 64, 67, 79   sword 64, 79, 132   barbe 61–2   cloak 64   cloth of gold 117   cope 71   hood 10, 55, 65, 67, 71, 168, 178–9   jewelry 73, 88, 112, 122, 136–9, 143–4, 159, 185, 197–8   mantle 64–5, 71, 93   serk 69   shirt and smock 7, 11, 13, 69–70, 79–80, 91, 93, 111, 113, 119–21, 123, 178–9   wedding ring 112   widow’s weeds 55, 168, 179   yeoman’s dress 180–1 garment terms   alms purse 19  arms; see arms and armor   barbe 5, 57, 61–2, 67, 85–6   barmcloth 124, 133, 169   body linen 11–12, 169   boyste 3   braies, breeches 67, 69, 92, 152–4, 163   buttons 21, 185   calle 71   cap 71   cape 58   chape 69

                 

cloak 54, 64, 70–1, 78, 82 cloche 69 coat, cote 21, 103, 123, 131–2, 177, 182 coif 132 coler 119, 121–3, 127–8, 130 133–6, 138 collar of fur 134 collar, standing 123 cope 67, 69, 71 cote armour (armure), battle coat 3, 23–7, 29, 33, 86–7, 89   cotte 67–9   courtepy 177, 181   coverchief 7, 184–5   doublet 153   filet 124  girdle, ceynte, belt 19, 123–4, 126, 144–5, 150, 169, 197–8   gloves 15, 17, 49, 54, 81, 83–6, 89   goore 124   gown 10, 57–8, 82, 103, 132   gypon 25, 27, 140, 182   ypser 182   gyte 12   handkerchief 82   hat, fringed 10, 181   headdress 169   hood 6, 54–5, 65–7, 71, 79, 194   howve 18   hose 3, 9, 69–70, 144, 146–7, 149–51, 154, 169, 182   houppelande 122   jewels and jewelry 3, 5–6, 12, 19, 25, 27, 37, 49, 54, 71–8, 81–9, 101–3, 112, 116, 158, 162, 164, 170–1, 175, 195, 197–8   kirtle 7, 177   male 10   mantel ferme 69   mantle 25–6, 41, 58, 64–5, 67, 69–71, 89, 103, 145, 178   mantelet 27   miter 175   nightcap 11   over-dress 169   poukamiso 96, 98   purse 11, 124, 169   robe 19, 58, 69, 102–3, 127–8, 144, 146–7, 149–51, 177, 182   sandals 19   scrip 3, 10   semycope 182

228 Index   shirt, chemise 7, 11, 13, 54, 69–71, 78–80, 141, 154, 163, 172–3; see also smock   shoes 69, 125, 144, 148–51, 160, 169   sleeve 54, 81, 84, 86, 96, 103  smock, chemise 8, 11–13, 67, 69, 78, 91–9, 103–6, 113, 119–20, 125, 127–38, 168–9    famous 94–6, 99, 103–5, 113, 117, 119, 134–5    literary [excluding Chaucer] 136–9    reconstructed 103  smock, chemise, shirt, in visual arts 123, 128–30, 133–7   souquanie 178   staff 10   stole 11–12   supertunic 58   surcot 69, 103, 127, 144, 182   surcot ouvert 69   tabard 26   tape 124   tunic 7, 19–20, 27   typet, tippet 9, 101   veiling 10, 23–8, 57, 85   voluper 8, 124, 135   wimple 57, 61–2, 66, 85, 128 garments by class or occupation   burial clothes 32   coronation robes 21, 37   costume for Bacchus festival 174   disguises 23, 88, 174, 194   fool’s striped costume 3   funerary dress 14–15, 17–22, 31   hair garments 186   guildsmen’s dress 33   herald’s garments 3   hunting dress 22–3   livery 22, 51, 182, 190, 192   mourning dress 23, 25, 32, 42, 48, 50–2; see also widow’s weeds   noble dress 3, 9, 12, 28–9, 100–1, 109–13, 115–17, 125, 133, 135–6, 139, 142–3   peasant dress 9, 12, 23, 100–1, 109–11, 117, 120, 125, 139   pilgrims’ dress 3, 88, 104–5   procession costumes 24, 28–9, 31, 187–96; see also tournament dress   royal dress 3, 5–6, 15, 21, 23, 175    robes of purple 15, 19–20   shipmen’s garb 3   tournament dress 23, 33, 194–6

  widow’s weeds 54–62, 64–5, 67, 72, 78, 80–2, 85–6, 88–9, 168, 174, 183   yeoman’s dress 10 garments’ construction by enchantment 82–3, 199–200; by fairies 101–2 Gautier, Léon 33 Gaylord, Alan T. 112, 142, 163, 165 Geddes, Elizabeth and Moyra McNeill 130 Geoffrey de Vinsauf 22, 30, 142–4 genre 2, 4–14, 53, 83, 99, 109, 118–20, 123, 125, 135–44, 150–1, 163–5, 169, 179–80, 186 Gernet, Louis 74, 76 The Gest Hystoriale 82, 84, 89 Gies, Frances and Joseph Gies 50 Giesey, Ralf E. 48 Gilchrist, Roberta 140 Gittings, Clare 50–1 god of Love 70, 170–2, 178, 180 Goddard, Eunice Rathbone 62, 70, 93 The Goodman of Paris 127–8 Gordon, R.K. 58, 66, 68, 74, 80, 82–3, 87 Gostelow, Mary 130, 134 Gower, John 8 Gravett, Christopher 84 Green, Richard 2 Greenwood, Maria K. 30, 61 Greimas, A. J. 92 Grew, Francis and Margrethe de Neergaard 149 Griffin, Dudley David 102, 115 Griselda (ClT) 12, 68, 83, 91, 99–103, 108–17, 138, 168; in visual arts 91, 100–1, 107, 115–16 Groebner, Valentin 140 Guenée, Bernard 44, 191 Guenée, Bernard and Françoise LeHoux 44 Guido delle Colonna, Historia Destructionis Troiae 82 Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose 3, 59–60, 68–70, 84–5, 92, 94, 110, 122, 137, 171–2, 177–8 Guillaume de Nangis, Gesta Philippi Regis Francorum 46, 188 Hall, James 25–6, 158 Hallam, Elizabeth M. 48 Hamaguchi, Keiko 17 Hamel, Mary 11, 43, 142, 158 Hanawalt, Barbara A. 61

Index  229  Harris, Jennifer 96, 98, 106, 129 Harry Bailly 10, 163, 169 Haselmayer, Louis August, Jr. 109, 118, 141 Haskell, Ann S. 145, 166–7 Hawkins, Sherman 162 Hearn, Karen 129 Hector (Tr) 55–6, 63, 65, 79, 85, 89 Hecuba (Eneas) 20–1 Heldris, Roman de Silence 73 Heller, Sarah Grace 3, 58, 60, 92–3, 101, 103, 110, 116, 119, 121–2, 133, 137–8, 147 Henryson, Robert, The Testament of Crisseid 74, 85 Herald, Jacqueline 92–3 heraldry 28, 84, 87, 141, 157–60, 169, 194–6 Herben, Stephen J., Jr. 149–50, 157, 162 Hercules (MkT) (HF) 172–3 Higgins, J. P. P. 17–18 Hilmo, Maidie 135 Hindman, Sandra 43 Hindley, Alan, Frederick W. Langley, and Brian J. Levy 177 Hippolyta (KnT) 17, 38 Hodges, Laura F. 1, 25, 86, 100, 123, 132–3, 135, 141–2, 150, 172, 176, 178, 180–3 Holme, Bryan 195–6 Homar, Katie 180 Homer, The Iliad 49, 57 Hopkins, Amanda 119 Houston, Gail Turley 60 Houston, Mary Galway 57, 61, 70 Hughes, Diane Owen 127 Hughes, Gavin 149–50 Hultin, Neil C. 77 Humphrey, David 146 Idleness (Rom) 22 Jankyn (SumT) 10 Januarie (MerT) 11, 81, 141 Jason (LGW) 173 Jaster, Margaret Rose 113 Jauss, Hans Robert 2, 4 Jean de Garlande 92, 137 Jean Lefèvre 95 Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or Guillaume de Dole 35, 89, 96, 99, 136 Jefferson, Lisa 124 Jennings, Margaret 72–3, 88

Jewers, Caroline 89 John of Gaunt 42, 53, 75 Jones, George F[enwick] 84, 126, 135 Keen, Maurice 32, 196 Kellogg, Alfred L. 110 Killerby, Catherine Kovesi 126 King, Donald and Santina Levey 131 kings and queens of England 15, 17–18, 21, 33, 35, 38, 40–7, 51, 145, 150, 187–96 Kinoshita, Sharon 40 Kipling, Gordon 44, 189, 191, 193 Kirkpatrick, Robin 117 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane 102–3, 113 Kleiner, Fred S. and Christin J. Mamiya 122–3 Knight (GP) 132, 140, 182 knight (WBT) 141 Kohler, Carl 93, 103 Kolve, V. A. 86 Kooper, E.S. 143, 159–60 Kunz, George Frederick 143, 158 Kurtz, D. C. and J. Boardman 14, 16 Lachaud, Frédérique 22 Ladd, Roger A. 10–11 Langland, William, Piers Plowman 35; Lady Meed’s costume 35 LeGoff, Jacques 17 Levey, Santina M. 134 Lewis, N. B. 42 Lewis, Robert E. 122 Leyerle, John 24, 75 The Liber Celestis of Bridget of Sweden 69 Lightbown, Ronald W. 74, 143, 158 Lindenbaum, Sheila 40 Linn, Irving 142, 152, 156–7, 161 Lis, Catharina and Hugo Soly 33 The Lives of Thomas Becket 186 Lombard, Maurice 145 Loomis, Laura Alandis Hibbard 142–4, 152, 157–8, 162–3 Loomis, Roger 101 “Lord Thomas and Fair Annet” 93 Lowes, J. L. 119 Lydgate, John. 42, 75, 89; The Troy Book 75, 89 Lygurge (KnT) 4–5, 13, 21, 24–6, 28, 31, 140, 167 Lynch, Kathryn L. 102, 110 Macklin, H. W. 57

230 Index Maidstone, Richard, Concordia 44–6, 188, 191–2 Malory, Thomas 39, 84, 113, 157–8, 172 Mandel, Jerome 156–7 Mann, Jill 70 Marie de France, Lanval 99 Marin, Louis 37 Martens, Maximiliaan P. J. 189 Martin, June Hall 88 Matthew of Paris, Chronica Majora 46 May (MerT) 11, 66, 81 McCall, John P. 117 McConnell, Sophie 134 McCracken, Grant 100, 113, 119 McKim, Anne M. 83, 85 McKisack, May 156 McKnight, C. J. 33 McRee, Benjamin R. 29 Medea (LGW) 173 Meech, Sanford Brown 55, 58, 63, 72, 74 Memorials of London and London Life 18 Merchant (GP) 182 Merrill, Rodney 77 Middleton, Roger 96 Mieszkowski, Gretchen 66, 78–9, 82, 86, 165, 167, 179 Miller (GP) 182 Miller, narrator (MilT) 168–9 Mills, Dorothy 27 Mills, Harriane 63 Minnis, Alastair 40 Monnas, Lisa 17–18, 41 Morey, James H. 73 Morse, Charlotte C. 109–10 “A most pleasant ballad of patient Grissell” 111 Munro, John 9, 147, 179 Murthesius, Anna 145 Muscatine, Charles 28 Netherton, Robin 101, 103, 112, 122–3, 127–8, 130, 135–6 New Chronicles of England and France 192 Newton, Stella Mary 93, 103, 124, 131, 146, 185 Nicholas (MilT) 169 Nichols, J. 53 Nicholson, R. H. 15, 17, 34, 47, 50 Nickel, Helmut 84 Niebrzydowski, Sue 119 Norris, Herbert 27, 133

Norton-Smith, John 77 Old Man (PardT) 185 Ollier, Marie-Louise 162 ornamentation, attitudes toward 125–7, 134, 137, 176–8, 185, 191, 195 Ovid 56–7, 62–3, 173, 177   The Art of Love 56–7   Metamorphoses 63, 173, 177 Owen-Crocker, Gale 94, 124 Owst, Gerald Robert 30, 61, 99 Page, Kathy 116, 131–2 Palamon (Tr) 4, 5, 23, 28, 32, 34, 38, 48–9, 52, 167, 183 Pallas (Eneas) 19–20 Pandarus (Tr) 5, 6, 61–8, 70, 72–5, 78–9, 86, 88, 165, 168, 178–9 Parson (ParsT) 184–5 Parsoneault, Catherine Jean 46, 188 Parsons, John 69, 113 Pastoureau, Michel 60, 157, 181 Patch, Howard R. 159 Patterson, Lee 45, 142, 156 Payne-Gallwey, Sir Ralph 17 Pearcy, Roy J. 43 Pearl Poet   Cleanness 122   Patience 122   Pearl 122   Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 22, 65, 122, 153, 159 Perret, Donald, 43–4, 46, 189–90 Petrarch 117 Phebus (MancT) 180 Phillips, Helen 35, 48 Philomela (LGW) 173–4, 177, 184 Philosophy, Lady (Bo) 175–6, 186 Pinasa, Delphine 92, 95 Piponnier, Françoise 132 Piponnier, Françoise and Perrine Mane 69, 93, 103 Planché, James Robinson 19, 26–7, 93, 124, 131, 145, 154–5, 174, 177 Pleij, Herman 147, 157 Pratt, Robert A. 34 Price, Simon 49 priest (MerT) 11 processions 14–53, esp. 32–53, 187–96   coronation 37   in literature 35, 39–40

Index  231  Progne (LGW) 173–4; Procne 173–4, 177 Programme for the Reception of Henry VII 193 The Pseudo-Ovidian De Vetula 95 Puckle, B. S. 14 Puhvel, Martin 22 Purdie, Rhiannon 144, 150 Purdon, Liam 175 Ramsey, Roger 100 Ransom, Daniel J. 27 Raschid-eldin 18 Reath, Nancy Andrews 184 Reeve (GP) 182 relics 10 “The Reply of Friar Daw Topias” 143 Rezak, Brigitte Bedos 74 Richardson, Catherine 103 Richardson, Janette 10, 180–1 apRoberts, Robert 3 Rogers, James E. Thorold 121 Roman de Eneas 19–20, 73 Le Roman de Thèbes 84 Roney, Lois 24, 26–7 Root, Robert 172 Ross, Thomas W. 65, 67, 73, 120, 124, 134, 137–8 Rowling, Marjorie 58 Sanok, Catherine 67 Scattergood, V. J. 180 Scheps, Walter 142, 164 Schofield, William Henry 142 Schuette, Mario and Sigrid MullerChristensen 130 Schwarz, R. A. 90 Scott, Margaret 27, 57, 68, 91, 122–3, 128 Scott-Macnab, David 150 Sergeant of the Law (GP) 123, 132, 135, 182 Shaw, David Gary 126 Shipman (GP) 182 Slater, Stephen 49, 194 Sledd, James 109 Smith, Nicole D. 146, 176–7 Smith, Roland M. 143 Smith, Sarah Stanbury 65–6, 178; see also Stanbury, Sarah Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane 14 Spearing, A. C. 70 Spenser, Edmund 145

Splendour of the Burgundian Court 154 Sponsler, Claire 125 Squire (GP) 170, 180 Staley, Lynn 183 Stanbury, Sarah 29, 100, 103 Staniland, Kay 18, 21, 51, 58, 131, 177 Stanley, E.G. 140, 144 Staples, Kathleen Epstein 130 Statius, Thebaid 57, 76–7, 170, 197–8 The Statutes of the Realm 125 Stock, Lorraine Kochanske 17, 22, 37, 61, 73, 175 Stockton, Jane 130 Storm, Melvin 77 Stow, John 29, 33, 38, 188–9, 194–6 Stratmann, Francis Henry 177 street decor 32–3, 40, 42–8, 50–3, 187–93   costumes 33, 35, 187–93, 194–6 Strohm, Paul 2 Stuard, Susan Mosher 101 Suggett, Helen 45, 192 Summoner (FrT) 11, 181, 184 sumptuary laws 125–7, 133–4, 150, 182 Symkyn (RvT) 12 Symons, Dana M. 142 Talarico, Kathryn Marie 99, 113 tapestry 18–19, 34, 38, 43–5, 47, 90, 93, 122, 129, 173–4, 183–4, 188, 190–2 Taylor, Ann M. 71 Taylor, Lou 48 Tereus (LGW) 173–4, 184 Theseus (KnT) 4–5, 17, 23, 30–2, 34, 37–8, 40–2, 47–50, 140–1, 167 Thompson, N. S. 11 Tommaso da Celano, Fra. 186 Thopas, Sir (Thop) 8–9, 12–13, 140–67, 180 Tortora, Phyllis G. and Keith Eubank 94–5, 106–8, 115, 129 Travick, Henry H. 57 “A treatise of ghostly battle.” 159 Trevelyan Papers 18 Trevisa, John 22 Troilus 5, 55, 60–7, 69–81, 84–90, 141, 159, 168, 179   Troilo 68 Twomey, Lesley K. 116 Uitz, Erika, 133 Vale, Juliet 40, 194 Vale, Malcolm 48

232 Index van Buren, Anne H. with Roger S. Wieck 123 Van Dyke, Carolyn 109 Van Uytven, Raymond 148 Venus  (PF) 184  (Tr) 60, 63, 83  (MilT) 137–8 Vial, Claire 39 Vierck, H. E. F. 95 Vigarello, G. 121, 132 Vincent, John Martin 50, 125–7 Virginia (PhyT) 12–13 Virginius (PhyT) 12–13 Wallace, David 102 Walsingham, Thomæ 191 Walter (ClT) 83, 91, 101–2, 109–16, 168 Wardwell, Anne E. 116 Waugh, Robin 114 Weir, Alison 44, 189 Weissman, Hope Phyllis 119 Whitaker, Muriel 116

Wickham, Glynne William Gladstone 23–4, 34, 36, 195 Wife of Bath (GP) (Prologue, WBT) 182, 184 William of Palerne 35 Williams, Patricia 92, 136, 146, 148 Windeatt, Barry 67 Wimsatt, James I. 116 Wise, Boyd Ashby 77 Withington, R. 47, 192 Woods, William F. 17, 31 Woolgar, C.M. 148 Wright, David H. 49 Wright, Glen 142 Wright, Monica [L.] 5–6, 23, 138, 165–6 Yamamoto, Dorothy 28 Yeager, R. F. 141–2 yeoman-feend (FrT) 180 Yeoman-Forrester (GP) 180–2 Zimmerman, J.E. 172

CHAUCER STUDIES I

MUSIC IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER, Nigel Wilkins

II

CHAUCER’S LANGUAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHERS’ TRADITION, J. A. Burnley

III

ESSAYS ON TROILUS AND CRISEYDE, edited by Mary Salu

IV

CHAUCER SONGS, Nigel Wilkins

V

CHAUCER’S BOCCACCIO: Sources of Troilus and the Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales, edited and translated by N.R. Havely

VI

SYNTAX AND STYLE IN CHAUCER’S POETRY, G. H. Roscow

VII

CHAUCER’S DREAM POETRY: Sources and Analogues, edited by B. A. Windeatt

VIII

CHAUCER AND PAGAN ANTIQUITY, Alastair Minnis

IX

CHAUCER AND THE POEMS OF ‘CH’ in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, edited by James I. Wimsatt

X

CHAUCER AND THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF FAME, Piero Boitani

XI

INTRODUCTION TO CHAUCERIAN ENGLISH, Arthur O. Sandved

XII

CHAUCER AND THE EARLY WRITINGS OF BOCCACCIO, David Wallace

XIII

CHAUCER’S NARRATORS, David Lawton

XIV

CHAUCER: COMPLAINT AND NARRATIVE, W. A. Davenport

XV

CHAUCER’S RELIGIOUS TALES, edited by C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson

XVI

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MODERNIZATIONS FROM THE CANTERBURY TALES, edited by Betsy Bowden

XVII

THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE CANTERBURY TALES, Charles A. Owen Jr

XVIII

CHAUCER’S BOECE AND THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION OF BOETHIUS, edited by A. J. Minnis

XIX

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE EQUATORIE OF THE PLANETIS, Kari Anne Rand Schmidt

XX

CHAUCERIAN REALISM, Robert Myles

XXI

CHAUCER ON LOVE, KNOWLEDGE AND SIGHT, Norman Klassen

XXII

CONQUERING THE REIGN OF FEMENY: GENDER AND GENRE IN CHAUCER’S ROMANCE, Angela Jane Weisl

XXIII

CHAUCER’S APPROACH TO GENDER IN THE CANTERBURY TALES, Anne Laskaya

XXIV

CHAUCERIAN TRAGEDY, Henry Ansgar Kelly

XXV

MASCULINITIES IN CHAUCER: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, edited by Peter G. Beidler

XXVI

CHAUCER AND COSTUME: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue, Laura F. Hodges

XXVII

CHAUCER’S PHILOSOPHICAL VISIONS, Kathryn L. Lynch

XXVIII

SOURCES AND ANALOGUES OF THE CANTERBURY TALES [I], edited by Robert M. Correale wtih Mary Hamel

XXX

FEMINIZING CHAUCER, Jill Mann

XXXI

NEW READINGS OF CHAUCER’S POETRY, edited by Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard

XXXII

THE LANGUAGE OF THE CHAUCER TRADITION, Simon Horobin

XXXIII

ETHICS AND EXEMPLARY NARRATIVE IN CHAUCER AND GOWER, J. Allan Mitchell

XXXIV CHAUCER AND CLOTHING: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Laura F. Hodges XXXV

SOURCES AND ANALOGUES OF THE CANTERBURY TALES [II], edited by Robert M. Correale with Mary Hamel

XXXVI

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN: Context and Reception, edited by Carolyn P. Collette

XXXVII CHAUCER AND THE CITY, edited by Ardis Butterfield XXXVIII MEN AND MASCULINITIES IN CHAUCER’S TROILUS AND CRISEYDE, edited by Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec XXXIX IMAGES OF KINGSHIP IN CHAUCER AND HIS RICARDIAN CONTEMPORARIES, Samantha J. Rayner XL

COMEDY IN CHAUCER AND BOCCACCIO, Carol Falvo Heffernan

XLI

CHAUCER AND PETRARCH, William T. Rossiter

Chaucer and Array responds to the questions posed by medievalists concerning Chaucer’s characteristic pattern of apportioning descriptive detail in his characterization by costume. It also examines his depiction of clothing and textiles representing contemporary material culture while focusing attention on the literary meaning of clothing and fabrics as well as on their historic, economic and religious signification. LAURA F. HODGES blends her interests in medieval literature and the history of costume in her publications, specializing in the semiotics of costume and fabrics in literature. A teacher of English literature for a number of years, she holds a doctorate in literature from Rice University.

fol. 8, reproduced with the kind permission of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Chaucer Studies an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)

Hodges

Cover: The God of Love dancing, wearing floral-patterned gown, from the c.1405 MS Ludwig XV 7,

Chaucer and Array

The use Chaucer made of costume rhetoric, and its function within his body of works, are examined here for the first time. The study explores Chaucer’s knowledge of the conventional imagery of medieval literary genres, especially medieval romances and fabliaux, and his manipulation of rhetorical conventions through variations and omissions. In particular, it addresses Chaucer’s habit of playing upon his audience’s expectations – derived from their knowledge of the literary genres involved – and why he omits lengthy passages of costume rhetoric in his romances, but includes them in some of his comedic works. It also discusses the numerous minor facets of costume rhetoric employed in decorating his texts.

Chaucer and Array patterns of costume and fabric rhetoric in the canterbury tales , troilus and criseyde and other works

www.boydellandbrewer.com

•Laura F. Hodges• •