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Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory
In Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory Jones and Stallybrass argue that the making and transmission of fabrics and clothing were central to the making of Renaissance culture. Their examination explores the role of clothes as forms of memory transmitted from master to servant, from friend to friend, from lover to lover. This book offers a close reading of literary texts, paintings, textiles, theatrical documents, and ephemera to reveal how clothing and textiles were crucial to gender, sexuality, and religion in the Renaissance.
386 pages, Paperback
First published January 25, 2001
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About the author
Ann Rosalind Jones
10 books1 followerI've been comparing cultures since I was a child, because I had crazy, interesting Welsh relatives on my Midwestern mother's side and my Canadian father spoke German with his mother (who was German). In high school, when I started studying French after two years of Latin, the similarities and differences between the two languages fascinated me so much that I decided I wanted to learn every Romance (Latin-derived) language out there. I haven't achieved that!
But I studied Italian and German in the process of getting my B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, my M.A. from Columbia University and my Ph.D. from Cornell University. Coming to Smith in 1977, I found the comparative literature program focusing on new literary theory, so I taught that through the 90s, along with a range of other courses: CLT 202 (Homer to Dante), Novels About Novels, Women's Autobiography, and the senior seminar for comparative literature majors, in which we've taken on topics from terror and exile to Magic Realism and defenses of fiction against the defenders of the "real." I now teach a course on the Renaissance gender debate and, with Dana Leibsohn, a seminar, Translating New Worlds, in which we look at images and texts in which Europeans respond to what they saw in the Americas and what Native Americans learned about them. And I enjoy participating in the comparative literature program. We have great faculty, talented and imaginative students and the chance to be constantly inventing new plans for the future.
In my writing, I've pursued several long-term interests: the European Renaissance, love poetry, women's writing, feminist theory, neomarxist approaches to culture. My first book was a study of eight women poets in France, Italy and England, The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620, my second a translation with my friend Tita Rosenthal (Italian Dept, USC) of the work of a 16th-century Venetian courtesan: The Poems and Selected Letters of Veronica Franco. In 2000, after a long (and sometimes high-stress) collaboration with Peter Stallybrass, my husband (English department at the University of Pennsylvania), we published Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. In this book, we look at portraits and prints, spinning and embroidery, armor and wills, as well as literary texts to analyze the links between what people in early modern Europe wore and who they believed they were. Clothes as a material language still interest me as a way into different cultures. I recently completed, again with Tita Rosenthal, a translation of a late 16th-century costume book, Cesare Vecellio's Clothing, Ancient and Modern, of All the World (Venice, 1598), which was published in 2008 with a hundred color illustrations that clarify his wonderfully detailed woodcuts of costume from Europe, Turkey, Asia, Africa and the New World. My current project is a study of the costume-book genre, combining prints and texts about dress worldwide, entitled Global Habits.
But I studied Italian and German in the process of getting my B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, my M.A. from Columbia University and my Ph.D. from Cornell University. Coming to Smith in 1977, I found the comparative literature program focusing on new literary theory, so I taught that through the 90s, along with a range of other courses: CLT 202 (Homer to Dante), Novels About Novels, Women's Autobiography, and the senior seminar for comparative literature majors, in which we've taken on topics from terror and exile to Magic Realism and defenses of fiction against the defenders of the "real." I now teach a course on the Renaissance gender debate and, with Dana Leibsohn, a seminar, Translating New Worlds, in which we look at images and texts in which Europeans respond to what they saw in the Americas and what Native Americans learned about them. And I enjoy participating in the comparative literature program. We have great faculty, talented and imaginative students and the chance to be constantly inventing new plans for the future.
In my writing, I've pursued several long-term interests: the European Renaissance, love poetry, women's writing, feminist theory, neomarxist approaches to culture. My first book was a study of eight women poets in France, Italy and England, The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620, my second a translation with my friend Tita Rosenthal (Italian Dept, USC) of the work of a 16th-century Venetian courtesan: The Poems and Selected Letters of Veronica Franco. In 2000, after a long (and sometimes high-stress) collaboration with Peter Stallybrass, my husband (English department at the University of Pennsylvania), we published Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. In this book, we look at portraits and prints, spinning and embroidery, armor and wills, as well as literary texts to analyze the links between what people in early modern Europe wore and who they believed they were. Clothes as a material language still interest me as a way into different cultures. I recently completed, again with Tita Rosenthal, a translation of a late 16th-century costume book, Cesare Vecellio's Clothing, Ancient and Modern, of All the World (Venice, 1598), which was published in 2008 with a hundred color illustrations that clarify his wonderfully detailed woodcuts of costume from Europe, Turkey, Asia, Africa and the New World. My current project is a study of the costume-book genre, combining prints and texts about dress worldwide, entitled Global Habits.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 15, 2008
Wonderful illustrations - touches on the importance of clothes and decoration
May 5, 2022
It feels a little dated now, but Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory is still well worth a read for anyone thinking about early modern clothing and costume. Each chapter explores in depth a different perspective on the subject matter, so that for the bulk of the book, this feels like reading a collection of essays rather than a monograph. This makes for really interesting reading, and is a sensible approach to such a broad topic.
August 6, 2013
In their book, Jones and Stallybrass argue that clothing holds symbolic importance that elevates its status from being merely ornamental to having the power to inscribe particular traits upon its wearer: “Clothes, unlike the working of the spirit, leave a ‘print or character’ upon observer and wearer alike” (4). In order to support this claim, the authors examine Hamlet, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Pamela, etc. The authors claim that they intend to “explore the contradictory implications of ‘fashion’ as ‘deep making’ and as circulating goods” (11). They find that clothing has the potential to deceive – for it can fluidly move from body to body, making the power that it possesses (especially in its duties as “bearers of identity, ritual, and social memory”) problematic (5).
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January 18, 2010UMD
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews