During the late sixteenth century 'fashion' first took on the sense of restless change in contrast to the older sense of fashioning or making. As fashionings, clothes were perceived as material forms of personal and social identity which made the man or woman. 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 2001 book offers a close reading of literary texts, paintings, textiles, theatrical documents, and ephemera to reveal how clothing and textiles were crucial to the making and unmaking of concepts of status, gender, sexuality, and religion in the Renaissance. The book is illustrated with a wide range of images from portraits to embroidery.
"Professor Jones’ book uniquely fills a huge hole in gender studies in the Renaissance. Its easy clarity of argument, its scrupulous care for detail, its just plain good story telling, and its th
Containing the complete and annotated texts of six pamphlets written between 1609 and 1620, "Custome Is an Idiot" makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on early modern British cultural h
Veronica Franco (whose life is featured in the motion picture Dangerous Beauty) was a sixteenth-century Venetian beauty, poet, and protofeminist. This collection captures the frank eroticism and impr