Whether it’s Joan of Arc donning armor or women disguising themselves as monks to enter monasteries, gender-crossing attire appears in medieval history more often than you might expect. This book explores the subject in depth.
Excerpt:
Clothing is a marker of our identity: today, it is above all that of the
individual, as we enjoy greater freedom of choice in the absence of precise canons. Though there are of course norms and aspirations, such as those around the projection of status through the choice of designer labels, even fake ones. If clothing today is intersectional, it was no less so in the Middle Ages, when not only did men and women dress differently from one another – although less differently than in, say, the bourgeois society of the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries – but there were also codes concerning social status. Someone’s garments were clear indication of where they stood
in society: knight or cleric, Christian or Jew, peasant or citizen, man or woman, and so on. A knight dressed as a cleric could in some ways be considered a cross-dresser, and, indeed, society of the time would have considered him such.
In the pages that follow, however, I have devoted myself to what we more commonly understand today as cross-dressers, that is, men who dress as women and women who dress as men. The designation is applied regardless of the reasons why the individual is cross-dressing. Where possible I have investigated the latter, always bearing in mind that, in most cases, it is the (generally male) authors of a text who “make them do it”, as Aristophanes did with Praxagoras and Blepyrus. This means that, more often than not, the perception of cross-dressing will be discussed rather than the act itself.
Who is this book for?
Medieval Europe maintained strict boundaries on clothing, yet instances of people defying these norms were more frequent than commonly assumed. This book offers valuable insights for a range of historians—not only those focused on gender and fashion but also scholars of religion, literature, and social history.
The Author
Marina Montesano is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Messina and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on gender, magic and witchcraft.
In the meantime, we’ll be picking some of our favourite 2024 books…in no particular order. First up: ‘Cross Dressing in the Middle Ages’ by Marina Montesano. Written in a narrative, accessible style, this is the first study to consider cross-dressing for the entire medieval age. shorturl.at/pn8bs
Cross-dressing in the Middle Ages
By Marina Montesano
Routledge
ISBN: 978-1-032-32579-8
Whether it’s Joan of Arc donning armor or women disguising themselves as monks to enter monasteries, gender-crossing attire appears in medieval history more often than you might expect. This book explores the subject in depth.
Excerpt:
Clothing is a marker of our identity: today, it is above all that of the
individual, as we enjoy greater freedom of choice in the absence of precise canons. Though there are of course norms and aspirations, such as those around the projection of status through the choice of designer labels, even fake ones. If clothing today is intersectional, it was no less so in the Middle Ages, when not only did men and women dress differently from one another – although less differently than in, say, the bourgeois society of the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries – but there were also codes concerning social status. Someone’s garments were clear indication of where they stood
in society: knight or cleric, Christian or Jew, peasant or citizen, man or woman, and so on. A knight dressed as a cleric could in some ways be considered a cross-dresser, and, indeed, society of the time would have considered him such.
In the pages that follow, however, I have devoted myself to what we more commonly understand today as cross-dressers, that is, men who dress as women and women who dress as men. The designation is applied regardless of the reasons why the individual is cross-dressing. Where possible I have investigated the latter, always bearing in mind that, in most cases, it is the (generally male) authors of a text who “make them do it”, as Aristophanes did with Praxagoras and Blepyrus. This means that, more often than not, the perception of cross-dressing will be discussed rather than the act itself.
Who is this book for?
Medieval Europe maintained strict boundaries on clothing, yet instances of people defying these norms were more frequent than commonly assumed. This book offers valuable insights for a range of historians—not only those focused on gender and fashion but also scholars of religion, literature, and social history.
The Author
Marina Montesano is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Messina and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on gender, magic and witchcraft.
You can learn more about this book from the publisher’s website.
You can buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
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