Brueghel's Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, and Culture in the Late Middle Ages

Author / Editor
Friedman, John Block.

Title
Brueghel's Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, and Culture in the Late Middle Ages

Published
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2010.

Physical Description
xxv, 361 pp. : 21 b&w illus.

Series
Medieval Studies.

Description
Studies the iconography of nonaristocratic, nonclerical dress in late medieval literature and art. Considers aspects of dress as they distinguished peasants and gentry in the Old French pastourelle and its descendant, the bergerie, and follows this legacy into more sharply satiric German mock pastourelles and social satires, influenced by fabliaux. Examines "transgressive" details of dress and physiognomy in Chaucer's GP description of the Miller, Alisoun of MilT, Symkyn of RvT, and the Squire's Yeoman of GP, focusing on indications of class, social aspiration, and urban/rural opposition.

Chaucer Subjects
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Miller and His Tale
Reeve and His Tale