School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    "Ye louely ladyes with youre longe fyngres": the silkwomen of medieval London
    TRIGG, STEPHANIE ( 2002)
    The silkwomen of medieval London have become a celebrated case in the history of women’s work, but the surviving evidence about the status of their work and their social situation in ambiguous at best. This essay examines their famous petition to Parliament in 1455 in which they describe silkwork as the virtuous labour of “gentlewomen”, and reads it against a number of other representations of women and silk work from romance, sumptuary legislation, estates literature and political poetry. My focus is on both the possibilities and the limitations offered by interdisciplinary research into medieval women’s lives.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    “Shamed be …”: historicizing shame in medieval and early modern courtly ritual
    TRIGG, STEPHANIE ( 2006)
    This essay explores the relationship between shame and honor in various texts and practices associated with medieval chivalry, and especially in The Order of the Garter. The meaning and significance of the motto of the Order–Honi soit qui mal y pense–is contested, but it emphasizes the close relationship between shame and honor in courtly society. The motto may not be an embedded coded reference to an unknown event; it may have been coined by Edward III to generate a sense of mystery appropriate to a courtly elite. An examination of selected literary texts (incluing Malory’s Works and Shakespere’s Henry VI, Part One) and historical documents describing the ceremonial rituals of heraldic degradation and courtly shame suggests a remarkable continuity in the understanding of courtly shame between the medieval and the early modern period in England. This continuity is ignored by several recent commentators on shame, who unconsciously rehearse and repeat the abjection of the medieval past in contrast to the renaissance understanding of shame.