Dressing Etiquette in the Medieval Literature

Abstract

The author's English summary from the article:

Key words: dressing etiquette, Middle Ages, Romance, “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin”.

Dressing and eating etiquettes play an important role in the culture of any civilized society. The Middle Ages can be regarded as prominent in this regard and they can conditionally be called the “ritualised era”. Clothes - “symbolic gestures in social life” (Le Goff) - occupied a most important role in the system of values. Clothes not only warmed and adorned medieval people, but they were also regarded as the main criterion defining a person’s social status. Studying the role of dressing etiquette is as important in art and literature as in social practice, as in literary works, this etiquette not only defined the social status of heroes, but it also symbolised certain turns in the plot and emphasised important passages in the narrative.

In European Chivalry Romances as well as in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, clothes have socio-cultural, socio-professional, and ritual-symbolic functions. Correspondingly: a) They help to identify a person (in this case, a hero) in society and emphasise his/ her social status and role; b) They are (together with jewellery) indispensable attributes of the main principle in feudal society - making presents; c) They symbolically reflect certain rituals and traditional rules characteristic of feudal societies; d) In a number of cases, the symbolism of clothes has not so much a purely ethnographic and ritual function, but rather an artistic and aesthetic function.

European Chivalry Romances are called courtly as well as adventurous, because a significant part of the narratives unfold far away from the courtly civilisation - in a so-called “other space” s(wild forests, seas, and so forth). As adventurist elements are introduced in the narratives, the dressing code’s role is reduced to the minimum. There is no other way out here, as action unfolds in a forest - a so-called wild environment, where real danger awaits knights and where there is no real need to observe clothing rules and to show precious clothes. The clothes of warriors or hunters become most important in the forest. After the motive of wandering/searching is exhausted, action reverts to its initial point (the court of the seignior), which means that the protagonists return to the environment that is familiar and comfortable (civilised) for them.

Correspondingly, in this segment of the narrative, the heroes wear ceremonial dresses, a move that is mostly intertwined with the motive of giving presents and is followed by a so-called gastronomic apotheosis that is a kind of declaration of the luxury characteristic of the courtly civilisation.

Published in the journal Sjani, vol. 15 (2014), pp. 173–182. Open the paper