Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia by Javier Irigoyen-García

2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-169
Author(s):  
Trevor J. Dadson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Distinction

Street “Luxuries”

2020 ◽  
pp. 413-433
Author(s):  
Melissa Calaresu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fast Food ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nutritional Needs ◽  
Early Modern Rome ◽  
The City

The history of eating on the street presents particular challenges as the extant material culture is especially limited. This chapter reveals the variety of food sold on the streets of early modern Rome through the study of a series of images of street sellers printed in the late sixteenth century in response to the growing ethnographic interest of travelers to the city. This chapter turns on its head what was considered a luxury in the early modern economy as these images suggest the range of foodstuffs which cannot be simply understood as daily necessities to meet the basic nutritional needs of the city’s inhabitants such as raw cooking materials or hot fast food. Instead, these images suggest that labor-saving products such as hulled rice or even products such as sweetmeats, which were normally associated with the work of the steward of an aristocratic house and the elite “dressing” of the table, were being sold on the streets. Therefore, despite the inherent ephemerality of the act of selling and eating food and the lack of surviving material culture, these images reveal the complexity of determining social distinction through food choices in early modern Rome.

La production de linge à Paris à l'ère des nouveautés (1520–1620)

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-195
Author(s):  
Astrid Castres
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Know How ◽  
Social Distinction

Arécis Au cours du seizième siècle, le linge blanc, gage de propreté et signe de distinction sociale, prit une place grandissante dans l'habit. Au gré des modes de la cour et de la venue d'artisans étrangers qualifiés, ou passés par les Flandres et l'Italie, des nouveautés techniques et formelles (point coupé, dentelles, fraises et porte-fraises, etc.) furent peu à peu introduites dans la capitale du royaume de France. En partant du cas parisien, cet article examine les mutations que connut la production de linge entre 1520 et 1620, à la suite de l'apparition de ces procédés nouveaux. Pour la plupart mis en œuvre et transmis par des femmes, ils conduisent à réfléchir aux particularités d'exercice de savoir-faire féminins ainsi qu'au rôle joué par les lingères et par les ouvrières en linge dans le processus d'innovation textile au début de l'époque moderne. A sign of cleanliness and of social distinction, white linen played an increasingly important role in dress throughout the sixteenth century. Novelties and new technologies (cutwork, lace, and the construction of ruffs, supportasse, etc.) appeared in French workshops in order to follow courtly fashion trends, and because of the arrival of foreign workers trained in Flanders and in Italy. Focusing on the Parisian case, this article examines the influence of these new processes on linen production between 1520 and 1620. The analysis of these techniques, which were implemented and transmitted mostly by women, leads to a broader reflection on the features of feminine know-how and the role played by women workers in early modern textile innovation.

Fortunes of the Occhiali Politici in Early Modern Spain: Optics, Vision, Points of View

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique García Santo-Tomás
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Moral Blindness ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Points Of View

Popularized in Spain through the work of the Italian satirist Traiano Boccalini, the motif of the occhiali politici, or political lenses, is one of the most understudied conceits in early modern Spanish satire. This essay examines four early modern Spanish texts where anteojos de larga vista (“eyeglasses” or “telescopes”) become central elements as the eye is given the ability to perceive the reality beyond deceptive appearances. But a capacity to see beyond reveals two parallel concerns: the adoption of spectacles as a mark of social distinction by a society suffering from the moral blindness these novels denounce and the increasing tensions between astronomy and religion stemming from the use of lenses as stargazing tools. Contextualizing these anxieties in the contemporary polemics regarding the divulgation of Galileo's Copernican theses, I illustrate how a simple corrective instrument triggered a fierce debate at the center of Spain's uneven modernity.

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