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Will Fisher. Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xii + 223 pp.; ill. ISBN- 10: 0-521-85851-9 (cl).
Margaret R. Miles. A Complex Delight: The Secularization of the Breast, 1350- 1750. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. xiv + 177 pp.; ill. ISBN-10: 0-520-25348-3 (cl).
Linda Levy Peck. Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth- Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xvi +431 pp.; ill. ISBN-10: 0-521-84232-7 (cl).
Aileen Ribeiro. Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. x + 387 pp.; ill. ISBN-10: 0-300-10999-7 (cl).
Susan M. Stuard. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. viii + 323 pp.; ill. ISBN-10: 0-8122-3900-3 (cl).
Caroline Weber. Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006. 412 pp.; ill. ISBN-10: 0-8050-7949-4 (cl).
Joyce de Vries
"Clothes make the woman, clothes make the man: the costume is of the essence."
-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1600-01)
The quip about the importance of costume in determining identity seems even more pertinent now than during Shakespeare's era. The significance of today's fashion is easy to comprehend: it is a multi-billion dollar global industry. Fashion magazines, reality shows, and the internet all offer advice on how to achieve personal perfection with fashion tips, examples of celebrity styles and designer knock-offs, and other essentials to consider when shopping. How did we get here? Fashion has been a growth industry for centuries and, as Shakespeare implied, men and women have long constructed their identity and projected their status through their attire. The six books under review here suggest that contemporary fashion has its roots in the early modern period, however strange and distant that may seem. These books demonstrate how an examination of consumption practices, fashion, and the body can lead to a reassessment of our notions of past and present gender and social issues, the role of material culture in identity formation, and even historical periodization.
With their focus on the early modern period, the authors challenge modernist assumptions about the associations of consumption and fashion with women: these...