"To stripe a surface serves to distinguish it, to point it out, to oppose it or associate it with another surface, and thus to classify it, to keep an eye on it, to verify it, even to censor it."

Throughout the ages, the stripe has made its mark in mysterious ways. From prisoners' uniforms to tailored suits, a street sign to a set of sheets, Pablo Picasso to Saint Joseph, stripes have always made a bold statement. But the boundary that separates the good stripe from the bad is often blurred. Why, for instance, were stripes associated with the devil during the Middle Ages? How did stripes come to symbolize freedom and unity after the American and French revolutions? When did the stripe become a standard in men's fashion? "In the stripe," writes author Michel Pastoureau, "there is something that resists enclosure within systems." So before putting on that necktie or waving your country's flag, look to "The Devil's Cloth" for a colorful history of the stripe in all its variety, controversy, and connotation.

Michel Pastoreau is a leading authority on medieval iconography. He is the director of studies at the Sorbonne's Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes where he has served since 1983 as a professor of the history of Western symbols. He is the author of The Devil's Stripe and Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton University Press.)

Contents

List of Illustrations  

Preface to the American Edition 

Order and Disorder of the Stripe  

The Devil And His Striped Clothes 

(13th­16th centuries)

The Carmel Scandal 

Striped Fabric, Bad Fabric  

Saint Joseph¹s Breeches  

Plain, Striped, Patterned, Spotted 

The Figure and the Background: Heraldry and the Stripe 

From The Horizontal To The Vertical And Back 

(16th­19th centuries)

From the Diabolic to the Domestic 

From the Domestic to the Romantic 

The Revolutionary Stripe 

To Stripe and to Punish 

Stripes For The Present Time 

(19th­20th centuries)

Hygiene of the Stripe  

A World in Navy Blue and White  

Oddball Zebras  

Striped Surface, Dangerous Surface  

From the Trace to the Mark  

Bibliographic Orientation  

About the Author  

Notes  

Index

Copyright © 2001 by Columbia University Press.