In the later Middle Ages clothing was used to mark religious, military, and chivalric orders; in the courtly milieu, more specifically, the ostentatious display of luxury dress was used as a means of self-definition for the ruling elite. In Courtly Love Undressed, E. Jane Burns explores the representation of this material culture in the literary texts and other documents that imagine various functions for elite clothing in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.
"Burns argues persuasively that fabric and clothing can create representations of both gender and status in selected French courtly texts. . . . While grounded in solid readings of medieval texts, Burns's book also reflects and adds to recent feminist rethinking of clothing's capacity to empower women."--Speculum

Introduction: The Damsel's Sleeve—Reading Through Clothes in Courtly Love

PART I. CLOTHING COURTLY BODIES
1 Fortune's Gown: Material Extravagance and the Opulence of Love

PART II. RECONFIGURING DESIRE: THE POETICS OF TOUCH
2 Amorous Attire: Dressing Up for Love
3 Love's Stitches Undone: Women's Work in the chanson de toile

PART III. DENATURALIZING SEX: WOMEN AND MEN ON A GENDERED SARTORIAL CONTINUUM
4 Robes, Armor, and Skin
5 From Woman's Nature to Nature's Dress

PART IV. EXPANDING COURTLY SPACE THROUGH EASTERN RICHES
6 Saracen Silk: Dolls, Idols, and Courtly Ladies
7 Golden Spurs: Love in the Eastern World of Floire et Blancheflor

Coda: Marie de Champagne and the Matière of Courtly Love

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

E. Jane Burns is L. M. Slifkin Distinguished Term Professor and Chair of the Curriculum in Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is author of Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.