What do Brueghel's mid-sixteenth-century portrayals of 'heavy'
wedding dancers and feasters have in common with many late medieval
poems and manuscript illustrations? Certain of his paintings, with
their obsessive social detail, have often been treated as if they
heralded a set of cultural attitudes peculiar to the Early Modern
period. Yet the way that the painter combines, in a single scene,
scurrilous behavior with dress not only unsuited to the rustic
status of the wearers but often sexually revealing, reflects
attitudes toward clothing, class, and culture that are deeply
medieval. In this expansive and highly original book, Friedman
reveals how portrayals of peasants from the literature of the
Golden Age of Virgilian Pastoral, who behave according to their
social station, were increasingly replaced in the Middle Ages by
portrayals that present the realistic peasant, whose outrageous
behavior betrays his or her class while it threatens those who
stand 'above'. Capacious in scope, the book covers poems from
England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain from the twelfth through
the sixteenth centuries. In addition, Friedman draws on texts from
various genres, particularly the Pastourelle, giving readers the
first panoramic approach to late medieval views of peasant clothing
and certain related social behaviors such as eating, publicly
excreting, brawling, and 'mooning'. The book examines elite anxiety
over the socially striving lower classes during a period in which
social identity was fluid and hierarchies were increasingly
challenged by pressure from below. Illustrated with over twenty
black-and-white images and offering detailed analyses of poems,
plays, and stories, ""Brueghel's Heavy Dancers"" offers a fresh and
illuminating contribution to the field of medieval studies.
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