MDMD2: Strip'd and Floral Gowns

[Dave Monroe]

"Portsmouth Polls in strip'd and floral Gowns whose
bold reds, oranges, and purples are taken down in this
light, bruised, made oily and worn, with black mix'd
in everywhere, colors turning ever toward Night."
(M&D, Ch. 3, p. 24)

Note the painterly description hee, by the way ("oily
... with black mix'd in everywhere'), but also ...

>From Michel Pastoureau, The Devil's Cloth: A History
of Stripes and Striped Fabric, trans. Jody Gladding
(New York: Columbia UP, 2001) ...

"In the medieval Western world, there are a great
number of individuals--real or imaginary--whom
society, literature, and iconography endow with
striped clothing.  In one way or another, they are all
outcasts or reprobates ....  They all disturb or
pervert the esatblished order; they all have more or
less to do with the devil." (p. 2)

"People in the Middle Ages seemed to feel an aversion
for all surface structures which, because they did not
clearly distinguish the figure from the background,
troubled the spectator's view.  The medieval eye was
particularly attentive to reading by levels.  Any
image, any surface appeared to be built of layers ....
with stripes, such a reading is no longer possible. 
There is not a level below and a level above ....' (p.
3)

"... the stripe is just as much of a deviation and
causes just as much of a scandal when it appears on a
juggler's robe, a prince's breeches, a courtesan's
sleeves ...' (p. 12)

"In all ecclesiastical society, war is henceforth
declared on stripes, especially those that alternate
bright colors--red, green, or yellow--and thus create
an impression of gaudiness, of diversitas.' (p. 13)

"Later, in lay society, there are customs, laws, and
regulations that require certain categories of
reprobates or outcasts to wear two-colored or striped
clothes.... it is sometimes the prostitues, sometimes
the jugglers and clowns, sometimes the hangmen who are
required to wear either an entirely striped suit of
clothing or, more often, an item of striped clothing"
a scarf, dress or aglet for prostitutes .... 
Everyhere, it is a matter of imposing a visual sign
indicating a deviation so that those who practice such
trades not be confused with honest citizens." (p. 14)

"... literary texts which quite often ascribe striped
emblems or clothing to charcters presented as evil or
negative.... in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
it develops especially in vernacular texts, notably in
chansons de geste an courtly romances.  Treacherous
knights, usurping seneschals, adulterous wives, rebel
sons, disloyal brothers, cruel swarfs, greedy
servants, they all may be endowed with stripes on
herladry or clothes." (pp. 14-5)

"These are the barred ones ..." (p. 15)

"All these individuals transgress the social order,
like the stripe transgresses the chromatic order and
the order of dress." (p. 17)

"As for the prostitute, whose dress is striped red and
yellow and the juggler or clown--future
Harlequin--whose costume is made up of squares or
diamonds ... all three wear upon their clothing the
very idea of trouble, disorder, noise, and impurity.'
(p. 25)

The Devil's Cloth is a fascinating little book, and,
while it doesn't quite address what is admittedly a
relatively (and "relatively" is, well, a relative term
here when it comes to those Pynchonian texts ...)
marginal (...) detail, I just couldn't pass up the
opportunity to utilize it here ...  

And keeping in mind yet that "rickety Labyrinth of
rooms for sleeping or debauchery" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 24),
see as well Picard, Dr. Johnson's London, p. 213
("Prostitutes").  And, no, this Lisa Picard is not the
subject of some indie film currently making the rounds
...


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