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Informationen zum Autor Michel Pastoureau is a leading authority on medieval heraldry. He is the coauthor of The Bible and the Saints and Heraldry: An Introduction to a Noble Tradition. Klappentext Michel Pastoureau's lively study of stripes offers a unique and engaging perspective on the evolution of fashion, taste, and visual codes in Western culture. The Devil's Cloth begins with a medieval scandal. When the first Carmelites arrived in France from the Holy Land, the religious order required its members to wear striped habits, prompting turmoil and denunciations in the West that lasted fifty years until the order was forced to accept a quiet, solid color. The medieval eye found any surface in which a background could not be distinguished from a foreground disturbing. Thus, striped clothing was relegated to those on the margins or outside the social order -- jugglers and prostitutes, for example -- and in medieval paintings the devil himself is often depicted wearing stripes. The West has long continued to dress its slaves and servants, its crewmen and convicts in stripes.But in the last two centuries, stripes have also taken on new, positive meanings, connoting freedom, youth, playfulness, and pleasure. Witness the revolutionary stripes on the French and United States flags. In a wide-ranging discussion that touches on zebras, awnings, and pajamas, augmented by illustrative plates, the author shows us how stripes have become chic, and even, in the case of bankers' pin stripes, a symbol of taste and status. However, make the stripes too wide, and you have a gangster's suit -- the devil's cloth indeed! Zusammenfassung What do prostitutes! referees! and Renaissance clowns have in common? They all wear stripes! and The Devil's Cloth tells us why. Pastoureau's lively study of stripes offers a unique perspective on the evolution of fashion! taste! and visual codes in Western culture. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface Order and Disorder of the Stripe The Devil and His Striped Clothes (13th-16th Centuries) The Carmel Scandal Striped Fabric, Bad Fabric Saint Joseph's Breeches Plain, Striped, Patterned, Spotted The Figure and the Background: Heraldry and the Stripe From the Horizontal to the Vertical and Back (16th-19th 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 (19th-20th 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 List of Illustrations About the Author Notes Index...
