Publisher's description and from the back cover:
This broad-reaching collection of essays constitutes a thorough introduction to the fields and methodologies concerned with studies of textiles and dress of the Middle Ages. New themes and critical viewpoints from many disciplines are brought to bear on the medieval material in the areas of archaeology, art and architecture, economics, law, history, literature, religion, and textile technology. The contributors address surviving objects and artifacts and interpret representations in texts and images. The articles extend in time from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries, and cover Europe from Scandinavia, England, and Ireland in the north, to Italy and the Mediterranean basin in the south. Emphasis is placed on the significant role of trade and cultural exchanges as they impact appearance and its constituent materials.

Reviews:
"An outstanding series of essays by historians, art historians, and literary specialists on a wide variety of topics in medieval textiles, from manufacture and use, to style, fashion, iconography, and the many shades of social meaning." - William W. Clark, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
"This volume demonstrates the wide variety of excellent new work now being done on dress and costume history. The papers are rich in content and cover a wide variety of periods and subject matter." - Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
"The volume is a valuable addition to the both the library of a general reader and a costume historian. For the general reader the books provides ready access to information ranging over a six-hundred year period. For the costume historian there is a wealth of detailed information to add breadth and depth to one's knowledge, with an additional resource of information in the form of copious endnotes and bibliographic references." - Sandra L. Rosenbau, Dress

Contents:
page VII Series Editor's Foreword
IX Acknowledgments
XI Illustrations
1 Introduction-Désirée G. Koslin and Janet Snyder
PART ONE: THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
7 1. Appearance and Ideology: Creating Distinctions between Clerics and Lay Persons in Early Medieval Gaul, Bonnie Effros
25 2. From Self-Sufficiency to Commerce: Structural and Artefactual Evidence for Textile Manufacture in Eastern England in the Pre-Conquest Period, Nina Crummy
45 3. Dressing the Part: Depictions of Noble Costume in Irish High Crosses, Margaret McEnchroe Williams
PART TWO: THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
67 4. Marie de France's Bisclavret: What the Werewolf Will and Will Not Wear, Gloria Thomas Gilmore
85 5. From Content to Form: Court Clothing in Mid-Twelfth-Century Northern French Sculpture, Janet Snyder
103 6. Fashion in French Crusade Literature: Desiring Infidel Textiles, Sarah-Grace Heller
121 7. "Christ as A Windblown Sleeve": The Ambiguity of Clothing as Sign in Gottfried von Straßburg's Tristan, Margarita Yanson
137 8. Addressing the Law: Costume as Signifier in Medieval Legal Miniatures, Susan L'Engle
PART THREE: THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
157 9. From Battlefield to Court: The Invention of Fashion in the Fourteenth Century, Odile Blanc
173 10. Unraveling the Mystery of Jan van Eyck's Cloths of Honor: The Ghent Altarpiece, Donna M. Cottrell
195 11. Marked Difference: Earrings and "the Other" in Fifteenth-Century Flemish Art, Penny Howell Jolly
209 12. The Margaret Fitzgerald Tomb Effigy: A Late Medieval Headdress and Gown in St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny, Elizabeth Wincott Heckett
223 13. "As proud as a dog in a doublet": The Importance of Clothing in The Shoemaker's Holiday, Linda Anderson
233 14. Value-Added Stuffs and Shifts in Meaning: An Overview and a Case Study of Medieval Textile Paradigms, Désirée Koslin
251 Glossary
259 Contributors
263 Index.