The Language of Clothing and the Law
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Daniela Carpi is Full Professor of English Literature at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona. Her fields of research are Renaissance theatre, critical theory, postmodernism, law and literature, literature and science, literature and visual arts. She collaborates with Ombre Corte in Verona, where she edits a section “Culture” devoted to comparative criticism and a section “Agon” on law and culture; with DeGruyter in Berlin, where she edits (together with professor Klaus Stierstorfer) a series on “Law and Literature.” She has founded the Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura (AIDEL), which she presides. Among her most recent publications:
Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (DeGruyter: Berlin/Boston, 2011) andLiminal Discourses. Subliminal Tensions in Law and Literature , ed. with Jeanne Gaakeer (DeGruyter: Berlin/Boston, 2013).
Abstract
Elizabeth I’s portraits span more than 40 years of her reign: during this time her courtiers commissioned paintings that developed both her own image and a complex set of symbols that transmitted her power. These paintings, together with other iconological representations of her sovereignty, embody her personal way to advertise her own power and keep her subjects within the fascination of her figure. By commissioning portraits of the Queen her courtiers both expressed their loyalty to her and helped to develop the wide range of emblems and visual devices through which her propaganda could be promulgated. The analysis of the symbols interwoven with the dresses which enwrapped the Queen in her portraits conveys both the social situation of the period and Elizabeth’s will to impose her figure as divine so as to stress her legitimacy to the throne. The problem of power, legitimacy and legality are all intertwined in the dresses: the yarn that is spun by the painter’s brush represents the rules that keep society together. It symbolises the legal system with all its paraphernalia and anticipates an awareness for those in power to advertise their image which typifies our age. The fundamental function of clothing in making or unmaking a person’s status within society is often used in Renaissance plays. In many passages of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for example, clothing is clearly connected to authority and it becomes the central device in the taming process itself.
About the author
Daniela Carpi is Full Professor of English Literature at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona. Her fields of research are Renaissance theatre, critical theory, postmodernism, law and literature, literature and science, literature and visual arts. She collaborates with Ombre Corte in Verona, where she edits a section “Culture” devoted to comparative criticism and a section “Agon” on law and culture; with DeGruyter in Berlin, where she edits (together with professor Klaus Stierstorfer) a series on “Law and Literature.” She has founded the Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura (AIDEL), which she presides. Among her most recent publications: Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (DeGruyter: Berlin/Boston, 2011) and Liminal Discourses. Subliminal Tensions in Law and Literature, ed. with Jeanne Gaakeer (DeGruyter: Berlin/Boston, 2013).
©2016 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Law, Fashion and Identities
- Theory: Dressing and Law
- Fashion as an Institutional System
- Clothing, Law and the Institution of the Subject’s Internal Normativity
- Fashion & Performance
- Playing it Fashionably Queer: Mae West’s Performing Sexuality
- Fashion in India: Coercion or a Flag for Freedom?
- Bodies, Masks and Biopolitics: Clothing as “Second Skin” and Skin as “First Clothing” in “The Tiger’s Bride”
- Augmented Bodies: Functional and Rhetorical Uses of Augmented Reality in Fashion
- Clothing, Art, Literature and Popular Culture
- The Language of Clothing and the Law
- The Law of Dress in Lord of the Flies
- All Aboard the Louis Vuitton Train!
- Research
- Post-Mabo White Settler Fables and the Negotiation of Native Title Legislation in Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth (2004)
- Ian Mc Ewan’s The Children Act: Minors’ Rights and Family Justice Perspectives in Italy and the UK
- Desire for Justice and Desire as Justice: Theatre and Drama in Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover
- Book Reviews
- Ian Ward ed: Literature and Human Rights: The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse
- Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher, and Nicola Smith: Queer Sex Work
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Law, Fashion and Identities
- Theory: Dressing and Law
- Fashion as an Institutional System
- Clothing, Law and the Institution of the Subject’s Internal Normativity
- Fashion & Performance
- Playing it Fashionably Queer: Mae West’s Performing Sexuality
- Fashion in India: Coercion or a Flag for Freedom?
- Bodies, Masks and Biopolitics: Clothing as “Second Skin” and Skin as “First Clothing” in “The Tiger’s Bride”
- Augmented Bodies: Functional and Rhetorical Uses of Augmented Reality in Fashion
- Clothing, Art, Literature and Popular Culture
- The Language of Clothing and the Law
- The Law of Dress in Lord of the Flies
- All Aboard the Louis Vuitton Train!
- Research
- Post-Mabo White Settler Fables and the Negotiation of Native Title Legislation in Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth (2004)
- Ian Mc Ewan’s The Children Act: Minors’ Rights and Family Justice Perspectives in Italy and the UK
- Desire for Justice and Desire as Justice: Theatre and Drama in Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover
- Book Reviews
- Ian Ward ed: Literature and Human Rights: The Law, the Language and the Limitations of Human Rights Discourse
- Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher, and Nicola Smith: Queer Sex Work
