Biographies of Meaning: The Cultural Agency of Household Objects in Late Medieval English Towns.

在伦敦杂货商理查德·托伊和约克郡泥瓦匠约翰·卡德比公元1430年的1391年库存中，廉价的小箱子都被列为珠宝。相比之下，富裕教会家庭的库存将箱子列为器皿。我们可能会问，为什么，他们的意义是什么，为什么他们在城市背景下被认为是不同的，他们是如何行动的？到目前为止，家居用品在中世纪晚期英格兰扮演的角色在很大程度上还没有被探索过。这是支撑我研究的问题。中世纪后期不断扩大的家庭物质文化被理解为我们消费社会的起源(科瓦莱斯基，2006)。消费主义的框架，及其教条式的接受，即社会渴望的效仿推动了不断扩大的“中等”物质，导致历史学家忽视了批判性地接触客观因素和横向影响。最近，威尔逊关于勃艮第城市剧院的工作(2015)鼓励了对物体代理的批判性思考，摩根(2017)对床的文化意义的研究隐含地揭示了它们的代理潜力。在早期现代时期，Hamling和Richardson(2017)已经开始探索家居用品和“中等物品”之间的关系。还有更多的工作要做。这篇论文将通过对一系列家居物品的分析来解决这一学术空白，以揭示它们的意义传记。它将试图通过揭示家居物品如何在城市社会文化过程中横向作用来挑战消费主义的主导话语。鉴于消费支出占英国GDP的60%，2017年消费放缓，有必要对消费主义作为一种社会经济力量的有效性进行历史分析。意义传记是我从关于物质文化的理论辩论中获得的一种独创性的方法论方法。它植根于科皮托夫的“文化传记”概念(1986)，即。当一个物体在不同的使用环境中移动时，它所拥有的价值和因此产生的作用。然而，它不是对象传记方法，而是检查对象类型的传记。使用这种方法，我将探索家居用品通过在房子内和房子外的使用而被灌输了什么文化价值，以及这些价值如何使它们成为更广泛的城市社会文化进程的代理人。这项研究将主要利用博思威克研究所和约克议员图书馆保存的大量现存中世纪资料。将对库存进行量化分析，以详细说明物体及其相关组合的空间位置。我们将讨论在当代视觉和叙事资源中对物体的再现，以确定赋予物体类型的文化意义。为什么刘易斯越来越多地出现在对暴饮暴食的描绘中，比如多塞特克兰本教区教堂里七宗罪的壁画？最后，对遗嘱、教会法庭证词和塞利、帕斯顿和斯通纳信件的定性阅读将揭示这些物品是如何被积极使用的，以及它们是如何行动的。1446年，罗伯特·菲茨罗伯特送给亚肯的圣托马斯家一个名叫“格雷特·格拉布”的银杯作为自己的纪念品。仅被视为一种消费品，这种命名的、代理的、家居物品难以解释。中世纪晚期的城市家庭是一系列经济、社会和宗教活动的空间场所。家居用品也是流动的，经常跨过房子的门槛进入其他城市空间。因此，这项研究有可能为中世纪晚期社会的所有领域提供另一种视角，考虑社会文化过程的横向性质。它还将介绍一种创新的方法框架，可以应用于物质文化研究，超越本论文的地理、学科和时间限制。

In both the 1391 inventory of London grocer Richard Toky and that of Yorkshire mason John Cadeby in c.1430 small inexpensive chests are listed as jewels. In contrast, the inventories of wealthy ecclesiastical households list chests as utensils. We might ask why, what was their significance, why were they perceived differently in urban contexts, and how did they act? The roles household objects performed in late medieval England has to date gone largely unexplored. This is the question that underpins my research. The expanding material culture of households in the later Middle Ages is understood as the genesis of our consumer society (Kowaleski 2006). The framework of consumerism, and its dogmatic acceptance that socially aspirant emulation drove expanding 'middling' materiality, has resulted in historians neglecting to critically engage with both object agency and lateral influences. Recently, Wilson's work on the Burgundian urban 'theatre' (2015) has encouraged critical thinking about object agency, and Morgan's (2017) examination of the cultural significance of beds has implicitly revealed their agential potential. For the early-modern period Hamling and Richardson (2017) have begun to explore the relationship between household objects and the 'middling sort'. Much more remains to be done. This thesis will address this scholarly lacuna through the analysis of an array of household objects to reveal their biographies of meaning. It will seek to challenge the dominant discourse of consumerism by revealing how household objects acted laterally in urban socio-cultural processes. With consumer spending accounting for 60% of the UK's GDP, and 2017 evidencing a consumer slowdown, historical analysis of the validity of consumerism as a socio-economic force is needed. Biography of meaning is an original methodological approach which I have drawn from the theoretical debate about material culture. It is grounded in Kopytoff's notion of 'cultural biography' (1986), viz. the values, and ergo agency, an object possesses as it moves through different use contexts. Instead of an object biographical approach however, it examines the biographies of object types. Using this methodology, I will explore what cultural values household objects were imbued with through their use, both within and without the house, and how these values made them agents in wider urban socio-cultural processes. This research will primarily draw upon the large corpus of extant medieval sources held by the Borthwick Institute and York Minster Library. Inventories will be quantitatively analysed to detail the spatial position of objects and their associated assemblages. The representation of objects in contemporary visual and narrative sources will be discussed to ascertain the cultural meanings assigned to object types. E.g. why were ewers increasingly present in depictions of gluttony, such as the wall painting of the seven deadly sins in a parish church in Cranbourne, Dorset? Finally, qualitative readings of testaments, Church court depositions, and the Cely, Paston, and Stonor letters will reveal both how these objects were actively used and how they acted. E.g. in 1446 Robert FitzRobert gave a silver cup named 'grete grubbe' to the house of St Thomas of Acon to act as a memento of himself. Viewed only as a consumer good this named, agential, household object defies interpretation.Late medieval urban households were the spatial location for a range of economic, social, and religious activities. Household objects were also mobile, frequently crossing the threshold of the house into other urban spaces. Thus, this research has the potential to offer an alternate perspective on all areas of late medieval society which considers the lateral nature of socio-cultural processes. It will also introduce an innovative methodological framework which can be applied to material culture studies beyond the geographic, disciplinary, and chronological limitations of this thesis.