文章基本信息

标题：An Honest Bed: The Scene of Life and Death in Late Medieval England
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作者：Katherine L. French, Kathryn A. Smith ; Sarah Stanbury
期刊名称：Fragments : Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts
印刷版ISSN：2161-8585
电子版ISSN：2161-8585
出版年度：2016
卷号：5
出版社：MPublishing
摘要：Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household.