IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 1136: Social Status and Identity: Mutable Concepts

Organiser:	Bobbi Sutherland, Department of History, University of Dayton, Ohio
Moderator/Chair:	Louisa Foroughi, Department of History, Fordham University, New York
Paper 1136-a	Noble Reputation in Froissart's Accounts of the Breton Civil War (Language: English) Erika Graham-Goering, Vakgroep Geschiedenis, Universiteit Gent Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities, Social History
Paper 1136-b	Changing Attitudes towards Social Mobility in Late Medieval England (Language: English) Alex Brown, Department of History, Durham University Index terms: Mentalities, Social History
Paper 1136-c	The Ménagier de Paris and Bourgeois Identity (Language: English) Bobbi Sutherland, Department of History, University of Dayton, Ohio Index terms: Daily Life, Mentalities, Social History
Abstract	Social status was a crucial component of medieval identity. Nevertheless, despite being very stratified, medieval social identity was far from immutable or uniform. This was especially true of the ways in which medieval people used cultural references to convey class identity and the anxiety that surrounded changing social position, especially in the later Middle Ages. These three papers each examine the complex ways in which social identity was claimed, expressed, and defined, including the variation in the ways nobility could be expressed, changing attitudes toward social mobility, and the expression of bourgeois identity that went beyond legal definitions.