Adriana Vidotte

Men and nature in the Medieval West

This project’s proposal is to focus on the relationship between man and the environment he occupies, inhabits, interacts, modifies: the observation of man in a landscape that is natural, historical and social. The research is limited, temporal and geographically, to Europe, with special focus on the Iberian Peninsula in the medieval period, and uses written and iconographic sources. It intends to analyze how the writers of the time described and represented the natural landscapes and revealed the relations of men with the environment.

Clothing, footwear and eating: fashion, food and social hierarchy in the reign of the Catholic kings in Castile (1474-1504)

The project proposes a study, from a political-cultural point of view, of the relations between habits and customs of clothing, footwear and eating, and the forms of social domination in the Castilian kingdom in the period of the Catholic Kings - Isabel and Fernando (1474- 1504). The research intends to analyze the role of the clergy in the discussion and legislation on the forms and color of clothes and shoes; to relate the symbolism of shapes and colors of clothing and footwear to social hierarchies, as well as to analyze the relationship between social order, clothing, food and sex. The main source of the research is the "Tratado sobre la demasia en el vestir, calzar y comer do frei Hernando de Talavera. However, a documentary corpus constituted by other works of the period, which cover legal texts such as sumptuary, chronic and treaties, will also be used.