Charlemagne’s Mustache-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Charlemagne’s Mustache

Published:2023-11-01 Issue: Volume:36 Page:24-68
ISSN:0709-5201
Container-title:Florilegium
language:en
Short-container-title:Florilegium

Author:

Dutton Paul¹²

Affiliation:

1. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia

2. Past President, Canadian Society of Medievalists/ Ancien président, Société canadienne des médiévistes

Abstract

Paul Dutton tackles the neglected, but fascinating, history of hair, mustaches and beards in this article expanded from his plenary talk for CSM in 2000. He argues that the Germanic kings used hair – glorious, curly locks and full, manly beards – to distinguish themselves from their clean-shaven Roman predecessors. The article goes on to explore the intricacies of hair under the Merovingians, with laws and practices determining precise lengths and styles for different ranks and classes. The Carolingians, by contrast, were strikingly short-haired, mustaches replaced long hair as semiotic signifiers of power.

Publisher

University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress)

Subject

General Engineering

Link

https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/flor-36.003

Reference129 articles.

1. See Conrad Leyser, "Long-haired Kings and Short-haired Nuns: Power and Gender in Merovingian Gaul," Medieval World, March/April (1992): 37-42

2. William Sayers, "Early Irish Attitudes toward Hair and Beards, Baldness and Tonsure," Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, 44 (1991): 154-89

3. Edward James, "Bede and the Tonsure Question", Peritia, 3 (1948): 85-98.

4. See E.R. Leach, “Magical Hair,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 88 (1958): 147–64; C.R. Hallpike, “Social Hair,” Man: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4 (1969): 256–64; Wendy Cooper, Hair: Sex, Society, Symbolism (London, 1971); Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (London, 1973), pp. 243–98; Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (Chicago, 1981); Grant McCracken, Big Hair: A Journey into the Transformation of Self (Toronto, 1995); Allan Peterkin, One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair (Vancouver, 2001).

5. Petronius, Satyricon 58.8.5: “qui de nobis longe uenio, late uenio? solue me.” There are a number of possible answers to this old riddle, but Petronius’s character chose an obscene one.