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EMLS 8.2 (September, 2002]: 13.1-5 Review of Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Tudor ... |
 | | Twycross and Carpenter made a wise choice in dividing their study into four parts - "Popular Masking," "Courtly Masking," "Theatrical Masking," and "Theory and Practice" - as their laudable commitment to testing influential theories of masking against "the complex particularity of the evidence" necessarily tends to a dense, albeit rewarding, argument (4). |
 | | Though Twycross and Carpenter argue that "the meaning of such a flened face depends on its context" (215) and that such flness is not necessarily racialized (though they point out that "ethiop" is a frequent term associated with the devil in the medieval sources [202]), the evidence consistently places "fl" in the negative register. |
 | | Finally, Twycross and Carpenter's conclusions about cosmetics and masks usefully contextualize the construction of early modern femininity; their discussion of the material culture of fl-face and white- face, which they argue equally served to de-naturalize the human subject, further adds to our understanding of the shifting significance of colour during this transitional period. |
| extra.shu.ac.uk /emls/08-2/twycrev.html (1148 words) |
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