On Nov 5, 2008, at 8:20 PM, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:
On Wednesday 05 November 2008 10:50:26 am Chiara Francesca wrote:
It is a book:
http://www.google.com/books?id=qc2jyomYg7oC&dq=devils
+cloth&pg=PP1&ots=emkB
FeV_Zh&source=bn&sig=VJs6xhhIxQLADRN2c9yzRkLTFwY
It is the history of stripes on cloth. Very cool book. It has an
almost
cult following. :)
I can't imagine why; it has a rather low information to anecdote
ratio, in my
opinion.
Michel Pastoureau is a very entertaining writer. I have _Devil's
Cloth_ and another one of his (_Blue: The History of a Color_) which
has some huge and lovely photos in it. He's also written a very good
little introductory paperback on the history of heraldry -- I used to
keep an extra copy or two around to give to people who were just
starting to become interested in the subject. Great photos in that
one too.
But I agree, I wouldn't consider either book as an unquestionable
source of historical information. He has a tendency to pick out
particularly entertaining bits and talk about them, rather than
considering the entire sweep of the evidence. I'm also told that the
"Blue" book demonstrates that he's either not aware of, or is
ignoring, some of the more recent and important evidence on the
history of color concepts and color words (or so said the cognitive
linguist who gave it to me). That's a pretty serious failing for a
book that purports to be about the history of the concept "blue."
____________________________________________________________
O Chris Laning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Davis, California
+ http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
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