| 摘要: | 本研究原以兩年為期限，完成有關近代早期英格蘭對本土服飾與愛爾蘭服飾的思考，後因僅獲得一年補助，故將研究重點放在英格蘭本身，討論十六、十七世紀英格蘭人如何透過服飾及其與身體的連結，建立國族想像和國族認同。本研究首先從較大的文化背景來瞭解服飾與國族的連結關係，觀察歐洲在經歷文藝復興運動、印刷術之普及，以及海外探險等歷史變化後，服飾如何透過「服飾書」（costume books）與「地圖」成為定義國族差異的主要標誌。接著進入英格蘭本身的歷史情境中，探索英格蘭人如何從服飾問題出發，思考並建構自身的國族形象。這部分主要利用的史料為民間文人的作品，即安德森（Benedict Anderson）所談的「印刷—資本主義」（print-capitalism）中產出的圖像與文字，如論冊（pamphlets）、遊記、講道、地圖等，它們主要為市場、為大眾而寫，表達了當時文人對國族抽象式或視覺式的想像，以及「英格蘭屬性」（Englishness）的內涵。由於此時期的國家概念，多以「身體」的意象表達，稱為「政治體」（body politic），本研究也利用身體的意象，討論當時三種對國家之身體（簡稱「國體」）不同的想像，分別是：「裸露的國體」、「混雜的國體」與「文雅的國體」。前兩者代表負面的批判，也是深沈的自省，展現英格蘭人遭受異國文化入侵而面臨的產業危機、道德腐化與認同問題；最後者則是在前兩者的基礎上，追尋英格蘭美好過往、重建民族認同及剛強、文雅的民族特質。此三者象徵著英格蘭國體三種不同的穿著方式，也是三種不同的國體論述，但它們都顯示服飾是建構英格蘭國族認同重要的載體。
This research originally planned to take two years and investigated the correlation between the sense of nationhood and the discourse of clothing in early modern England, through the writings of English and Irish fashion. However, it gets only one-year fund, and therefore, changes the focus solely on English fashion itself. This research begins with the discussion of how nations were defined by clothing in Europe during the periods of the Renaissance and the Exploration, and particularly through printed “costume books” and maps. Then it moves to England, and makes use of English popular writings on clothing during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as pamphlets, travel writings, sermons, and maps. Those are part of what Benedict Anderson called “print-capitalism” in his Imagined Communities (new edn. 2006), and they, to a great degree, express the solidarity of English national identity, along with its textual and visual representations of Englishness. By connecting the issue of clothing and the metaphor of body, this research argues that there were three different images of national bodies (actually three modes of clothing) in early modern English imagination of their nation. They were: the naked national body, the composite and the civilized. The former two were negative representations of English nation attributed to its lack of national costume and its inconsistency of dress under the influence of foreign fashions. English writers discerned the decay of the nation in their discussions of the country’s naked body and its composite way of clothing, but at the same time, they searched for the reasons of this decay and its true national character. Those efforts brought the discourse of a civilized national body which was founded upon true civility and an ordered society, by means of reviving traditional morality and English wool cloth industry. No matter which representations of the national body, they all displayed that clothing stood out as one of the most powerful mechanisms to convey and fabricate national identity in early modern England. |
