So Far So Good!

So I have been working 'De Mulieribus Clairs' for about a month now and I am still very, very happy with my choice. I have been able to get my hands on a couple translated pages and I have to say that Boccaccio was one saucy fellow. So far I have been able to look closely at some choice illuminations in the manuscript. I have narrowed it down to three that I think will be the ones I mainly look at for my paper. I hope to be able to compare them with some of his other works and maybe some of the works done by Christine De Pizan! The only road blocks I have hit are because of my lack of back-knowledge of the history of the middle ages. I find myself becoming so engrossed by some of the things I am reading in the narrative that I forget what I am supposed to be doing, which is not a bad thing at all! I have found it difficult at times to comprehend some of the contextual knowledge but that is all part of the adventure and I have having a lot of fun learning so much about the middle ages. I can honestly say I have a new found and very VERY deep respect for medievalists. That was a strange period of time... The more I learn about the time period in general the more I find myself changing my research questions, which is also exciting. I feel as if this project and the class in general are forcing me to think outside my comfort zone and consider things like why is there a cat wearing a jetpack? I am having a lot of fun with this and I hope to keep learning more about the ever raunchy Boccaccio and the clothing he put the women in his manuscripts in. I want to keep looking at comparing the clothing to other women in the period. I found some great journal articles about the domestic home and a females life in general. In other periods I found it was really helpful to learn about the woman and then learn about her clothing, the two always seem to be directly related. For example in Late Regency Period London a woman wearing pale blue was usually unmarried and in the market for a upper-middle class husband because the colour was considered to be one that easily is kept clean, demonstrated a soft demeanour but also suggested marriage because the colour was so close to a white wedding dress. I am now working to find out if there are any identifiers similar to that in the middle ages, so my next step is really getting to know some middle ages ladies!