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Stephanie Trigg. Shame and Honor: A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. viii + 322 pp. $55. ISBN: 978–0–8122–4391–8.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Antti Matikkala*
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Abstract

Type
Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Renaissance Society of America

Most of the British orders of knighthood, founded between 1348 and 1917, have received modern officially-endorsed histories beginning from 1996, but this is something different, “a symptomatic long history,” and serves quite different purposes. “The cultural and social history of the Order of the Garter cannot be written simply from within,” argues Stephanie Trigg in this refreshing study of “the Most Noble Order.” While she is not the first literary historian to take on the subject, other scholars — like Peter Erickson and James N. Ortego II in a couple of articles, which are not referred to by Trigg, and Francis Ingledew in his controversial Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Order of the Garter (2006) — have concentrated on more particular issues. Trigg’s perspective is broader, “from the 1340s into the first decade of the twenty-first century,” and the book is neither “a purely anthropological” nor a historical study. Unlike historians, Trigg does not make a distinction between primary sources and secondary works; besides manuscripts, she has used “printed and online materials.”

In the three parts of the book, Trigg discusses “Ritual Histories,” “Ritual Practices,” and “Ritual Modernities.” Instead of chronologies, she is interested in structural patterns, the historiography of ritual practice, literature, tradition, and heritage in the widest meanings of these terms. Trigg traces “cultural, symbolic, and narrative transformations” by combining “a series of diachronic and thematic approaches” (5). Spinning off from Bourdieu’s symbolic capital, Trigg employs “mythic capital” as a conceptual tool. Trigg is not in search of a historical truth as such and, indeed, one of her main arguments is the rehabilitation of the importance of the legend of the dropped garter regardless of its original veracity.

For a historian, Trigg’s work may appear over-theorized at points, but by moving thematically back and forth in time (“in multiple temporalities”) it succeeds in raising new questions and opening new lines of enquiry. Essayistic and interpretational in its style, Shame and Honor accomplishes the task it has set out to complete. Thus, it can be regarded as a welcome and novel contribution to Garter studies. Shame and Honor also reminds one of the importance of bringing such central underlying concepts, which have often been overshadowed by organizational and administrative structures in modern institutional histories, to the foreground in the study of such honorific bodies. How rhetorical such concepts could be, it is worth remembering that, for instance, Elias Ashmole began his great work on the Garter (1672) with a discussion “Of Vertue and Honor.”

Specialists of costume history and insignia of the orders are likely to disagree with Trigg’s reading of the changing fashions and methods of wearing the Garter insignia, a gradual passage from the lower part of the body to the upper, “as a movement of double embarrassment” (199). A heraldic pedant, whose work Trigg views with some disdain, could point out that Ashmole was never “Lancaster Herald” (44). He was Windsor Herald of Arms, not “at Arms” (41). For the sake of clarity, it should be noted that since my book, The Orders of Knighthood and the Formation of the British Honours System, 1660–1760 (2008), deals exclusively with this period, it is within this timeframe that I regard the reign of Charles II as “the high point of the ceremonial life of the Order” (169). When referring to Peter J. Begent and Hubert Chesshyre’s The Most Noble Order of the Garter 650 Years (1999), Trigg has some problems with identifying the correct author for the quotations. She always refers to the two main authors collectively — for instance, “Begent and Chesshyre conclude” — although the authorship of respective chapters is clearly indicated. In fourteen cases the credit should go Begent, five times to Lisa Jefferson, and twice to Chesshyre.