Changing understandings of gentility: status, gender, and social opportunity in England, c. 1400-1530

This dissertation traces the failure of the late medieval English gentry to define themselves, and the moment of social opportunity that arose from this failure. Modern scholars have struggled to develop a comprehensive definition of the gentry as a social group because members of the gentry themselves had difficulty articulating their social position. The fourteenth-century English nobility’s method of social closure through the hereditary summons to Parliament effectively divided the kingdom’s aristocracy. Forced out of this elite group, the knights, esquires, and gentleman were left to develop their own separate group identity. In this they failed. Any sense of kinship among them, that together they formed a gentle community with its own culture, was disrupted by that culture’s overlap into other groups. The continued use of the term “gentle” to refer to characteristics that were associated with all elite ranks of society made it impossible for the gentry to achieve any positive distinctions as a social group. Unable to define themselves, the gentle ranks found it difficult to exclude newcomers, increasing the range and diversity of individuals who could claim to be part of the group. Texts on heraldry, conduct, hunting, hawking, and language indicate that multiple paths to gentility opened up during the fifteenth century in response to the gentry’s failure at social closure. I argue that these texts indicate a contemporary recognition and acceptance of the changes occurring during this period in criteria for evaluating social distinctions. The indeterminate characteristics of gentle status led to the commodification of gentility as authors, scribes, and printers recognized the demand for texts that could provide an entrée into elite lifestyles. While these texts purported to reach out to an audience of gentle readers, they also expanded opportunities for others to join the group, packaging gentle culture in a way that was easily accessible and convenient to the literate, wealthy commoners who were most likely to seek social elevation. Spurred by the gentry’s inability to develop a distinctive and exhaustive set of membership criteria, the commodification of gentility provided a guide to social opportunities that these commoners could exploit.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Kristin Canzano Pinya