Publication Date
11-2024
Keywords
Joan I of Aragon, hypebeast, French culture, medieval culture
Abstract
Limited releases, celebrity culture, and insane profit margins: these features define the hypebeast phenomenon of the early twenty-first century. The rise and fall of this cycle of conspicuous consumption bears remarkable resemblance to the craze for French culture in the Crown of Aragon in the late fourteenth century. King Joan I, starting from the time of his youth as the Duke of Girona, funded several projects to import French culture. In 1380, Joan married Violante de Bar, niece of the French King Charles V and the Duc de Berry. Once Joan and Violante ascended to the throne, they co-created a spectacular program to bring French music and literature to the Crown of Aragon. The high prices that resulted from economic scarcity only occasionally hindered their outlandish spending. According to his contemporary critics, Joan’s conspicuous consumption strained royal finances to the point of ruin, and this blighted his reputation. This paper examines Joan’s self-fashioning program of cutting-edge cultural consumption and patronage, a program that in many ways defied medieval norms of masculine royal authority. After Joan died, Catalan cultural luminaries rejected French influence in a backlash similar to that of the fall of hypebeast in the mid-2010s.
Recommended Citation
Seyfried, Jonathan
(2024)
"Medieval Hypebeast: The Conspicuous Consumption of Joan I of Aragon,"
Quidditas: Vol. 45, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol45/iss1/4
Included in
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