[Ansteorra] In defense of courtesy (was: Re:Courtesy challenge)

Marc Carlson marccarlson20 at hotmail.com
Wed Oct 4 19:26:50 PDT 2006


>James Crouchet james at crouchet.com
>I cannot agree with your contention...

I'm glad to hear it.  I wish I could convince more people that the "everyone 
must agree with me or die" thing is a myth.

>While it is true that we take some
>of our models of courtesy from the Victorians and we obviously have our
>own priorities, fashions of speech and behavior, and prejudices, in the
>main we would recognize and respect the themes of courtesy from the past.

I believe that I may not have been as clear as I should have been.  My 
statement was regarding what we consider chivalric courtesy and proper 
behavior being Victorian, not that there weren't standards for courtesy and 
behoavior.

>As evidence I offer "The Book of the Courtier" by Baldesar Castiglione,...

I have read it, or rather I have read English translations, and I agree that 
people might recognize the essence of courtesy that is described, the 
question is whether that portrait is the same as that painted by the 
chivalric mythology of the Victorian era.  For example, when Castiglione 
describes performing acts of Chivalry, I think he's talking about something 
related to horses :)

To be fair, yes, there are a number of similarities in what Castiglioni 
describes and how I was taught a "Gentleman" ought to behave.  So let's 
tighten our focus to treatment of women as prescribed by SCA "chivalric" 
standards.  Castiglioni says that men should be of meek, gentle, sober etc 
conversation with women, and love them honestly more for their minds than 
their bodies.  I'm not seeing anywhere that women are weak and inferior and 
must be protected, and kept from working too hard.  Much less, demonstrating 
our defacto ownership over the weaker sex through an array of bizzare 
rituals such as escorting them into court, opening doors for them, and so 
on.

However, since my wife has found our copy of the Book of the Courtier, I'll 
take another look.  I may be wrong, it's happened before :)

Marc/Diarmaid





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