Tea at Trianon: The Courtier

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Courtier

Defining the role of gentlefolk. To quote:

Here I wish to discuss the way the figures of the gentleman and the gentlewoman developed in European culture during the Renaissance. To define these roles I will start from a very important text of Italian literature, The Courtier by Baldassar Castiglione. This book, written as a dialogue, gradually came to exert great influence on court society. It contributed unquestionably to the building of the way of life in court society during the period of modern state formation. The Courtier provided the basic grammar of European court society until the French Revolution. Why? There are four reasons which give a particular authority to this book in defining the figures of the gentleman and the gentlewoman. (Read entire article.)