Comments on: Thinking about duels and violent gentlemen

By: Dave Mazella

Dave Mazella — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:36:35 +0000

Try looking at Linda Pollock’s work, esp. “Honor, gender and reconciliation in elite culture, 1570-1700″. Journal of British Studies, vol. 46, Jan 2007. She focuses mostly on the social pressures that allowed men NOT to duel, even when circumstances might suggest an offense had taken place. DM

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:46:33 +0000

If you don’t have it already Smollett gives his opinion of duelling in the French army and in general here:

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/smollett/tobias/travels/chapter15.html

By: Chris Orchard

Chris Orchard — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:54:20 +0000

very interesting work. I am working on, among other things, pamphlets about Royalist pickpockets in the 1640s and 1650s but also on those bored soldiers called The Hectors who were involved in serious violent behavior at the same time. Lots of bloody heads and broken limbs!

By: Perry

Perry — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 09:00:43 +0000

Hey Sharon. Another very useful resource is http://www.fencingbibliography.com/
Contains a number of works on the duel as a phenomenon as well.
Perry

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:10:59 +0000

Hi Sharon,
I don’t know if it might help you in your work but there is a brant new book about duel in early modern France: Pascal Brioist’s Croiser le fer. If you want a more complet bibliography (and if you read French of course), just ask so.
Benjamin

By: Perry

Perry — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 08:10:22 +0000

Hi Sharon
McBane’s full title is
“The Expert Sword-man’s Companion; or the True Art of Self-Defence. With all Account of the Author’s Life and his Transactions during the Wars with France. To which is annexed, The Arts of Gunnerie. Illustrated with 22 etched copper plates. By Donald McBane. Published Glasgow, 1728.” It was reprinted a year or two ago in an anthology under ISBN 1-891448-15-3

Haven’t come across that book you mentioned but it’s pretty well past the period I’m working in (17th c Spain and France).
Perry

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:52:06 +0000

Thanks, Perry. Must confess I’d never heard of McBane before, I’ll look into that, and see if I can contact Jean Marshall later.

And will just add that I’ve just seen a review of a book over at Philobiblon – sounds like a less “academic” treatment (and focuses on the end of duelling, so not so useful for me) but still interesting.

By: Perry

Perry — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:22:35 +0000

Morning all
Ellie, may I reccommend Carl Thimm’s “A Complete Bibliography of Fencing and Duelling (1896)”, Arthur Wise’s “The Art and History of Personal Combat” (1971) and Chris Amberger’s “The Secret History of the Sword” (1998) which while idiosyncratic is fascinating including its rare (in English) treatment of modern German fraternal duelling, which the auther has experienced.

Sharon. Another person to get hold of is my collaborator Jean Marshall in History at Oxford who’s doing her doctorate on this sort of this at the moment.

I must say I remain unconvinced that, particularly in the early early-modern the boundaries between pre-arranged and spntaneous violence or between social equals or unequals were as firm as it may seem. Have you read Donald McBane’s autobiography, a soldier and pimp in Marlbrough’s army, he deals with these kinds of issues.

Perry
University of kwaZulu-Natal
Durban
South Africa

By: Early Modern Notes » AHA links

Early Modern Notes » AHA links — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 08:35:39 +0000

[...] http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn/index.php/archives/2005/08/thinking-about-duels-and-violent-gentlemen [...]

By: Early Modern Notes » A duel?

Early Modern Notes » A duel? — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 10:20:36 +0000

[...] (Following on from my earlier thoughts about duels, I have taken a quite long and detailed deposition from the files and rather than just pasting it in, I’ve turned it into a first-person narrative in modern English so you can read the story more easily.) [...]