Gentleman [ Taste & Manners / Politics & Society ]
… had almost given up: ‘It is used of any man however high’. All that was needed to be a gentleman, it seemed, was to present to the outside world what Penelope Corfield calls ‘a sufficiently confident display’. 2 That is, if you could … expected of the traditional, patrician gentleman was not very different from the stylish oratory and elegant self-presentation set out in Baldessare Castiglione’s influential Il Cortigiano as long ago as 1528 (translated into English … there was evidence of the new middling-sort gentleman’s need for more specific guides to gentlemanly self-presentation, necessary to avoid the risk of challenge to his self-made status. In these guides we see a shift towards a …
Benevolence | Middling sort | Politeness | Rank
Encyclopedia