Duelling [ Politics & Society ]
… violent culture which presided over seventeenth-century England: ‘Physical combat, of a more or less ritualized kind, was a part of masculine culture at every social level. Just as the upper classes had their ‘roisters’, ‘hectors’, … the seventeenth century in England certainly saw a number of debates and efforts to legislate and prevent duels from taking place. Sir Edward Coke insisted that to kill a man in a duel was a murder. In 1615, the court of Star Chamber … the years to come. They placed duels in the wider context of a country which needed peace rather than war, and commended King James for having worked for peace in the international arena. For Middleton, for instance, there is a continuity …
Antagonism | Aristocracy | Disorder | Gentleman | Honour | Law | Masculinity | Mundanity | Religion
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