The standard reference on historical swordsmanship since its 1885 publication, this volume is still widely considered the definitive work on fencing history and the art of European swordsmanship. The author, Egerton Castle, traces fencing from its roots in the unschooled brawling of the Middle Ages to its latter-day precision and refinement, focusing particularly on the 16th-century development of the rapier and the weapon's popularity in Renaissance Italy, where Italian masters founded the modern art of swordsmanship. Envisioning the history of the sword as a history of humanity, the author proposes that the changes in modes of fencing corresponded to changes in manners. The rough, untutored fighting of the Middle Ages, for example, mirrored the supremacy of brute force in social and political life. The more subtle Renaissance era led to the ascendancy of the rapier and dagger, weapons of vicious elegance rather than sturdy brutality. Subsequent years saw a dwindling incidence of dueling, the decline of the sword to an article of gentlemen's apparel, and the reduction of swordsmanship to a courtly accomplishment akin to dancing. "The subject is full of interest," the author notes in his Introduction, "not only for the fencer who looks upon his favourite pastime as a science, but also in a high degree for the novelist, the painter, the actor, and the antiquarian." All will welcome the return of this abundantly illustrated and long-out-of-print work.

Schools and Masters of Fencing: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century (Dover Military History, Weapons, Armor)

History

Castle, Egerton

Military

Dover Publications

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Schools And Masters Of Fence: From The Middle Ages To The End Of The Eighteenth Century

Kessinger Publishing

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Marshfield, The Observer And The Death-Dance: Studies Of Character And Action

Kessinger Publishing, LLC

The Composer

Biographies & Memoirs

Castle, Agnes

Arts & Literature

Kessinger Pub

Marshfield the Observer & The Death-Dance, Studies of Character & Action

As outspoken in his day as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens are today, American freethinker and author ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL (1833-1899) was a notorious radical whose uncompromising views on religion and slavery (they were bad, in his opinion), women's suffrage (a good idea, he believed), and other contentious matters of his era made him a wildly popular orator and critic of 19th-century American culture and public life. As a speaker dedicated to expanding intellectual horizons and celebrating the value of skepticism, Ingersoll spoke frequently on such topics as atheism, freedom from the pressures of conformity, and the lives of philosophers who espoused such concepts. This collection of his most famous speeches includes the lectures: [ "The Gods" (1872) [ "Humboldt" (1869) [ "Thomas Paine" (1870) [ "Individuality" (1873) [ "Heretics and Heresies" (1874)

BiblioLife

The Composer, by Anges and Egerton Castle

Agnes

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Marshfield, the Observer & the Death-Dance: Studies of Character & Action

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