Modern chivalry fit fairly well during a time before the current women’s rights movement, when women began to reject traditional roles and behavior, including the roles and behavior required for garnering chivalrous behavior.įor example, feminism taught women that displays of chivalry were, in many ways demeaning and condescending. Currently, women discuss how men are no longer chivalrous, while men discuss how women have been rejecting chivalry. None of us can be honest and discuss the death of chivalry without also discussing its diminishing at the hands of both men and women.
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The new chivalry became a code of courting and a code of honor in love, as opposed to war.
The code had nothing to do with conduct in love until much later.Īfter the Crusades, poets turned chivalry into something beyond the code of the chevaliers. Chivalry refers to the code of ethics and conduct of a knight (or chevalier) during the Middle Ages, where his horse, weapons, attendants and flag were concerned. In its purest definition, chivalry is truly dead. We often hear that chivalry is dying, or that the art is dead, but many of us have no idea why.
His article reminds us that every culture contains elements of chivalrous, honorable and noble behavior, and that people of every color and ethnic background can be “knights in shining armor.” Yet as author Darryl James points out, there are many aspects of African-American tradition that are harmonious with the ideals of chivalry, including courtesy, integrity and mutual respect between men and women. These questions are perhaps most pertinent among the African-American community, in which chivalry is literally an alien concept, imported from a cultural heritage that is neither African nor American. This brings up some very valid questions in the mind of anyone who does not have roots in that culture: How does this code apply to me? Why should I adhere to this archaic, restrictive and often confusing standard of behavior when my traditional values lie elsewhere? The Code of Chivalry is a cultural product of Western European society.
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