Etiquette as an art of gracious living is quoted as a f……
TEXT E
In sixteenth-century Italy
and eighteenth-century France, waning prosperity and increasing social unrest
led the ruling families to try to preserve their superiority by withdrawing from
the lower and middle classes behind barriers of etiquette. In a prosperous
community, on the other hand, polite society soon adsorbs the newly rich, and in
England there has never been any shortage of books on etiquette for teaching
them the manners appropriate to their new way of life.
Every
code of etiquette has contained three elements: basic moral duties; practical
rules which promote efficiency; and artificial, optional graces such as formal
compliments to, say, women on their beauty or superiors on their generosity and
importance.
In the first category are considerations for the
weak and respect for age. Among the ancient Egyptians the young always stood in
the presence of older people. Among the Mponguwe of Tanzaia, the young men bow
as they pass the huts of the eiders. In England, until about a century ago,
young children did not sit in their parents’ presence without asking
permission.
Practical rules are helpful in such ordinary
occurrences of social life as making proper introductions at parties or other
functions so that people can be brought to know each other. Before the invention
of the fork, etiquette directed that the fingers should be kept as clean as
possible; before the handkerchief came into common use, etiquette suggested that
after spitting, a person should rub the spit inconspicuously
underfoot.
Extremely refined behavior, however, cultivated as
an art of gracious living, has been characteristic only of societies with wealth
and leisure, which admitted women as the social equals of men. After the fall of
Rome, the first European society to regulate behavior in private life in
accordance with a complicated code of etiquette was twelfth-century Province, in
France. Provinces had become wealthy. The lords had returned to their castle
from the crusades, and there the ideals of chivalry grew up, which emphasized
the virtue and gentleness of women and demanded that a knight should profess a
pure and dedicated love to a lady who would be his inspiration, and to whom he
would dedicate his valiant deeds, though he would never come physically close to
her. This was the introduction of the concept of romantic love, which was to
influence literature for many hundreds of years and which still lives on in a
debased form in simple popular songs and cheap novels today.
In
Renaissance Italy too, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a wealthy and
leisured society developed an extremely complex code of manners, but the rules
of behavior of fashionable society had little influence on the daily life of the
lower classes. Indeed many of the rules, such as how to enter a banquet room, or
how to use a sword or handkerchief for ceremonial purposes, were irrelevant to
the way of life of the average working man, who spent most of his life outdoors
or in his own poor hut and most probably did not have a handkerchief, certainly
not a sword, to his name. Yet the essential basis of all good manners does not
vary. Consideration for the old and weak and the avoidance of banning or giving
unnecessary offence to others is a feature of all societies everywhere and at
all levels from the highest to the lowest.
Etiquette as an art of gracious living is quoted as a feature of which country
A．Egypt.
B．18th century France.
C．Renaissance Italy.
D．England.
