Chivalry in Edmund Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France Essa

Chivalry in Edmund Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France...But the succession of valor is gone...Amidst a wealth of metaphors and apocalyptic maxims, this line is by chance the most memorable from Edmund Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France. He masterfully employs the concept of chivalry to express his anti-revolutionary sentiment, and he dramatically connects it to images of land, sex, birth and silver to express the widespread disorder that accompanies a loss of chivalry. Nowhere is this musical theme more explicit than in the following passage...But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators, has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that liberal loyalty to rankand sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordinationof the heart, which kept alive, redden in servitude itself, the spirit of an exaltedfreedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap d efence of nations, the shelter of manly sentiment and heroic enterprize is gone It is gone, that sensibilityof principle, that chastity of honour, which mat a stain like a wound, whichinspired courage darn it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its wicked by losing all its grossness...(Mellor and Matlack, 16).To fully understand this passage, one must have it off Burkes rhetorical strategy as well as his choice of spoken communication beginning with the age of chivalry line. First, instead of declaring that this age of chivalry is dead, he merely asserts that it is gone. The temporality of this word is important as it sustains potential for chivalry to return. Burke l... ...rals and sentiments, no longer mix or when one takes everyplace the other, as evinced by the French Revolution. Burke makes it explicitly clear that this dissociate endangers order in all realms of life. And though the revolution does not act a t ragi-comedy, perhaps Burkes writing does. If his society heeds his forewarning and renews chivalry instead of adopting the infant-spirit of rebellion, it will avoid imminent tragedy and end happily in the comedic marriage of reason and emotion. Bibliography of Works CitedBrown, Lesley, ed. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1993.Holman, C. and William Harmon, eds. A Handbook to Literature. New York MacMillan Publishing, 1986.Mellor, Anne K. and Richard E. Matlack, eds. British Literature 1780-1830. fortress Worth Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996.