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The Compleat Gentleman
Brad Miner
The Modern Man's Guide to Chivalry
Spence Publishing
April 2004
264 pages
ISBN: 189062652X
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
At a time of astonishing confusion about what it means to be
a man, Brad Miner has recovered the oldest and best ideal of
manhood: the gentleman. Reviving a thousand-year tradition
of chivalry, honor, and heroism, The Compleat Gentleman
provides the essential model for twenty-first-century
masculinity. Despite our confusion, real manhood is not complicated. It
is an ancient ideal based on service to one’s God, country,
family, and friends—a simple but arduous ideal worthy of a
lifetime of struggle. Miner’s gentleman stands out for his dignity, restraint, and
discernment. He rejects the notion that one way of behaving
is as good as another. He belongs to an aristocracy of
virtue, not of wealth or birth. Proposing neither a club nor
a movement, Miner describes a lofty code of manly conduct,
which, far from threatening democracy, is necessary for its
survival. Miner traces the concept of manliness from the jousting
fields of the twelfth century to the decks of the Titanic.
The three masculine archetypes that emerge—the warrior, the
lover, and the monk—combine in the character of the
"compleat gentleman." This modern knight cultivates a
martial spirit in defense of the true and the beautiful. He
treats the opposite sex with the passionate respect required
by courtly love. And he values learning in the pursuit of
truth—all with the discretion, decorum, and nonchalance that
the Renaissance called sprezzatura. The Compleat Gentleman is filled with examples from the past
and the present of the man our increasingly uncivilized age
demands.
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