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Pistols for Two, Coffee for One: Duelling in History and Fiction

Profs Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin and Martin McLaughlin will discuss with Joe Farrell his recent book, Honour and the Sword: The Culture of Duelling (Signal Books).

No study of western history can be complete without some account of the duel and the code of honour. What made two men arrange an encounter on the ‘field of honour’, each with a sword or pistol in hand, facing someone whom they rarely hated, with the intention of killing or the prospect of being killed? The culture which justified such proceedings now seems merely bizarre, but what is the force of culture?

At times, it can appear that every figure of note in recent centuries fought one or more duels. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Cabinet ministers, lawyers, accountants, generals, colonels, landowners, clergymen, roués, gamblers, counts, earls, dukes, writers, artists and even some sovereigns made an armed appearance at dawn to right some real or imagined wrong. The duel was banned by church and state, but the veto was ignored and the duel was a subject of anxious debate in every age by such thinkers as Cesare Beccaria, Dr Johnson and Rousseau.

The duel may be a development of another historical phenomenon, the medieval tournament and joust, although there were essential differences. The duel had its own code and ritual, the essential element of which was the ‘point of honour,’ what was honour? Falstaff derided it, but it was the central attribute of the courtier and his successor, the gentleman, who was required, if offended, to respond with a challenge. The code of honour and the duel was given its definitive formulation in Clonmel in Ireland in 1777, but its origins lay in Renaissance Italy.

According to one account, there were over one hundred treatises on honour produced by Humanist writers. Eventually, duels were fought all over Europe and America, but initially it was so identified with Italy that the form duello was in universal use. In Elizabethan England, Francis Bacon, who was an opponent of duelling, regarded it as a disease imported from Italy. Vicentio Saviolo set up a school of swordsmanship in London, and this may have impressed Shakespeare, who portrayed a memorable duel in Romeo and Juliet.

Giacomo Casanova fought a duel in Warsaw and wrote a brief work, Il duello, which is invaluable not only as an account of this encounter, but of the mentality of the duellist. Duels were also common in literature, with Conrad, Chekhov and Pirandello and many others featuring duels in their work. Pirandello’s father was an ardent duellist, and it seems that Pirandello himself challenged an actor whose performance in a one-act play had displeased. However, his attitude in such works as Il turno and Il gioco delle parti is more decidedly ironic, a sign that the duel was becoming a subject of ridicule.

Joseph Farrell is Professor Emeritus of Italian in the University of Strathclyde. He has also been a theatre reviewer, translator of film scripts, novels and plays, and author of several works including a travelogue on Sicily, a biography of Dario Fo and Franca Rame as well as the biographical study, Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa. 

Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin is a Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin. He has written books on Boccaccio, as well as two crime novels (under a pseudonym), and co-edited volumes on Dante, on the languages of Ireland, and on translation and censorship. A winner of the John Florio translation prize, he has been chairman of the Irish Translators’ Association and the Irish Writers’ Centre.

Martin McLaughlin was Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian at Oxford from 2001 to 2017, and is now an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He has published widely on Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present, including Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (OUP, 1995), Italo Calvino (Edinburgh UP, 1998) and Leon Battista Alberti. La vita, l’umanesimo, le opere letterarie (Olschki, 2016). He has also co-edited volumes on Dante, Petrarch, Alberti, Machiavelli and others, and translated works by Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco.

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  • Organizzato da: ICI London
  • In collaborazione con: ICI Edinburgh