Breaking news! From this website:
From the producer of Wild at Heart, A Band of Brothers comes a compelling new video study that will give you the opportunity to be able to explore how we can raise our sons into a noble, vibrant masculinity and a healthy manhood propelling your fatherhood to another level.Hmm, as opposed to an ignoble, flaccid masculinity and a malaise-bedeviled manhood that might stuff your fatherhood back into the envelope?
We've seen this before. I suppose this is the more secular version. Note the way the Middle Ages comes across:
"In fact, I will be so bold as to argue that knighthood -- despite some of its shortcomings -- offers to any dad a powerful outline for his son's successful journey to manhood. What's even more encouraging is to remember that the light of knighthood arose in the suffocating moral darkness and social chaos of the rough-and-tumble Middle Ages. In that sense, knighthood provides for modern dads a model of hope for raising sons with morals and spiritual vision, despite our own increasingly dark and crude culture."
To which I say: yeah, sure, if you don't mind raising a son who is a trained killing machine, go ahead, buy the DVDs! But don't blame me when he lops off your neighbor's head and sticks it on a spike in your front yard.
[thanks, Brantley and Karl!]
Or burns down a nunnery while his companions wince at the smell of frying nuns (Raoul de Cambrai).
ReplyDeleteThere are some chivalric entertainments I'd like to see come back. William FitzStephan describes a jousting game on the Thames: fun! And it'd probably be safer than the bicycle jousting I did when I was 10 (and certainly safer than propelling my, er, fatherhood at anything....)
Wild at Heart?
Re thanks: I only stood on the shoulders of Brantleys.
I dunno about this being more secular than the other- it seems to be connected to "Focus on the Family."
ReplyDeletehey I liked the story of teh Duke of Bourbon during the Hundred's years war. He built a mine to a castle (while they were builidng one out to his camp) and then had to face off with a noble squire (the highest person of rank there) in said tiny mine all they could do was poke each other with their swords cause they couldn't move their arms from side to side... the duke got so excited that he gave out his signature war cry and the squire surrendered the city on the condition that the duke make him a knight... the duke agreed however suggested they put it off for a day so all their underlings could have fun poking each other too...
ReplyDeletebicycle jousting... sounds fun... slightly dangerous but fun. Definately more entertaining the the doll rods me and a friend used to pretend to sword fight with all the time. (my mother hated that...)
hey i just realized i was completely off topic there... meh...
ReplyDeleteby the way does the idea of bringing back the christian knights of old scare anyone else? i can't help but think of crusades rapine and pillaging.
Isabel Davis's recent work Writing Masculinity (CUP, 2007) addresses this problem of how to create/represent different kinds and forms of masculinity in later medieval English Lit. Have not got my copy yet - but in the light of some of the queer theory discussion elsewhere here, it would be worth looking out for. n50
ReplyDeleteIn a world where there exists a faction of radicals who would like very much to slit the throats of every virtually every westerner, perhaps a new breed of "modern knight" with morals, patriotism and a desire to defend the oppressed isn't such a bad idea after all... wishful thinking I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether to laugh or scoff at you. I see how this can be construed as mentioned above. However, this is a really good tool for bringing up young men with values, not just biblical values. Most importantly equipping young men with values they will need to be successful when they go out on their on. I hope you will check this out if you have a son.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading the book, and initially was skeptical that it might be like "Wild at Heart". It isn't. Lewis just uses the metaphor of training up a knight to apply lessons on deliberate fathering (Deut 6:7).
ReplyDelete