Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory

Frank Whigham, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. xiv + 257 pp. $ 27.00 US.

Frank Whigham mentions the old story of Sidney carrying Castiglione's II Cortegiano "ever in his pocket when he went abroad'' (30), thus linking the man tradition reified as the perfect courtier with the European epitome of courtesy. "Courtesy" is what Whigham's study radically demystifies, into the words of his title, and a whole range of tropes that allowed him to force entry into what was "simultaneously an arena of conflict and a mart of opportunity" (x). Instead of the bland assertion of courtier as a work of art, Whigham uses cultural anthropology, Kenneth Burke and the archival studies of Foucault to show up the dynamics of power - "the vocabulary and grammar of three systems of tropes of status" - social hierarchy, personal promotion, and personal rivalry. His approach, broadly, is that of cultural semiotics, the reading of the social and literary text - in this case courtly handbooks -...