Feudalism...rule by estates...LOL
Feudalism...rule by estates...LOL
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
(chuckle)
Uh, sorry but no, I'm not. You've been corrected and you can't prove that the Koch brothers are not up to no good and the the comparison between middle ages nobility goals and the American oligarchy are not the same: that's the issue. So if you can do the work, great, if not, what I've posted will just stand as fact.
The Three Estates
When a text is geared toward a particular class of people, it is said to be written ad status, Latin for "to the estate," that is, to everyone in a particular social category (or "estate"). The idea of the "estates" is important to the social structure of the Middle Ages.
Feudal society was traditionally divided into three "estates" (roughly equivalent to social classes). The "First Estate" was the Church (clergy = those who prayed). The "Second Estate" was the Nobility (those who fought = knights). It was common for aristocrats to enter the Church and thus shift from the second to the first estate. The "Third Estate" was the Peasantry (everyone else, at least under feudalism: those who produced the food which supported those who prayed and those who fought, the members of the First and Second Estates). Note that the categories defined by these traditional "estates" are gender specific: they are defined by what a man does for a living as much as by the social class into which he was born.
Women were classified differently. Like men, medieval women were born into the second or third estate, and might eventually become members of the first (by entering the Church, willingly or not). But women were also categorized according to three specifically "feminine estates": virgin, wife and widow. It is interesting to note that a woman's estate was determined not by her profession but by her sexual activity: she is defined in relationship to the men with whom she sleeps, used to sleep, or never has slept.
The rigid division of society into the three traditional "estates" begins to break down in the later Middle Ages. By the time of Chaucer (mid-fourteenth century), we see the rise of a mercantile class (mercantile = merchants) in the cities, i.e. an urban middle-class, as well as a new subdivision of the clergy: intellectuals trained in literature and writing (and thus "clerics" like Chaucer's Clerk), but who were not destined to a professional career within the Church. Chaucer arguably belonged to both of these new categories. What biographical details may have made him particularly sensitive to issues of social class? (Review the lyric poem "Gentilesse"; what does the line repeated at the end of each verse have to say about this issue?)
In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is highly conscious of the social divisions known as the "Estates." While the genre of the Canterbury Tales as a whole is a "frame narrative," the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is an example of "Estates Satire," a genre which satirizes the abuses that occur within the three traditional Estates (in particular, the Clergy). In her personal Prologue, the Wife of Bath argues forcefully that the feminine estates of "wife" and "widow" should be valued as much as that of "virgin."
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Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
Mister D (06-30-2018)
Thank you. I felt no need to reference something that anyone with at least some familiarity with the Medieval world should already know. Plus, I wanted him to keep digging.
As I mentioned earlier, estates could also mean something more along the lines of a territory with representation in government (e.g. the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire).
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist