Book Review: Fencing Through the Ages

Greetings,
What? Another book review? Yes, it is. This one is of a similar nature to my last in that I bought this book at Swordplay last year and have been horribly slack about getting around to doing a book review on it. This is one that I am actually going to really enjoy telling you about as it will reveal a book and an author who, for the most part had been pushed aside for others.

Corthey, Adolphe (2015) Fencing Through the Ages, LongEdge Press, Brisbane, First Edition 1898, Translated by Chris Slee

So, the bibliographical details have been presented above, and should provide everything you should need to search for this book online for you to buy it. Why would you buy it? Well the book presents some very interesting material which has otherwise been shoved aside by the English-speaking world.

This book was translated into English from French by Chris Slee in a literal fashion. In this he attempted to stay as true to the language as possible. The advantage of this, while meaning that the result is less smooth than it could be, means that it is closer to the original as possible for the English-speaking reader. Slee supplies notes with regard to his translation of particular words throughout the book to inform the reader of his choices.

Adolphe Corthey is the French equivalent to Captain Alfred Hutton and Egerton Castle and is of as much importance to the revival of Historical European Martial Arts. His book Fencing Through the Ages presents an account of various masters of fencing, much as Castle's Schools and Masters of Defence. While it was Hutton and Castle on one side of the English Channel, it was Corthey on the other side.

The book presents an interesting discussion of the history of fencing from the very beginning all the way up to the eighteenth century. His discussion of the very early periods is, of course, very brief whereas his discussion of Renaissance and later period weaponry is much longer. The first weapon he discusses in detail is the two-handed sword, and the last is the smallsword. In this discussion he mentions the works of various masters in the same sort of fashion as is found in Castle's. This is the primary part of the book, and the actual book written by Corthey. As expected, of course, there are present many of the historical biases of the period with the "development" toward the dominance of the point and so forth, but as an historical document, this makes it still useful.

The fact that the above is the primary part of the book does not mean that the sundry materials should be skipped over in any way whatsoever. There is the presentation of contemporary media information also included demonstrates significance of author and work. Thus the presentation of such work was placed in the public eye, much as HEMA practitioners are attempting to do now.

One of the most interesting documents contained within this volume actually resides in the back pages. It is entitled "On the Subject of the Transformation of the Combat Sword" and discusses the transformation from combat weapon to weapon usable for practice. This is a document which should be of great interest to all practitioners of revivalist martial arts, but especially HEMA with regard to examining how to get weapons at least resembling their historical counter-parts.

In the end I found that this book, understated by its size and weight, was a most interesting read from cover to cover and I would recommend it for all with an interest in history and HEMA. The wide areas of knowledge which Corthey points toward should at least indicate to the reader other areas in which research may be made, and other areas in which maybe they had not thought to cover.

Cheers,

Henry.