Normes d’étiquette et dilemmes contemporains

Abstract

Manners are expressions of value systems that are historically and culturally relative. Analyzing etiquette books—programming texts that articulate social normativity related to proper behavior—offers a compelling tool for interpreting society, by showing which behaviors, in a given historical and cultural context, are deemed worthy of regulation, and which are not. After a general overview of etiquette norms, their varying degrees of institutionalization and their diachronic transformations, this study focuses on the figure of the gentleman—a particularly fraught one today. Indeed, this figure intersects with potentially conflicting issues such as chivalry, gender equality and political correctness. We then ask how and to what extent the gentleman has changed, what norms now govern proper male behavior in light of new social sensitivities, what remains from the past, and what questions are raised by the emerging norms found in contemporary etiquette books.