Quote:
Originally posted by wflaschka
Spanish school -- All my book learning on Fencing had sort of laughed at the spanish method. However, in the last few weeks I've been doing web research on the differences in national fencing styles. I have come across some passages online that said, in effect, we are just now beginning to understand what the Spaniards were doing. That is, they'd been undeservingly discredited. |
The negative view of Spanish fencing comes largely from Egerton Castle, who wrote the first major history of fencing in English. His book was an impressive effort, but he took the psuedo-Darwinian view that fencing approached perfection as it became more and more similar to the styles that were most popular in his time, so anything that was different from late 19th century French and Italian foil therefore must have been fundamentally flawed :P
Since Castle was considered the first great authority on fencing history, his views are still repeated to this day, though his work contains numerous errors. Having fenced with the two people on earth who have seriously studied Spanish fencing for several years has convinced me it can be a very effective style.
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