Customer Reviews

The Art of Fencing, or, The Use of the Small Sword (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one on the earlier texts on the use of the small sword, with techniques that are generally recognizable as foil or epee techniques. Yes, there are references to parrying with the empty hand, but the guard, parries, footwork, and attacks are clearly dominant antecedents of the point arms of modern sport fencing.

The illustrations are generally clear and helpful, the text was translated from French in the early Eighteenth Century, but is very readable despite this. Not as comprehensive as Domenico Angelo's The School of Fencing: With a General Explanation of the Principal Attitudes and Positions Peculiar to the Art (published about thirty years after L'Abbat, in 1763), this book still lays down a basic and sound framework for the management of the small sword. The discipline of fencing had a ways to go at that point. With scholarship like this as a foundation, it is easy to see how it matured fairly rapidly in that period.

By itself it is a mildly interesting but basic text on smallsword fencing, but in the context of the development of fencing, this is a priceless addition to a student's understanding of the sequence of developments and innovations in fencing.

Don't get it as a first book on fencing, don't get it as a "how to" but it is an essential piece of the development of the art of fencing.

E. M. Van Court

L`Abbat hat hier ein Werk geschaffen, was sich mit dem der Gebrüder Angelo vergleichen lassen muss. Da kann L`Abbat nicht ganz mithalten. Auch wenn es sich hierbei um eine recht klare Fechthandschrift handelt und der Autor einige Jahrzehnte vor den Angelos gewirkt hat, fehlen mir zum Beispiel die glasklaren Grafiken anderer Werke. Es gibt einige Bücher zu diesem Thema, die gründlicher abgehandelt und qualitativ besser aufgemacht wurden und sind. Daher nur vier Sterne von mir.