Flattery

Yes, It Is My Deceased Wife!...Only You Have Flattered Her Too Much!, lithograph by Honoré Daumier, Brooklyn Museum

Flattery (also called adulation or blandishment) is the act of giving excessive compliments, generally for the purpose of ingratiating oneself with the subject.

Historically, flattery has been used as a standard form of discourse when addressing a king or queen. In the Renaissance, it was a common practice among writers to flatter the reigning monarch, as Edmund Spenser flattered Queen Elizabeth I in The Faerie Queene, William Shakespeare flattered King James I in Macbeth and Niccolò Machiavelli flattered Lorenzo II de' Medici in The Prince.

Flattery is also used in pick-up lines when attempting to initiate romantic courtship.

Most associations with flattery, however, are negative. Negative descriptions of flattery range at least as far back in history as The Bible. In the Divine Comedy, Dante depicts flatterers wading in human excrement, stating that their words were the equivalent of excrement, in the 8th Circle of Hell.

An insincere flatterer is a stock character in many literary works. Examples include Wormtongue from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Goneril and Regan from King Lear, and Iago from Othello.

Historians and philosophers have paid attention to flattery as a problem in ethics and politics. Plutarch wrote an essay on "How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend." Julius Caesar was notorious for his flattery. In his Praise of Folly, Erasmus commended flattery because it "raises downcast spirits, comforts the sad, rouses the apathetic, stirs up the stolid, cheers the sick, restrains the headstrong, brings lovers together and keeps them united." [1]

"To flatter" is also used to refer to artwork or clothing that makes the subject or wearer appear more attractive, as in:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Regier, Willis Goth. In Praise of Flattery (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Flattery
Look up flattery or flatter in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, February 19, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.