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Courtesy comes from old French 'courteis' (12th century) and is gentle politeness and courtly manners. In the Middle Ages in Europe, the behaviour expected of the nobility was compiled in courtesy books. The apex of European courtly culture was reached in the Late Middle Ages and the Baroque period (i.e. roughly the four centuries spanning 1300–1700). The oldest courtesy books date to the 13th century, but they become an influential genre in the 16th, the most influential of them being ''Il Cortegiano'' (1508), which not only covered basic etiquette and decorum but also provided models of sophisticated conversation and intellectual skill. The royal courts of Europe did, of course, persist well into the 18th century (and to some limited extent to the present day), but in the 18th century, the notion of ''courtesy'' was replaced by that of ''gallantry'', referring to an ideal emphasizing the display of affected sensitivity in direct contrast with the ideals of self-denial and dignified seriousness that were the Baroque norm. During the late medieval and early modern period, the bourgeois class tended to emluate the courtly etiquette of their betters. This changed in the 19th century, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, with the emergence if a middle class with its own set of bourgeois etiquette, which in turn was mocked in the classist theory of Marxism as ''petite bourgeoisie''. The analogue concept in the court culture of medieval India was known by the Sanskrit term ''dakṣiṇya'', literally meaning "right-handedness", but as in English ''dexterity'' having a figurative meaning of "apt, clever, appropriate", glossed as "kindness and consideration expressed in a sophisticated and elegant way". ==References== de:Höflichkeit 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「courtesy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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