Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06497_Field_TCUM T62.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

     In the merely personal and private sphere we are often
reminded of how changes of tone and attitude are demanded
of different times and seasons in order to keep situations in
hand. British clubmen, for the sake of companionship and
amiability, have long excluded the hot topics of religion and
politics from mention inside the highly participational club. In
the same vein, W. H. Auden wrote, “. . . this season the man of
goodwill will wear his heart up his sleeve, not on it. . . . the
honest manly style is today suited only to Iago” (Introduction
to John Betjeman’s Slick But Not Streamlined ). In the
Renaissance, as print technology hotted up the social milieu  to
a very high point, the gentleman and the courtier (Hamlet-
Mercutio style) adopted, in contrast, the casual and cool
nonchalance of the playful and superior being. The Iago allusion
of Auden reminds us that Iago was the alter ego  and assistant
of the intensely earnest and very non-nonchalant General