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Goals and Methodologies of Source-Use in Historical Fencing and Martial Arts

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  When historical fencers want to follow the guidance in our fencing sources as strictly as possible, we need to understand the meaning of their guidance as best we can. Dictionaries, thesauruses, grammar guides, and similar tools can help with this. However, they are often insufficient on their own because fencing is a specialty topic, and they might not include the specialized use-cases for a word or concept found in fencing sources.  As a result, gaining a deep understanding of a technique, concept, or tactical idea sometimes requires consulting examples of it in more than one fencing source. However, doing so also creates certain information integration challenges. When we consult multiple sources to develop our training program and want to follow the instructions of our sources as strictly as possible, which source’s guidance should we follow if their content differs? Additionally, the very act of deciding which sources to consult can steer the outcome of our study of a ...
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Methodology in HEMA - by Adam Franti

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This article is provided by guest author Adam Franti of Lansing Longsword Guild , and published here with his kind permission.  Unlike other articles on this blog, written by me, this article is © 2023 Adam Franti.  Where are you on the methodological map? --------------------------- Introduction Whether you’re aware of it or not, your engagement with Historical European Martial Arts is informed by a methodology. That is, the kinds of questions raised by our collective exploration of written sources related to swordplay have to be answered by historical inquiry. Historical inquiry can’t help but have a methodological construction, even if the person making the inquiry is unaware of it. Methodology is, pretty simply, the use of particular tools of analysis related to the goals of the analysis. To a historian, the goal of an analysis is to answer a historical question. For a historical fencer, the goal is likely something much more general.  The following article proposes a...
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Welcome to Historical Fencing

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  Welcome to Historical Fencing A couple of months ago I had my first chance to fence a bunch of people I didn’t know since moving to New York State at Fecht Yeah. It went well, and in the time since I’ve been thinking about some of the perspective shifts I’ve had since I started fencing in 2016. A large part of my training history has involved book and source study with the goal of helping others, and only in the last few years have I gotten the chance to focus purely on developing my own fencing.  I’m not currently coaching, but it feels like the easiest way to express some of my perspective changes over the last six years is to write as though I were explaining fencing to a brand-new fencer, or someone getting ready for their first training session - sort of like a “pre-class orientation.” It might sound something like this: ------- Welcome to historical fencing.  Whenever we start something new, the amount of information to take in is overwhelming. This is true for f...
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