Flattery

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Yes, It Is My Deceased Wife!...Only You Have Flattered Her Too Much!, lithograph by Honore Daumier, Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum - Yes It Is My Deceased Wife...Only You Have Flattered Her Too Much - Honore Daumier.jpg
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. It is also used in pick-up lines when attempting to initiate sexual or romantic courtship.

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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 , Niccolò Machiavelli flattered Lorenzo II de' Medici in The Prince and Jean de La Fontaine flattered Louis XIV of France in his Fables .

Many associations with flattery 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 second bolgia of 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 In 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

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Coming from the Greek origin, κολακεία, which means flattery, the word "kolakeia" means to flatter someone as a means to take advantage of or gain something from them through speech. Kolakeia's concept is to overload someone with compliments so the speaker can slip in another idea that the listener may not agree upon. It may also include a subtle compliment where the listener does not know it happened but it affects their way of thinking. The use of the kolakeia is often looked down upon because it is not a true concept of speech. The use of this type of communication, allows people to question the speaker's motives.

References

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