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Decorum (from theLatin: "right, proper") was a principle of classicalrhetoric, poetry, and theatrical theory concerning the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject. The concept ofdecorum is also applied toprescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within set situations.
In classical rhetoric and poetic theory, decorum designates the appropriateness of style to subject. BothAristotle (in, for example, hisPoetics) andHorace (in hisArs Poetica) discussed the importance of appropriate style inepic,tragedy,comedy, etc. Horace says, for example: "A comic subject is not susceptible of treatment in a tragic style, and similarly the banquet ofThyestes cannot be fitly described in the strains of everyday life or in those that approach the tone of comedy. Let each of these styles be kept to the role properly allotted to it."[1]
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Hellenistic and Latinrhetors divided style into thegrand style, the middle style, and the low (or plain) style. Certain types of vocabulary and diction were considered appropriate for each stylistic register. A discussion of this division of styles was set out in thepseudo-CiceronianRhetorica ad Herennium. Modeled onVirgil's three-part literary career (Bucolics,Georgics,Aeneid), ancient, medieval, and Renaissance theorists often linked each style to a specificgenre:epic (high style),didactic (middle style), andpastoral (plain style). In the Middle Ages, this concept was called "Virgil's wheel".
For stylistic purists, the mixing of styles within a work was considered inappropriate, and a consistent use of the high style was mandated for the epic.[2] However, stylistic diversity had been a hallmark of classical epic (as seen in the inclusion of comic and/or erotic scenes in the epics of Virgil or Homer).Poetry, perhaps more than any other literary form, usually expressed words or phrases that were not current in ordinary conversation, characterized aspoetic diction.
With the arrival ofChristianity, concepts of decorum became enmeshed with those of thesacred and profane in a different way than in the previous classical religions. Although in theMiddle Ages religious subjects were often treated with broad humour in a "low" manner, especially inmedieval drama, the churches policed carefully the treatment in more permanent art forms, insisting on a consistent "high style". By the Renaissance the mixture of revivedclassical mythology and Christian subjects was also considered to fall under the heading of decorum, as was the trend of mixing religious subjects in art with livelygenre painting or portraiture of the fashionable. The CatholicCouncil of Trentspecifically forbade, among other things, the "indecorous" in religious art.
Concepts of decorum, increasingly sensed as inhibitive and stultifying, were aggressively attacked anddeconstructed by writers of theModernist movement, with the result that readers' expectations were no longer based on decorum, and in consequence the violations of decorum that underlie the wit ofmock-heroic, of literaryburlesque, and even a sense ofbathos, were dulled in the twentieth-century reader.
In continental European debates on theatre in the Renaissance and post-Renaissance, decorum concerns the appropriateness of certain actions or events to the stage. In their emulation of classical models and of the theoretical works by Aristotle and Horace (including the notion of the "Three Unities"), certain subjects were deemed to be better left to narration. In Horace'sArs Poetica, the poet (in addition to speaking about appropriate vocabulary and diction, as discussed above) counseled playwrights to respect decorum by avoiding the portrayal, on stage, of scenes that would shock the audience by their cruelty or unbelievable nature: "But you will not bring on to the stage anything that ought properly to be taking place behinds the scenes, and you will keep out of sight many episodes that are to be described later by the eloquent tongue of a narrator.Medea must not butcher her children in the presence of the audience, nor the monstrousAtreus cook his dish of human flesh within public view, norProcne be metamorphosed into a bird, norCadmus into a snake. I shall turn in disgust from anything of this kind that you show me."[3]
In Renaissance Italy, important debates on decorum in theater were prompted bySperone Speroni's playCanace (portraying incest between a brother and sister) andGiovanni Battista Giraldi's playOrbecche (involving patricide and cruel scenes of vengeance).[4] In seventeenth-century France, the notion of decorum (les bienséances) was a key component of French classicism in both theater and the novel, as well as the visual arts.
Social decorum sets down appropriatesocial behavior andpropriety, and is thus linked to notions ofcourtesy,decency,etiquette,grace,manners,respect, andseemliness.
The precepts of social decorum as we understand them, as the preservation of external decency, were consciously set byLord Chesterfield, who was looking for a translation ofles moeurs: "Manners are too little, morals are too much."[5] The word decorum survives in Chesterfield's severely reduced form as an element of etiquette: the prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within a set situation. The use of this word in this sense is of the sixteenth-century,[6] prescribing the boundaries established in drama and literature, used byRoger Ascham,The Scholemaster (1570) and echoed inMalvolio's tirade inTwelfth Night, "My masters, are you mad, or what are you? Have you no wit, manners nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?... Is there no respect of persons, place nor time in you?"[7]
The place of decorum in the courtroom, of the type of argument that is within bounds, remains pertinent:[8] the decorum of argument was a frequent topic during theO.J. Simpson trial.
DuringModel United Nations conferences the honorable chair may have to announce, "Decorum delegates!" if delegates are not adhering to parliamentary procedure dictated by the rules. This often happens if a delegate speaks out of turn or if the delegation is being disruptive.
