page_title: High culture
section_title: Cultural capital
hierarchical_section_title: High culture / History of high culture in the West / Cultural capital
caption_attribution_description: English: A copy of a conversation piece by Nazari featuring Gustavus Hamilton, Lord Boyne, and a group of his friends in the cabin of their ship, while sailing from Venice to Lisbon. Boyne was making the Grand Tour during this time. Boyne is seated on the left of the painting, seen sitting sideways in full-length. With him are believed to be the third Earl of Carlisle, with white hair standing to the left and holding a drinking mug in his left hand. Behind him is the master of the ship. Sir Francis Dashwood stands to the right, and behind him is another figure, possibly Lord Middlesex. A cat emerges from under the table, indicated by Boyne's foot. The Earl of Carlisle's right hand rests on a volume of 'Don Quixote', while the master points to a crown compass hanging from the deckhead. Dashwood points to a chart showing the Straits of Bonifacio, the route the ship will follow. Lord Middlesex holds a shepherd's pipe. The table is covered with a Turkey cloth, and has a large bowl of punch.
context_page_description: High culture encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, and literature that a society consider representative of their culture.
context_section_description: In socially-stratified Europe and the Americas, a first-hand immersion to the high culture of the West, the Grand Tour of Europe, was a rite of passage that complemented and completed the book education of a gentleman, from the nobility, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie, with a worldly perspective of society and civilisation. The post-university tour of the cultural centres of Europe was a social-class benefit of the cultural capital transmitted through the high-status institutions (schools, academies, universities) meant to produce the ideal gentleman of that society.
  The European concept of high culture included cultivation of refined etiquette and manners; the education of taste in the fine arts such as sculpture and painting; an appreciation of classical music and opera in its diverse history and myriad forms; knowledge of the humane letters (literae humaniores) represented by the best Greek and Latin authors, and more broadly of the liberal arts traditions (e.g. philosophy, history, drama, rhetoric, and poetry) of Western civilisation, as well as a general acquaintance with important concepts in theology, science, and political thought.
caption: Four English lords on ship during their Grand Tour, 1731-32
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