Last night we had a bit of fun looking at counter rememdies from the dagger section. I used the images from the Exiles excellent work, which has the Novati pictures. I don't really like the pen drawings from the other Exile works, although the texts in these versions is more complete. Some things we noticed about the counter remedies we used:
-you have to be awake and aware of what is going on for them to work
-they tie into the idea of constant motion, if the initial attack fails, keep going!, in other words, you stop = you die
- The attacker/defender must be ready to use their offhand also- there's a tendency to focus on the dagger hand/arm only
- The time window to successfully do a counter remedy is very small and gets even smaller if the sequence goes to a contra-counter
-The best counter remedies are the simplest ones, usually depicted being done by a King, other techniques, which are doable, but perhaps less efficient/common, are depicted by scholars
-The biggest number of counter remedies seems to be for fendente mandritto attacks
I printed out the images and brought them to class so that the others could see I wasn't just making up the stuff (I'm not that creative). It might also be fun to print out a few more images, maybe also from the abrazare section, get everybody to pair off with no input from me, give everybody 5 minutes to "interpret" the image they get, and have them demo what they come up with in front of the class. Obviously, I am not so au fait with the material that I can definitively say whether another's interpretation is correct, BUT it would be a great opportunity to promote the idea of actively using the treatise material and bringing it to life.
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