Libro Del Cortegiano Research Articles

"Formiamo un cortegian:" Castiglione and the Aims of Writing

Ever since its 1528 publication in Venice by Aldus Manutius' heirs, the notoriety of Castiglione's text has entailed the risk of a certain blindness as to its real intentions. Traditionally, critics have been eager to embrace the speaker's own acknowledged desire to rescue the bright memory of Urbino from oblivion and by his writing make it live for posterity (Il Libro del Cortegiano 3.1.342). 1 This has also meant accepting at face value the author's sublime self-erasure from the text, which lends the Urbino conversations the air of an invitation to an invisible voyeur. Even so astute a critic as Edouardo Saccone, who hinges the success of courtly performance on the "prudence, discretion, and good judgment" of the "public for whom the spectacle is destined," confines this insight to the scene of discourse within the text--i.e., the spectators at a fictive masquerade--while ignoring any possible relation of this audience to the extratextual audience of Castiglione's readers (64).

Castiglione and Erasmus: Towards a Reconciliation?

Though historians have been led to characterize the relationship between Baldassarre Castiglione and the Dutch humanist Erasmus as entirely negative, the recovery of the lists of books in Castiglione's library offers the chance to reconsider their relationship. Castiglione made extensive use of Erasmus's Instituto principis Christiani in his Libro del Cortegiano; he also made much use of Erasmus's translations of two of Plutarch's moral treatises. Castiglione's inventories show that Erasmus was also the best-represented contemporary author in his library, which included the Institutio, Spongia, and four volumes of the Biblia Complutensis. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that Castiglione appreciated Erasmus's philological approach to the Scriptures.

GRACEFUL PERFORMANCES: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT OF MUSIC AND DANCE IN THE CORTEGIANO

Music and dancing are critical components of the Italian Renaissance court's political and social structures. Indeed, Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano emphasizes this aspect of the function of music in court society. Music and dance epitomize the role of the courtier; they are not merely ornamental or additional to more important qualities, but are considered crucial to his social and political existence: ‘anzi estimo per le ragioni che voi dite e per molte altre esser la musica non solamente ornamento, ma necessaria al cortegiano’.

Baldesar Castiglione, Thomas Wilson, and the Courtly Body of Renaissance Rhetoric

Abstract: Historically, the Renaissance marks a transformation in wfiich the elite classes come to define themselves by their aesthetic refinement, taste, and good manners. Accompanying this change is a special vision of the human body which is distinguished from that of artisans and peasants. This opposition has been described by Bakhtin as one between the classical body and the grotesque one, and it appears in the most unportant book for the Renaissance redefinition of the upper classes, Castiglione's II libro del cortegiano. Castiglione's view of the body actually derives from the rhetorical tradition of antiquity, in particular from Quintilian and Cicero's De oratore. A similar view appears in the works of Renaissance rhetoricians and can usefully be illustrated by analysis of Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), although the latter also retains a vision of the grotesque body as a result of the ambiguous social position of its author.

Merit in Courtly Literature: Castiglione, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, and Le Caron

Spesse volte mi viene un dubbio, s'é dato dal nascimento (come nell'altre cose ancora) ch'i Principi siano propitii & favorevoli verso questi, iniqui & crudeli verso quegli altri, o se pure è posto nella industria nostra…. (Francesco Sansovino,Propositioni in materia di cose di Stato, Vinegia, 1583, fol. 110)Castiglione'sLibro del cortegiano(1528) and Renaissance courtesy literature in general chart an uneven course between the description of an illustrious courtly ideal never fully incarnate and the establishment of a set of rules enabling courtly practice and prescription. These two intentions, one roughly Platonic and the other roughly Aristotelian, are in the end contradictory, for the more substantial the ideal becomes, the less can it accommodate varying experience and therefore practice. The impulse to set forth an ideal as something outside of variety through which experience is to be judged is incompatible with the production of that ideal through the experiential mean of varying extremes.

Il Cortegiano and the Choice of a Game

The narrative of the Libro del Cortegiano involves at once subdued drama and slightly risky play. It begins with a game whose purpose is to propose a second game which will occupy the company at Urbino for the rest of the evening. This elaborately two-tiered pastime suggests immediately the centrality and formality of play for this group, and throws the dramatic focus on the question of a given proposal's suitability. The reader doesn't know what criteria will determine the excellence of the winning invention, but he is allowed to participate in the consideration of each. Thus in this preliminary contest, Gasparo Pallavicino makes a proposal, and then Cesare Gonzaga another; then the buffoon Fra Serafino and the poet, the Unico Aretino, each makes a kind of non-proposal in bad faith, which has to be dealt with by the arbitress, Emilia Pia.