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The Dialectic of Il Cortegiano

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lawrence Lipking
Lawrence Lipking*
Affiliation:
Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
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Extract

The book of the Courtier, by the overwhelming weight of its reputation and influence, comes to us as a handbook of the courtly virtues, or, more historically considered, as a treatise on the education of a Renaissance courtier. It is reasonable that it should. Castiglione himself announced his intention of teaching “what manner of man he must be who deserves the name of perfect Courtier, without defect of any kind” (i, 1); and his division of his work into four books which treat successively and compendiously the personal qualities, the conduct, the female counterpart, and the utility and aspirations of the courtier emphasizes its appearance of being a handbook. One can hardly refute, therefore, those writers who use The Courtier as an encyclopaedia of courteous manners, or even those who find in it a manual of Renaissance philosophy. Few works of the Renaissance have a more genuine documentary value.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , October 1966 , pp. 355 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 All quotations and section numerals from The Courtier will refer to the translation by Charles S. Singleton (Garden City, N. Y., 1959).

2 The main line of writing in English about The Courtier has focussed on its use as a book of manners, from Hoby's introduction of it to “all in generali, a storehouse of most necessarie implements for the conversation, use, and trayning up of mans life with Courtly demeaners,” through Dr. Johnson's recommendation of it as “The best book that ever was written upon good breeding” and his placing of it as a forerunner of the Spectator “to teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties,” to such modern studies as Ruth Kelso's The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1929). Italian and German critics have been readier to see the work in terms of its philosophy, art, or biographical background. In Un illustre nunzio pontificio del Rinascimento: Baldassar Castiglione (Città del Vaticano, 1951), Vittorio Cian, who considered The Courtier to be Castiglione's personal memorial, attacks the point of view which sees it as no more than a manual; see esp. pp. 227–230. Erich Loos, in Baldassare Castigliones “Libro del Cortegiano”: Studien zur Tugendauffassung des Cinquecento (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1955), distinguishes four possible ways of interpreting The Courtier: as a picture of society in the Cinquecento; as a moralistic work; as a normative book on education; as “ästhetisch-idealisierendes Kunstwerk.”

3 Among many studies, see Julius Stenzel, Plato's Method of Dialectic, trans. D. J. Allan (Oxford, 1940), esp. pp. 1–22; Victor Goldschmidt, Les Dialogues de Platon: structure et méthode dialectique (Paris, 1947).

4 E.g., Philip Merlan, “Form and Content in Plato's Philosophy,” JHI, viii (1947), 406–430.

5 Loos analyzes The Courtier schematically, pp. 160–161; more thorough structural analyses are provided by Giuseppe Toffanin, Il “Cortegiano” nella Trattatistica del Rinascimento (Naples, n. d.).

6 Castiglione's ideas on language (Preface, 2) are discussed by Cian, La Lingua di B. Castiglione (Florence, 1942).

7 For the circumstances of the dialogues, see E. Bianco Di San Secondo, Baldassarre Castiglione: nella Vita e negli Scritti (Verona, 1941); and the notes to the editions by Cian (Florence, 1947), Bruno Maier (Turin, 1955), and L. E. Opdycke (New York, 1901).

8 Mario Rossi, in Baldassar Castiglione: La sua personalità, la sua prosa (Bari, 1946), pp. 83–85, specifically compares Castiglione's conclusion with those of Plato.

9 For instance, A. D. Menut, “Castiglione and the Nichomachean Ethics,” PMLA, lviii (1943), 309–321; J. T. Stewart, “Renaissance Psychology and the Ladder of Love in Castiglione and Spenser,” JEGP, lvi (1957), 225–230.

10 “The discourse of Bembo, by far the most notable part of Castiglione's book, has to some readers and critics seemed inapposite. It is in reality in perfect keeping, and even essential to the scheme. The question, ‘What is the chief end of a courtier?‘ had received but a lame answer. … when the time seems come to knit up all and make an end, we stumble suddenly on a greater matter than all the rest—the Platonism of the Renaissance.” Walter Raleigh, Introduction to Hoby's The Book of the Courtier (London, 1900), pp. lxviii, lxix.

11 “Bembo's Platonism, so elegantly propounded by him, is simply an additional adornment of life, not its centre and guide.” Wilhelm Schenk, “The ‘Cortegiano’ and the Civilization of the Renaissance,” Scrutiny, xvi (1949), 96.

12 David Paul, “A Book of Behaviour,” Cornhill, clxi (1945), 474–478, attacks the abruptness of the transition to exaltation; Schenk (p. 98) concludes that the philosophy of the courtiers was a lie.

13 The relation of Bembo's Gli Asolarli to The Courtier is sketched by Raleigh (pp. lxix ff.) and Loos (pp. 124–130). The making of the final version has been studied thoroughly by G. Ghinassi, Studi di Filologia Italiana, xxi (1963), 217–264.

14 In Gli Asolani, iii, a hermit lectures Lavinello on the mysteries of Platonic love.

15 The early reception of The Courtier is surveyed by Walter Schrinner, Castiglione und die englische Renaissance (Berlin, 1939); its later reception, by Loos.

16 See Cian's Un illustre nunzio …, pp. 35 ff.

17 The aesthetic applications of memorial feeling are analyzed by O. B. Hardison, Jr., The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1962).

18 The similarities of the two artists are emphasized by Edward Williamson, “The Concept of Grace in the Work of Raphael and Castiglione,” Italica, xxiv (1947), 316–324. According to Denis Mahon, “Eclecticism and the Carracci: Further Reflections on the Validity of a Label,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xvi (1953), 312 n., Castiglione's remarks about the equal validity of different styles of painting (i, 37) became routine ammunition for those “who were opposed to the monopolistic claims of classic-idealist theory.”

19 A more sympathetic way of viewing “affectation” in the Italian Renaissance and in Castiglione is as the symptom of an attitude which envisions the self as a work of art, able to be shaped and “affected” according to conscious design. See Joseph A. Mazzeo, Renaissance and Revolution: The Remaking of European Thought (New York, 1965), pp. 131–160.

20 A number of critics have contrasted The Courtier with other books on behavior in such a way as to demonstrate the effect of Castiglione's form upon his content: Ercole Bottari, Baldassare Castiglione e il suo libro del Cortegiano (Pisa, 1874), pp. 70–83, a comparison with the De re aulica of Agostino Nifo; Michele Ziino, “Castiglione e Montaigne,” Convivium, x (1938), 56–60; Hilary Adams, “ ‘Il Cortegiano’ and ‘Il Galateo’,” MLR, xlii (1947), 457–466; W. J. Schnerr, “Two Courtiers: Castiglione and Rodrigues Lôbo,” Comparative Literature, xiii (1961), 138–153.

21 After the nineteenth-century praise for Castiglione's idealism, twentieth-century critics have been more skeptical. The modern tendency, as in R. E. Young, Introduction to Castiglione and His Courtier, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, xxi (1939–40), 240–257, is to accept the spiritual quality of human fellowship, rather than the idealism of the disquisitions.

22 De Sanctis groups Castiglione with Della Casa, and praises only the artificial graces of his Cinquecento style. History of Italian Literature (New York, 1959), ii, 557–558.

23 See Mrs. Ady (Julia Cartwright), Baldassare Castiglione, the Perfect Courtier: His Life and Letters, 1478–1529 (London, 1908), ii, 382–383.