The Fortunes of the Courtier : The European Reception of Castiglione's Cortegiano

ISBN-13: 9780745611518 / Angielski / Miękka / 1995 / 224 str.

Peter Burke

Opis

This book aims to understand the different readings of Castiglione's Cortegiano or Book of the Courtier from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.

Recenzje

"The Fortunes of the Courtier is a valuable book. It should lead on to further important work, as its author suggests, especially as he has provided an invaluable bibliography and appendices detailing editions up to 1850 and known readers before 1700." Times Literary Supplement

"The Fortunes of the Courtier, original, spare and stimulating, is a model monograph." The London Review of Books

"Burke′s painstaking research and engaging speculations make it much easier to see Castiglione′s position clearly." Times Higher Education Supplement

"A readable oscillation between the generalised and the particular." Parergon

Spis treści

List of Plates.

Preface and Acknowledgements.

Abbreviations.

1. Tradition and Reception.

2. The Courtier in its Time.

3. The Courtier in Italy.

4. The Courtier Translated.

5. The Courtier Imitated.

6. The Courtier Criticized.

7. The Courtier Revived.

8. The Courtier in European Culture.

Appendix 1 Editions of the Courtier, 1528–1850.

Appendix 2 Readers of the Courtier before 1700.

Bibliography.

Index.

O autorze

Peter Burke is Reader in Cultural History at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is the author of several books including Venice and Amsterdam (Polity, 1994) and The Art of Conversation (Polity, 1993).

Blurb

Castiglione′s Cortegiano, or Book of the Courtier, first published in 1528, is one of the most famous texts of the Italian High Renaissance, with over a hundred editions printed in numerous languages. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it has generally been read as a text which represented the Renaissance. During the Renaissance itself, however, the book was read for very different reasons: it was a guide to contemporary conduct, not a guide to the values of a past age.

The aim of Peter Burke′s new book is to understand, if not to close, the gap between these two divergent readings of the Courtier. It also attempts to use the rise, decline and transformation of interest in the Courtier in the first century after its publication as indicators of changing social values, and the regional variations in its reception as a means of exploring the unity and variety of the culture of Renaissance Europe.

To achieve these aims, Burke begins with a discussion of the text itself, showing how, in successive editions, the dialogue was presented in different ways, partly in order to appeal to men and women who were insecure about their status. Later chapters chart the history, geography and sociology of enthusiasm for the book as well as the reactions against it, both official and unofficial. The book concludes with a discussion of the later fortune of the Courtier, and its appeal to writers as different as Samuel Johnson and W. B. Yeats.

Combining minute research with broad conclusions about the culture of early modern Europe, The Fortunes of the Courtier will be recognized as a major contribution to the history of the Renaissance.