1. Quondam in Prosperi (1980): 37-41, using the edition-translation by Margherita Isnardi Parente (Napoli: Morano, 1977), especially 72 f. The symbolic use of court ceremonial as part of the psychological and legal environment for monarchic absolutism from Francis I to Louis XIV is penetratingly discussed by Ralph E. Giesey, Cérémonial et puissance souveraine: France, XV ^e -XVII ^e siècles, trans. Jeannie Carlier, Cahiers des Annales no. 41 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1987). Giesey (17) criticizes the incorrect extension of Kantorowicz's notion of "the king's two bodies" to identify the king's mystic body (the body politic) with Christ's mystic body as a metaphysical foundation of absolutism, and essentially agrees with N. Elias on the Versailles court ritual as an instrument to "domesticate" the nobility by subjecting it to the king's arbitrary will. However, against Elias's contention that this evolution was consciously planned, he sees it rather as a chance development that only in retrospect acquired its charged symbolic meaning (79-85). [BACK]

2. The first edition (Sevilla: Jácobo Cromberger), unauthorized, was immediately revised, much expanded, and published under the new title (Valladolid: Nicolás Tierri). See Croll's analysis of the heavily Gorgianic ornamentation in the "schematic" style in his "The Sources of the Euphuistic Rhetoric" [1916], rpt. in J. Max Patrick and Robert O. Evans, eds., Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm. Essays by Morris W. Croll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966): 241-295, esp. 252-254. John Lyly is reputed to have been influenced by Guevara for his Euphues. See the useful survey by Joseph R. Jones, Antonio de Guevara (Boston: Twaine, 1975). [BACK]

3. On Guevara's success in Italy see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989): 300-304 and 422-424 on Italian editions, with no mention of the Menosprecio. See Quondam in Prosperi (1980): 41-54 on the Relox and 63-68 on the Menosprecio. [BACK]

4. Cf. the edition by A. Alvarez de la Villa (Paris: Louis Michaud, [1912 or 1914]). [BACK]

5. Menosprecio, ed. M. Martínez de Burgos (Madrid: Ediciones de "La Letura," 1915). [BACK]

6. For the inner motives of the turn to the pastoral, see, for example, Menosprecio, ed. Martínez de Burgos, 180: "Oh how often was I seized with a desire to retire from court, to withdraw from the world, to become a hermit or a Carthusian monk; but I did not desire this because I was virtuous but because I was desperate, because the king did not give me what I wanted, and the favorite refused to see me." Translated in J. R. Jones, Antonio de Guevara 94. The Aviso is supposed to have had an important impact on the satire of the courtier/ favorite in the picaresque novel starting with the Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Cf. Jones: 87-89. [BACK]

7. See, for a few stimulating contributions: Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy (1964); Mircea Eliade, Le mythe de l'éternel retour. Archétypes et répétitions (Paris: Gallimard, 1949; 1969; 1985); translation of 1949 edition in Cosmos and History; The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), and The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965; Garland, 1985; London: Routledge, 1988); Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969); Gustavo Costa, La leggenda dei secoli d'oro nella letteratura italiana (Bari: Laterza, 1972); Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel, "Sketch for a Natural History of Paradise," Daedalus (Winter 1972): 83-128. [BACK]

8. Li livres dou Tresor 8.1; also in the classic Tuscan version by Bono Giamboni: Il Tesoro di Brunetto Latini volgarizzato da Bono Giamboni, ed. Luigi Gaiter (Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1878-1883): 4:11. This is the only complete edition but it is not regarded as methodologically correct (cf. Segre and Marti, La prosa del Duecento [1959]: 1072). Giamboni's version of Il Tesoro had been printed at Treviso: Gerardo Flandino, 1474, and Venice: per Marchio Sessa, 1533, and so on; that of Brunetto's Etica at Florence: Domenico Maria Manni, 1734. [BACK]

9. Erwin Panofsky, "The Early History of Man in Two Cycles of Paintings by Piero di Cosimo," in Studies in Iconology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962). [BACK]

10. Lorenzo de' Medici, Opere, ed. Attilio Simioni, 2 vols. (Bari: G. Laterza, 1913-1914; 2d ed. 1939): 1: 274-281. [BACK]

11. "spedale delle speranze, sepoltura delle vite, . . . . mercato delle menzogne, scola de le fraudi, . . . . paradiso de i vizi, inferno de le virtù . . . . Né ermo, né bosco, né caverna, né tomba, . . . . sia pur quanto si voglia orrida, . . . . bestiale." Ed. G. Battelli (Lanciano: Carabba, 1914) 11, 14 f. See Franco Gaeta in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 1 (1982): 251-253. [BACK]

12. F. 27r of the Venice: Gherardo, 1554 edition. Quondam: 56-67. [BACK]

13. Cited by Vallone (1955): 73 from Saba's 1554 edition. [BACK]

14. C. Donati (1988): 64-66; Quondam in Prosperi 54-58; Claudio Scarpati, Studi sul Cinquecento italiano (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1982): "Ricerche su Sabba da Castiglione" 27-125. By Scarpati see, also, Dire la verità al principe (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1987). [BACK]

15. A. Prosperi, "Libri sulla corte ed esperienze curiali nel primo '500 italiano," in Prosperi (1980): 69-91 at 69-72. [BACK]

16. Genova: Antonio Bellomo, 1543; Venetia: ad instantia di M. Pelegro de Grimaldi author de l'opera, 1544. Prosperi (1980): 72-77. The author blamed Castiglione for setting up an impossibly demanding goal: see edition Venice (1544): folio 6r. [BACK]

17. Compare "Egli era galantuomo, e cortigiano / A un tempo stesso; ch'egli è come dire / Fare a un tempo da basso e da soprano": unsigned "Notizie istoriche di Lorenzo Pignotti" at the head of the edition of Poesie di Lorenzo Pignotti aretino (Firenze: presso G. Molini e Compagni, All'Insegna di Dante, 1820): 3, where these verses referring to Francesco Redi are attributed to a "capitolo" by Giovan Battista Fagiuoli (1660-1742). A. Vallone, Cortesia e nobiltà nel Rinascimento 17 note 8. See Arturo Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento (Torino: E. Loescher, 1888; G. Chiantore, 1916; 1926): 226, recording "cortegiana onesta" in the early sixteenth century. [BACK]

18. "Ma quante ce ne sono oggidì non dico di reine o principesse, ma semplici e private gentildonne, che levatole un po' l'apparenza di bellezza sono senza costumi e vertù, le quali accorgendosi de l'amore di qualche gentiluomo che non sia a lor talento dei beni de la fortuna dotato, quello scherniscono e di lui si beffano?" Bandello, Le novelle, ed. G. Brognoligo (Bari: Laterza, 2d ed. 1928): 2: 160.

The courtly mentality also invests a new genre that was destined to a lively evolution through the following couple of centuries, namely that of the heraldic "imprese" Paolo Giovio, Dialogo delle imprese militari e amorose (composed in 1551), ed. Maria Luisa Doglio (Roma: Bulzoni, 1978) 34, declares to be about to speak in the ways of the court, "voler parlare alla cortigiana." [BACK]

19. See Elias, Über den Prozess (1939), and The Civilizing Process (1978): chap. 2, "Civilization as a Specific Transformation of Human Behavior," 51-217, with detailed analysis of precepts on behavior at table, in public, in the house, in the bedroom, in sexual relations, and in the daily life of the knight, referring to the literature of manuals in different European countries from roughly 1200 to 1800. [BACK]

20. (Lyon [and Geneva]: T. de Straton; also Stephanus, 1564; 1568); Colloques [original Latin text with facing French trans.] (Paris: Marneuf, 1586). [BACK]

21. Johannes Siebert, Der Dichter Tannhäuser: Leben, Gedichte, Sage (Halle/S.: M. Niemeyer, 1934; rpt. Hildesheim, New York: G. Olms, 1980). [BACK]

22. Remarques nouvelles sur la langue françoise (Paris, 1676): 1: 51, cited by Elias, The Civilizing Process (1978): 102. [BACK]

23. Elias, ibid.: 216 f. Conversely, Venetian cortesan retained the meaning of courtois while shedding all association with court life. See Carlo Goldoni: "Je fis done une comédie de caractère dont le titre étoit Momolo cortesan  . . . . Il n'est pas possible de rendre l'adjectif cortesan par un adjectif françois. Ceterme  . . . . n'est pas une corruption du mot courtisan; mais il dérive plutôt de courtoisie et courtois  . . . . Aussi quand je donnai cette pièce à la presse, je l'intitulai l 'Uomo di mondo, et si je devois la mettre en françois, je crois que le titre  . . . . seroit celui de l 'Homme accompli. " Mémoires (Paris, 1787): part 1, chap. 40, now in Goldoni, Tutte le opere, ed. Giuseppe Ortolani, 1 (Milano: Mondadori, 1935): 185. See Carlo Ossola (1987): 140 f. [BACK]

24. Some critics have challenged his authorship, but Torquato Tasso, who praised it in his dialogue Il padre di famiglia, read it as Della Casa's work. See G. F. Chiodaroli and Gennaro Barbarisi, "G. Della Casa," in Letteratura Italiana: I Minori 2 (Milano: Marzorati, 1961): 1208 f. Della Casa's Latin De officiis was reprinted in his Opere, 6 vols. (Napoli, 1733), the vernacular Trattato in Castiglione, Della Casa, Opere, ed. Giuseppe Prezzolini (Milano, Roma: Rizzoli, 1937) and then again in Prose di Giovanni Della Casa etc., ed. A. Di Benedetto (1970). See C. Scarpati, Studi sul Cinquecento italiano (1982), "Con Giovanni Della Casa dal De officiis al Galateo, " 126-153. [BACK]

25. "Ancora il bene, quando sia soverchio, spiace. E sappi che coloro, che avviliscono se stessi con le parole fuori di misura e rifiutano gli onori che manifestamente loro s'appartengono, mostrano in ciò maggiore superbia che coloro che queste cose, non ben loro dovute, usurpano." Opere di B. Castiglione, G. Della Casa, ed. C. Cordié (1960): 390. Translation mine here and hereafter. [BACK]

26. "E non è altro leggiadria che una cotale quasi luce che risplende dalla convenevolezza delle cose che sono ben composte e ben divisate l'una con l'altra e tutte insieme: senza la qual misura eziandio il bene non è bello e la bellezza non è piacevole . . . . così sono alcuna volta i costumi delle persone  . . . . se altri non gli condisce di una cotale dolcezza, la quale si chiama  . . . . grazia e leggiadria." [BACK]

27. "Essere costumato e piacevole e di bella maniera; il che nondimeno è o virtù o cosa molto a virtù somigliante . . . . La dolcezza de' costumi e la convenevolezza de' modi e delle maniere e delle parole giovano non meno . . .  che la grandezza dell'animo e la sicurezza . . . .; perciocché queste si convengono essercitare ogni dì molte volte  . . . .; ma la giustizia, la fortezza e le altre virtù più nobili e maggiori si pongono in opera più di rado." Opere di B. Castiglione: chap. 1, p. 368. See Eugenio Garin, L'Umanesimo Italiano. Filosofia e vita civile nel Rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1965):193 f. on Della Casa's distinction between absolute morality and relative sociality, the basis for a truly human life. [BACK]

28. "Non  . . . . della natura de' vizii e delle virtù, ma solamente degli acconci e degli sconci modi che noi l'uno con l'altro usiamo." Chap. 28, p. 432. [BACK]

29. "Le quali cirimonie credo che siano state trapportate di Spagna in Italia, ma il nostro terreno le ha male ricevute e poco ci sono allignate, conciossiaché questa distinzione di nobiltà così appunto a noi è noiosa e perciò non si dee alcuno far giudice a dicidere chi è più nobile o chi meno"; " . . . . per I'una di queste due cagioni i più abbondano di cirimonie superflue, e non per altro: le quali generalmente noiano il più degli uomini perciocché per loro s'impedisce altrui il vivere a suo senno, cioè la libertà, la quale ciascuno appetisce innanzi ad ogni altra cosa." Chap. 17, pp. 400 f. [BACK]

30. E. Garin (1965): 194. [BACK]

31. Garin, ibid. [BACK]

32. De la institution di tutta la vita (1543); Della institution morale (1582). Garin (1965): 196-199; C. Donati (1988): 60-62. [BACK]

33. Garin (1965): 199. Francesco Piccolomini, Breve discorso della istituzione di un principe e compendia della scienza civile, ed. Sante Pieralisi (Roma: Salviucci, 1858). [BACK]

34. In this context Garin (1965): 195 also calls attention to the little known Frosino Lapini (d. 1571), L'Anassarcho del Lapino, overo Trattato de' Costumi, e modi che si debbono tenere, o schifare nel dare opera agli studij. Discorso utilissimo ad ogni virtuoso e nobile scolare (Firenze, 1567; I know only the edition Fiorenza: B. Sermartelli, 1571). [BACK]

35. E. Garin (1965): chap. 7, "Ricerche morali," 193-211, on the various aspects of moral speculation in the Italian Renaissance, specifically on the authors just named. [BACK]

36. In the letter of dedication of the Circe to Cosimo de' Medici Gelli shows his literal derivation from Pico's oration. Of all the authors just mentioned, Gelli is a good example of the difficulty of interpreting the social and political meaning of much of our moral literature. The inherent ambiguity of the imaginative representation makes it, as it were, Protean or at least Janus-like. In the summarily coherent presentation of his 1965 book (201 f.), Garin interprets Gelli as an eloquent exhortation to accept the worldly destiny of the active member of the city of man. Enzo Noè Girardi, in contrast, interprets both Circe and Capricci as a partly mystical, Platonizing religious reflection on the limits and miseries of the human condition, weighed down by our earthiness: see Letteratura Italiana: I Minori 2 (1961): 1111-1132. [BACK]

37. Cf. Garin (1965): 207. [BACK]

38. A. Messina, "La fortuna editoriale in Italia e all'estero della Civil conversatione di Stefano Guazzo (sec. XVI)," Libri e documenti 2 (1976): 1-8. [BACK]

39. The Latin terms are all synonyms of "wit," "witticism." The different editions have different numbering for the lemmata, which in the later editions also appear richer, especially with the added Latin synonyms. I cite from the splendid printing Vinegia: n.p., 1548 and the ed. Venetia: Paulo Vigolino, 1593, in the New York Public Library: lemma 1297 and 892 respectively (no pagination). C. Ossola (1987): 136, cites from the edition Venetia: Uscio, 1588, under lemma 892, " urbanità, " p. 120b. [BACK]

40. Tavola or Index and lemma no. 2452 in the 1548 edition, no. 1574 in 1593 edition. C. Ossola (1987): 132, quotes the same definition equating conversation with social intercourse from the 1588 edition, Tavola, lemma no. 1574, and p. 213a.

Medieval Latin conversatio already had the meaning of "communal activities," as in Lambert of Ardres's Historia comitum Ghisnensium, MGH SS 24: chap. 127, p. 624, where a detailed description of the castle built by Arnulf II of Ardres in the first third of the twelfth century gives the second floor, the main part of the house, as reserved to habitatio, the living quarters, and conversatio, all communal activities. [BACK]

41. Lemma no. 950 in 1548 edition: "Lat. beneficentia, munus, liberalitas, è humana e gratiosa liberalità con destri e moderati costumi così detta dalle corti de buoni Principi, ne le quali sempre tal virtù risplende." The lemma cavaliere (no. 543 in 1593 ed.) gives only a list of fitting epithets from the authors (Petrarca, Boccaccio, etc.), ending with the statement that "Sarmente [Sarmiento ?] fu primo uomo che scrivesse di cavalleria." [BACK]

42. The term still covered a broad semantic field. When Annibale turns to the subject of "la conversatione delle donne," Guglielmo takes this to mean sexual intercourse ("con le quali si giuoca alle braccia," p. 290 of 1574 original; Pettie's trans.: 1: 324). The passage well illustrates the paradox of the feminine condition at court and in society, that is, the risk and ambiguity between polite conversation with women and the danger this was perceived to pose to their chastity. They had to run the tightrope act of being seductive without allowing themselves to be seduced; they had to act as teasing flirts, affable yet modest. A. R. Jones in Armstrong and Tennenhouse, eds. (1988): 44. [BACK]

43. J. Burchkardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (New York: Harper & Row, 1958): 2: 371. [BACK]

44. "Chi desidera adunque usar felicemente della civil conversatione, ha da considerare che la lingua è lo specchio e 'l ritratto dell'animo suo; e che sì come dal suono del denaio conosciamo la bontà e falsità sua, così dal suono delle parole comprendiamo a dentro la qualità dell'uomo et i suoi costumi." Ed. Salicato (1575): book 2: 75b. [BACK]

45. Cited by Quondam in Prosperi (1980): 30, from the edition Madrid: Aribau (1874): 2. [BACK]

46. 9v, 36r-37r in both 1543 and 1544 editions. C. Donati (1988): 62. [BACK]

47. This occurred on 20 October 1574. See C. Donati (1988): 152-156 on the political background to Guazzo's work. [BACK]

48. The oppressive presence of the terrible Vespasiano Gonzaga as protagonist in the dialogue of book 4, however, takes away much of the openness of a true dialogue. It is good to remember that Duke Guidobaldo's physical absence from the Cortegiano dialogue was a warrant of spontaneity and a condition for the necessary critical spirit. [BACK]

49. Quondam in Prosperi (1980): 58-63 on Guazzo. [BACK]

50. "'L viver civilmente non dipende dalla Città, ma dalle qualità dell'animo. Così intendo la conversatione civile, non per rispetto solo della Città, ma in consideratione de' costumi e delle maniere, che la rendono civile." Ed. Venice: Robino (1575): 58, and ed. ibid.: Salicato (1575): 1: 30. [BACK]

51. D. Javitch, "Courtesy Books," in A. C. Hamilton et al., eds.. The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989). The negative assessment of the Book of the Courtier as an expression of a debased social environment characterizes some recent studies, for example, Gino Benzoni, Gli affanni della cultura (1978), and John Robert Woodhouse, Baldesar Castiglione. A Reassessment of The Courtier (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978). [BACK]

52. Ed. Venice: Robino (1575): 186. [BACK]

54. See G. E. Ferrari, Documenti marciani e principale letteratura sui codici veneti di epopea carolingia (Venezia: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 1961), with a catalogue of the Este library. On the "franco-veneti" and the reception of chivalric literature through the Orlando Innamorato see Riccardo Bruscagli et al., I libri di "Orlando Innamorato," Ferrara, Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali, Saggi (Ferrara: Panini, 1987): chap. 1.1-1.2, pp. 14-26 by Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti.

Although written records start relatively late in Italy, by using personal and place names Pio Rajna, "Contributi alla storia dell'epopea e del romanzo medievale: V, Gli eroi brettoni nell'onomastica italiana del secolo XII" and "Contributi alla storia dell'epopea e del romanzo medievale: VI, Ancora gli eroi brettoni nell'onomastica italiana del secolo XII," Romania 17 (1888): 161 ff., 355 ff., showed that the Arthurian legends were probably known in Italy as early as 1080-1100. See the still authoritative Arturo Graf, "Appunti per la storia del ciclo brettone in Italia," Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 5 (1885): 80-131, especially on the Tristano Riccardiano; and Segre and Marti, eds., La prosa del Duecento (1959): 556. [BACK]

55. Rolandino, Cronica in factis et circa facta Marchie Trivixiane, ed. A. Bonardi, in L. A. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 8, n.s. 1 (Città di Castello, 1905-1906); trans. by J. R. Berrigan, The Chronicles of the Trevisan March (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1980). It included the deeds of the feared Ghibelline leader and imperial vicar Ezzelino da Romano. A productive scholar, Rolandino was also a leading notary and a vigorous political leader (cf. my chap. 1 and note 81). See Waley: 222 f. [BACK]

56. Waley: 228. That the particularism and separatism of many French, German, and Italian lords was not shared by their English counterparts is another matter. [BACK]

57. For an authoritative discussion of the linguistic and historical characteristics of this literature, see, after A. Viscardi, Letteratura franco-italiana (1941), with bibliography, A. Roncaglia, "La letteratura franco-veneta," in Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, eds., Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 2: Il Trecento (Milano: Garzanti, 1965; 1973): 727-759. Also Corrado Bologna, "La letteratura dell'Italia settentrionale nel Trecento," in A. Asor Rosa, ed., Letteratura Italiana 7.1 (1987): 511-600. Nicolò da Verona introduced new epic characters, including the spirited Estout, who was destined to become Boiardo's and Ariosto's Astolfo. Also Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (1972): 465 f. on the originality of the Entrée and the Prise. [BACK]

58. See the edition of the Attila by Giulio Bertoni (1907). [BACK]

59. Pio Rajna's standard study Le fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876, 2d ed. 1890) is still considered the most exhaustive survey of Ariosto's sources, but critics have become aware of its unrealistic listing of French originals without sufficient credit being given to the much closer Franco-Venetian and Tuscan versions that Ariosto certainly had at hand. See Carlo Dionisotti, "Appunti sui Cinque Canti e sugli studi ariosteschi," in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, Convegno di studi di filologia italiana nel Centenario della Commissione per i Testi di Lingua (Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1961): 369-382 at 377-379; Daniela Delcorno Branca, L' Orlando Furioso e il romanzo cavalleresco medievale (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1973): 6; and Aurelio Roncaglia, "Nascita e sviluppo della narrativa cavalleresca nella Francia medievale" (1975): 229-250 at 229 f. [BACK]

60. Ezio Levi, I cantari leggendari del popolo nei secoli XIV e XV (Torino: Loescher, 1914); idem, ed., Fiore di leggende: cantari antichi (Bari: G. Laterza, 1914); Carlo Dionisotti, " Entrée d'Espagne, Spagna, Rotta di Roncisvalle, " in Studi in onore di Angela Monteverdi I (Modena, 1959): 207-241; Gianfranco Folena, "La cultura volgare e l' 'umanesimo cavalleresco' nel Veneto," in Vittore Branca, ed., Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano (Firenze: Sansoni, [1963] 1964): 141-158. On Pulci's chivalric content see the ample analyses in R. M. Ruggieri, L'umanesimo cavalleresco da Dante al Pulci (Roma, 1962): 199-265. [BACK]

61. For easy reference see Tristan and the Round Table. A Translation of La Tavola ritonda, trans. Anne Shaver, MRT&S 28 (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Press, 1983), based on the old but still basic Polidori edition (2 vols., rpt. Bologna: Romagnoli, 1964-1965). [BACK]

62. Aldo Vallone (1955): 56-59. For an up-to-date assessment of Boiardo's way of handling the genre and his relationship to the Ferrarese court, see Charles S. Ross, Introduction to his translation of the Orlando Innamorato (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1989): 1-29. [BACK]

63. Orlando Innamorato: 2.10.1: 1-6 in M. M. Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato, Amorum Libri, ed. Aldo Scaglione, 2 vols. (Torino: UTET, 2d ed. 1963): 2: 162. On chivalry in Boiardo see, for example, Antonio Franceschetti, "L 'Orlando Innamorato e gli ideali cavallereschi nella Ferrara del Quattrocento," Atti dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Classe di scienze morali e lettere (Venezia, 1971-1972): 315-333. [BACK]

64. The most recent title is Trevor Dean, Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450 (Cambridge, Eng., New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Preferment and social advancement in Ferrara chiefly took the form of land rewards conferred on "men intimately involved in the working of the Este lordship, whether as retainers, courtiers, household servants, or dependent peasant farmers" (107), in addition to knights and noblemen. Reviewing this study in Renaissance Quarterly 41.4 (1988): 708-710, W. Gundersheimer (see his 1973 book on Ferrara) finds that "Dean has confirmed in substantial detail the essentially feudal character of the Ferrarese regime" and "put to rest (p. 97) [the]  . . . simplistic notion that [the Estensi] developed a new system of authoritarian control, or a new way of governing. His extensive knowledge of earlier forms of feudalism enables him to offer many useful comparisons."

Research is still wanted on the ideological conditions of northern Italy's seigniorial courts: preliminary materials are in Il Rinascimento nelle corti padane. Società e cultura (Bari: De Donato, 1977). On the Este court as background to the literature from Boiardo to Tasso, see the methodological suggestions in Giovanni Getto, Letteratura e critica nel tempo (Milano: Marzorati, 1954, 2d ed. 1968): "La corte estense di Ferrara come luogo di incontro di una civiltà letteraria," 219-239 in 1st ed.; 325-353 in 2d ed. [BACK]

65. Orlando Innamorato: 1.9.49 f. Critics have spoken of "umanesimo cavalleresco" and "umanesimo romanzesco" and tried to define Boiardo's poetic world in such terms, variously referring the romance or chivalric component of his inspiration to the medieval heritage and the humanistic one to his ample use of classical motifs, aptly blended with the Arthurian and Carolingian ones. See R. M. Ruggieri, L'Umanesimo cavalleresco italiano da Dante al Pulci (Roma, 1962; new ed. Napoli: Conte, 1977 with title L'umanesimo cavalleresco italiano, da Dante all'Ariosto ); idem, "L'umanesimo cavalleresco nell' Orlando Innamorato, " in Giuseppe Anceschi, ed., Il Boiardo e la critica contemporanea, Atti del Convegno  . . . su M. M. Boiardo, Scandiano-Reggio Emilia, 1969 (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1970): 467-479; Giovanni Ponte, La personalità e l'opera del Boiardo (Genova: Tilgher, 1972); and Antonio Franceschetti, L' Orlando Innamorato e le sue componenti tematiche e strutturali (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1975). Brandimarte's "perfect" paradigm is studied in Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "'Ma soprattutto la persona umana / era cortese': Brandimarte's cortesia as expressed through the hero's loci actionis in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, Book I," in G. Papagno and A. Quondam, eds., La Corte e lo spazio: Ferrara Estense 2 (1982): 739-781. [BACK]

66. Curtius (178) has reminded us that this topos of sapientia and fortitudo is also found in Rabelais ( Pantagruel: chap. 8), Spenser ( Faerie Queene: 2.3.40; Shepheardes Calendar: October, vv. 66 ff.), and Cervantes ( Don Quijote: part 1,chap.38). [BACK]

67. Women and knights are chiastically opposed (in gallantly reversed order) to arms and loves; then courtesy, corresponding to the first and last of the four named elements, is opposed to "audaci imprese," iterating the motif of audacia (prowess, bravery). [BACK]

68. The comparison with Wolfram's Parzival brings closer analogies than with Chrétien's Perceval on account of the more radical behavior on the part of the former (see my chap. 6). We cannot know which precise versions of the story were available to Ariosto, but even though the range of his readings was admittedly very wide, it could not include German texts. [BACK]

69. Many critics have wrestled with Ariosto's symbolism concerning characters and adventures, with sharp assessments of his way of revising traditional allegories and emptying them of their moral import. A good recent example of such interpretations with regard to Ruggiero and all major characters is Peter DeSa Wiggins, figures in Ariosto's Tapestry: Character and Design in the Orlando Furioso (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). [BACK]

70. Ferdinand Lot, Étude sur le Lancelot en prose (1918): chap. 2, rpt. in M. L. Meneghetti, ed., Il romanzo (1988): 299-311 at 306. [BACK]

71. Tony Hunt, Forum for Modern Language Studies 17 (1981): 99 f. [BACK]

72. A recent study in this vein of reaction to the Romantic view of the Furioso is Albert Russell Ascoli, Ariosto's Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). Marina Beer, Romanzi di cavalleria. Il Furioso e il romanzo italiano del primo Cinquecento, Centro Studi "Europa delle Corti" / Biblioteca del Cinquecento 34 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1987), speculates that the madness of Roland was a result of the medical views of love as an illness, as also recorded in Equicola's Libro de natura de amore, so that Ariosto's representations are rather a parody of Platonic and courtly love—or rather the excesses of the latter—even while his image of knighthood is idealistically in reaction against the brutality of contemporary warfare. [BACK]

73. Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi (Roma, 1554): see the edition: Giovan Battista Giraldi Cintio [sic], De' romanzi, delle commedie e delle tragedie, ragionamenti . . .; documenti intorno alla controversia sul libro de' romanzi con G. B. Pigna (Milano: Biblioteca Rara di G. Daelli, 1864), and Henry L. Snuggs, ed. and trans., Giraldi Cinthio on Romances: Being a Translation of the Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968): xiv. The new label and the defense of the newly recognized and theorized genre was also in the essay I romanzi  . . . divisi in tre libri. Ne quali della poesia et della vita dell'Ariosto si tratta  . . . (Vinegia: nella bottega d'Erasmo appresso V. Valgrisi, 1554) by Cinthio's pupil, Giovan Battista Nicolucci Pigna. Both Cinthio and Pigna were, together with Speroni, prominent courtiers of the Este in Ferrara, and all three were well known to Tasso, who is supposed to have represented them in characters of the Aminta (as first proposed by Gilles Ménage in the Aminta' s first annotated edition, Paris: Courbé, 1655). The subtle game of multiple agnitions was undoubtedly an alluring challenge to the court audience. [BACK]

74. See Javitch (1988) on W. Booth's assessment and the current theoretical framework among "narratologists" (and narrators as well). [BACK]

75. Similarly, however original and personal Ariosto's famous "median style" may sound to us, it also had its generic antecedents in the romances, signally Chrétien's. [BACK]

76. Speroni referred to Cinthio's Discorso dei romanzi (1554) in a fragment entitled "De' romanzi" probably composed soon after the appearance of Bernardo Tasso's Amadigi in 1560: see Javitch (1988): 61. [BACK]

77. D. Javitch, "Narrative Discontinuity in the Orlando Furioso and Its Sixteenth-Century Critics," Modern Language Notes 103 (1988): 50-74. This survey of Cinquecento reception does not address the question of historical antecedents to such practices, and much Ariosto criticism similarly fails to engage in a more thorough historicization of this masterpiece, as if it might detract from its undoubted originality. See, also, Klaus W. Hempfer, Diskrepante Lektüren: die Orlando-Furioso-Rezeption im Cinquecento. Historische Rezeptionsforschung als Heuristik der Interpretation (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1987). [BACK]

78. (Lyon, 1955; rpt. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1930 and Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1971): 2.8, "De l'euures heroïque," 78 f. See S. John Holyoake, An Introduction to French Sixteenth-Century Poetic Theory: Texts and Commentary (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972): 172, and J. Frappier in R. S. Loomis, ed. (1959; 1961): 299. In the course of a detailed analysis of Virgil's narrative excellence, Peletier says: "E parmi l'universel discours, il fèt bon voer, comment le Poëte, apres avoer quelquefoes fèt mancion d'une chose mémorable  . . . , la lesse la pour un tans: tenant le Lecteur suspans, desireus e hátif d'an aler voer l'evuenemant. An quoi je trouve noz Rommanz bien inuantiz. E dirè bien ici an passant, qu'an quelques uns d'iceus bien choesiz, le Poëte Heroïque pourra trouuer a fere son profit: comme sont les auantures des Chevaliers, les amours, les voyages, les anchantemans, les combaz, e samblables choses: déqueles l'Arioste à fèt amprunt de nous, pour transporter an son Liure." [BACK]

79. Vinaver, The Rise of Romance (1971). [BACK]

80. Kellermann, Aufbaustil und Weltbild Chrestiens von Troyes im Percevalroman, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 88 (Halle/Saale: M. Niemeyer, 1936; rpt. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1967). A critical survey of the question in E. Köhler, L'aventure chevaleresque (1974): chap. 7, "La forme du roman arthurien chez Chrétien de Troyes: Rapport entre contenu et structure signifiante," 269-298. [BACK]

81. On the Cinquecento critics' misjudgment of Ariosto's thematic and formal unity owing to their imposition of supposed Aristotelian principles see, also, Peter V. Marinelli, Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of Orlando Furioso (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1987), who rightfully insists on the need to take into account Ariosto's connection with Boiardo. Also, on the question of genre, Marina Beer, Romanzi di cavalleria. Il Furioso e il romanzo italiano del primo Cinquecento (1987). The second part of this book provides a full statistical and bibliographic account of the readership and popularity of the chivalric poem between 1470 and 1600 (apparently a circulation of about half a million copies). [BACK]

82. Tasso, Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali (Milano, Napoli: R. Ricciardi, 1959): 487-729. The third of the six discorsi (pp. 561-624) deals principally with the Aristotelian unity of plot in epic and romance—declared to be of a similar kind, hence subject to the same poetic criteria. It is a protracted argument about the Furioso, objections starting with the difficulty of retaining the mass of events in one's memory (572 ff.). Similar were the approach and the critiques in Tasso's earlier (1587) Discorsi dell'arte poetica e in particolare sopra il poema eroico (ibid.: 349-410). Montaigne voiced the same objections. [BACK]

83. Bibliotheca Selecta: book 1, chap. 25, p. 113 of the 1593 edition (Roma: Typographia Apostolica Vaticana). On some of Possevino's diplomatic activities within the academic world see A. Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986): 136 f., 146 f. On the chapter in question see M. Fumaroli (1985): 23 and note. [BACK]

84. E. Köhler, "Die Pastourellen des Trobadors Gavaudan," GermanischRomanische Monatsschrift 14 (1964); Mancini ed.: 217-232. The pastoral world of the Aminta finds its fitting style in a deceptive naturalness that is the counterpart of the symptomatic "baroque" artificiality of Tasso's other works, from the Gerusalemme to his lyrics and even the correspondence. In chapter 18 on Marino in his Storia della letteratura italiana (1870-1871), Francesco De Sanctis characterized the style of the Aminta as "naturalezza con una sprezzatura che pare negligenza ed è artificio finissimo": the connection with Castiglione's vocabulary is revealing. It is as if Tasso were representing the spectacle or the make-believe of the court in the Aminta and its true inner nature in his other works. [BACK]

85. Cf. Paolo Braghieri, Il testo come soluzione rituale: Gerusalemme Liberata (Bologna: Pàtron, 1978): 14: "la molla narrativa scatta nella dialettica che al moto centripeto del desiderio del capitano oppone quello centrifugo, disgregativo, dei 'compagni erranti.' In questo senso il testo emerge, dalla minaccia dell'errare-errore, come tentativo di stabilire un ordine." [BACK]

86. See Raimondi's edition of Tasso's Dialoghi (Firenze: Sansoni, 1958): 1: 3-5. The titles of the successive dialogues most directly pertinent to our subject will indicate the range of courtly and chivalric themes: Il Forno overo della nobiltà; Il Beltramo overo della cortesia; Il Gonzaga overo del piacere onesto; Il Messaggiero; Il padre di famiglia; De la dignità; Della precedenza; Il Romeo overo del giuoco; Il Rangone overo della pace; Il Malpiglio overo della corte; Il Malpiglio secondo overo del fugir la moltitudine; Il Gianluca overo de le maschere; La Molza overo de l'amore; Il Conte overo de l'imprese. [BACK]

87. Dialoghi, ed. Raimondi: vol. 2, tome 1: 1-113. [BACK]

88. Tasso, Dialoghi, ed. Ezio Raimondi (1958). Il Malpiglio is also available with facing Italian text in Tasso, Dialogues, trans. Carnes Lord and Dain A. Trafton (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982): 151-191. Another of Tasso's dialogues, Il segretario (Ferrara: V. Baldini, 1587), dealt with that particular ministerial office—the subject of a number of contemporary treatises going from Francesco Sansovino, Del segretario (Venetia: F. Rampazetto, 1564; 14 editions until 1608) to Battista Guarini, Il segretario (Venezia: B. Magiotti, 1594), Angelo Ingegneri, Del buon segretario (Roma: G. Falcotti, 1594), and on through the following century. See Amedeo Quondam, "Il dominio del segretario, l'ordine della retorica," in A. Quondam, ed., Le "Carte Messaggiere"—Retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare: per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento (Roma: Bulzoni, 1981): 120-150. [BACK]

89. Tasso's Dialogues, trans. Lord and Trafton (1982): 180. [BACK]

90. Ibid.: 174 f., there rendered with: "Concealment becomes the courtier more than showing off." [BACK]

91. Ibid.: 178-180. Vallone (1955: 60) seems to misinterpret the important letter of 1584 to Curzio Ardizio in which Torquato Tasso assessed the historical value of the figure of the courtier as presented by Castiglione: see Tasso, Epistolario, ed. Scipio Slataper (Lanciano: R. Carabba, 1932): 1: 88. Tasso did not mean that in his view Castiglione's courtier was purely imaginary, as the skeptical Prezzolini maintained against Vittorio Cian in the well-known polemic on the historical meaning of the great treatise. He was rather expressing his own feeling that the court had ceased to be an operative agency of good government in his own days as it might have been in times past, even though Castiglione's picture of both the courtier and the prince was inspired by a noble Platonic idea. [BACK]

92. Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, "Il forestiero in corte," Lettere Italiane 39 (1982): 328-347 at 345-347: "Di politica non c'è più traccia nelle pagine del Tasso che si riferiscono alla corte . . . . Il rapporto fra principe e cortigiano è quello fra padrone e servo, e il servo non deve mai apparire da più del padrone." [BACK]